Up in the Air

摘要

I was flying from Newark to New Delhi on a non-stop flight operated by a leading US carrier. The flight was supposed to have taken off from Newark at 2000 hours, but as it was overbooked and the airline officials were trying to accommodate the 'extra' passengers on other flights, we were running behind schedule. In the waiting lounge, the flight crew was offering a compensation of USDollars 700 to passengers who had 'flexible travel plans' and could reschedule their itinerary, so that other passengers could be accommodated on the current flight. Despite the temptation, I decided against it and boarded the plane as they called out the seat number printed on my boarding pass.It was a Boeing 777 with a capacity of over 300 passengers and we were going to be airborne for a good Yl hours. Sitting beside a nosey neighbour who was cribbing about the virtually absent leg room (in the famous Shashi Tharoor' s 'cattle class'), I was desperately seeking some divine intervention to save me from him. With his incessant probing, he had already found out that I was a recent medical graduate pursuing internship.