But no one returned, to clean up, fuel up or anything — not that day, or the next day, not for a week or a month or a year.

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Once upon a time there was an airplane. He was a young Maharaja, he was agile and ambitious, he wanted to fly through the clouds, and speed past the sun, he wanted to be a warrior in the sky, he wanted to lead the fleet, the 737-200 batch of 1982. He was shiny, the head of his class. But surprisingly, while his batchmates were given exotic destinations, he was given post and cargo duty.

He ferried telegrams and posts and packages and couriers and some passengers, mostly postmen from Bombay to Calcutta — he didn’t have ‘connections’ like some of his ‘batchmates’, so he couldn’t object — but he was patriotic. “Let me be the best I can be,” he justified to himself: he was turned into a workhorse and he became a workaholic. Bombay to Calcutta soon became Mumbai to Kolkata, Santa Cruz Airport to Dum Dum Airport soon transformed to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport Mumbai to Netaji Subhash Chandra........

© Midday