Magic of the mega mechanical birds

My age is eight square. Even now, I am fascinated by airplanes. I loved to watch them with the eyes of a child as they flew low, their engines roaring like a dozen lions in unison, across the sky, over the terrace of our house in Chennai. When we spent about a year in a house located in Pallavaram near the Chennai airport, standing on our roof, we could watch the planes as they approached the runway gracefully and soared up the invisible flight path in amazing take-offs.

Sometimes, when bigger jets cruised low overhead, the whole building shivered. Our dog Rose would tremble and our cat Snooze would jump off my mother’s lap and disappear under the cot. As I stood, mouth open, ears plugged and head tilted upward, these planes would descend elegantly at an angle of 45 degrees. When they passed over our head, we felt as if they would pick up our tiny house with their wheel talons and carry it away like an eagle carrying off a rabbit.

I adore serpentine trains — children’s first love. I never stopped loving the rugged steam engines. When it came to ships, I did not have the opportunity to look at them from close quarters. I used to see them as just specks from the Marina beach as they waited along the distant horizon to enter the Madras Port, anchored one behind the other. But an airplane is the most awesome creation of man. Trains and ships are earthly but planes are heavenly.

The arrival of an Air India flight early in the morning from Singapore was our alarm clock. When it screamed its way over our house, flashing the landing lights, we would wake up with a start. During my weekend visits to Mount Thiruneer Malai, which overlooks the Madras Airport to worship Lord Ranganath, I used to spend an extra hour on the hilltop to watch the planes as they descended step by step as if down an invisible staircase. My association with planes ended when we shifted to another area after my mother urged us to do so saying she would turn stone deaf if she continued to live in that house under the shadows of ‘monstrous’ eagles .

Everyone at home was relieved when we moved away except me. I missed the magnificent mega mechanical birds till I again got an opportunity to resume my lost relationship with them when I retired. Though this time, our house was not that close to the airport, sitting in my arm chair on the terrace, I could watch the planes. ‘You are 64, not six plus four, to sit there and watch the planes with wide eyes,’ my wife used to chide me often. She didn’t know that watching planes sitting under the open blue sky was better than watching the never ending slow motion serials on TV behind the closed doors of a stuffy living room.