And the plane was going up in the air…things were getting
left behind. The airport walls, the runway, the people, the identities
everything was getting blurred. Here I was up in the air, inside a plane
hanging in between a sky above and clouds below. Though I was not alone and had
few more fellow beings nearby, but that was it, this was the new definition of
world left to me now. The conventional definition of world had no more
significance in the mid air.
So, between an endless sky and clouds, here I was. There was
no more North, or South or up and down for me. Completely aimless and
groundless and hanging somewhere, I had lost my identity. The identity which
was cultivated or rather many times imposed on me for so many years was lost in
a moment. Nothing mattered anymore. For a moment I started to think, which
world I belonged to. The one which I had come from and claimed to be very much
my own, or the one in front of me. My body, my name, my friends, anyone I had
known, the paths I had traveled, my successes, my failures all were looking
irrelevant in the mid-air. Perhaps, the only way to regain my lost self was if
I landed back to the ground. Here I was no one to anyone or rather there was no
more of anyone and neither of me. I don’t think I ever had such an existential issue
before.
Occasionally when I looked inside the plane, I could come
back to myself, and could establish the separateness of my being, otherwise
whenever I looked out of the window; it was a nameless and endless ocean of
white and blue without any traces of me.
The feeling was horrifying as well enchanting. What, if I had to stay
like that for many more hours, or days and never return back to land? How would
be my life, if such a thing happened? Would any of my previous learning help me
in this new world, or would I need to start from zero, and unlearn everything I
had learnt so far. These thoughts were disturbing as well strangely calming.
And somewhere I knew that in some hours I would be safely landing at a familiar
turf, ending the current uncertainty, and strangeness and then these thoughts
would not haunt me.
And then, the plane started gliding underneath, and I found
myself below the clouds. Now I could make some sense of where I was. At a great
distance downwards, I could figure out the brownish land masses, the shining
water bodies and the tiny spots of greenness around them. But, still I was
unable to see any signs of roads and vehicles, the marvels of human
accomplishments. At best, I could make out some straight and curvy yellowish
patches, originating in between from somewhere and ending abruptly.
And then another thought struck me. In some time, I was
going to land, and was to continue my life from where I had left, but was it
really worth it? From, such a magnitude, with a much broader vision (at least
literally), what I could see was that every possible creature or object I had
acquainted or known or imagined of so far, everything was looking so tiny, or
even not visible. So whatever, I had held so grandeur, so valuable, and had spent
energy of my life to get after, was actually not bigger than a child’s play. Even
the proud ideas of ‘I’, and ‘my accomplishments’ were lost in this maze. I felt
as if in my entire life I had been misinformed about my priorities, and had just wasted it
in gathering and building stuffs, which didn't matter at all. Neither it
mattered that how good or bad I did in my financial and social standings. From
this distance, the whole idea of usual life was looking invented and fictitious
to me.
In this new light, life suddenly became much simpler,
and I had a laugh at my ambitions, my desires and expectations I had tangled my
life with. I can’t say how strong and lasting this feeling would be, but at
least this experience gave me a totally new dimension to look at my life. Perhaps,
up in the air, I didn't lose myself but found a new of me.