1: Flights of Dreams

August 1998 – Chennai International Airport

The blast of cool, processed air hit Bharath’s face as he stepped onto the jet bridge. It felt like he had already left India behind. His sneakers squeaked a little on the polished floor, his shoulder bag was a bit heavier than it should have been — stuffed with snacks from Amma and a last-minute gift from his cousin: a deodorant called Wild Stone. He had emptied half of it onto himself in the airport bathroom.

“Makes you irresistible to women macha,” his cousin swore. “You’ll be fighting them off with a stick.”

He was going to the US. The land of Pamela Anderson of Baywatch and Denise Richards of Wild Things!

Well, first to Dubai. Then to Atlanta. But still. He was on his way. The butterflies in his stomach weren’t fear — no way — this was excitement. He tried to walk like he’d done this a hundred times, casually glancing at the overhead compartments, nodding at strangers like a seasoned traveler. Like someone who belonged.

When he spotted the Emirates air stewardesses, his heart actually skipped a beat. Tall. Graceful. Impossibly poised in their deep red hats and flowing beige scarves. One of them gave him a polite smile as he passed, and he swore it lingered for an extra half-second. That was it. This was exactly like that movie he and his friends had watched at the shady theater in Royapettah. The one where the handsome guy flies first class, gets invited to a hidden bedroom in the plane, and somehow ends up making love to multiple air hostesses somewhere between Mumbai and Frankfurt. Somehow their lack of service to their customers never bothered anyone.

His friend Mukund had leaned over halfway through the movie and whispered, “This is real, da. This is basically a documentary.”

Bharath had believed him. With all that Wildstone on as insurance - he had no reason to doubt the inevitable. It was all just a function of time before he was bedding someone. He wasn’t sure about taking on multiple women - but he was sure he could handle at least one. Maybe the air hostess that he could swear had eyed him and licked her lips as he passed by. Just like the ad for Wild Stone.

He scanned the cabin discreetly — no sign of a hidden bedroom yet, but this was just the first leg. Maybe the bigger plane from Dubai had the special bedroom. If he remembered right, the sex in the movie did start only when the plane was over Europe. Maybe it was something in the ozone layer that made women lower their inhibitions.

He ran a hand through his hair, double-checked his parting, and adjusted his blue-tinted sunglasses on his forehead. They didn’t serve any real function indoors, but they looked good.

He stashed his backpack in the overhead bin and sank into his economy seat with what he imagined was the grace of a panther. Row 34C. Almost his favourite size on women as well. He did prefer the Ds, but C was acceptable. Regardless, aisle seat. Perfect for gazing around the cabin as his cologne announced him to the world.

As he buckled in, he let himself grin. He was the Bharath — computer science prodigy, unofficial cricket captain of his colony’s team, two-time inter school quiz champion, and according to his mother and three aunts, “the best boy in all of Tamil Nadu.” Sure, he’d never had a girlfriend — but not for lack of offers. Just ... bad timing he supposed. Girls liked him. Apparently, he had a private fan club that had never announced itself. Everyone said so.

At customs, even the officer had been impressed. “US-aa? For studies? Computer science? Ah, super, super.” His mom had nearly cried. His dad wasn’t so pleased.

“US? For what? I am building a damn IT empire here and it’s not for the neighbours’ children. What will you get there that you won’t get here?”

Bharath had smiled then, respectful, even as his stomach twisted. He didn’t have the heart to tell his father the truth — that it wasn’t just about the degree. It wasn’t even about the prestige of studying abroad.

It was about escape.

He stared out the window now, watching the as the engines roared to life and the baggage handlers threw their luggage onto the belt that led into the aircraft.

He loved Chennai. He really did. It had given him everything — a supportive family, recognition, comfort, a future. But it had also boxed him in with those very same things. Expectations. Eyes everywhere. Aunties who asked too many questions. Friends who only saw one version of him. Teachers who had decided what kind of man he would become before he even got the chance to find out for himself.

He wasn’t running away from home. He was running towards something.

A blank slate. A place where he wasn’t “Mr. Computer Science.” Or “that Murali sir’s son.” Or “the boy who topped state maths.” A place where no one would whisper about who saw him with which girl on Anna Salai, or raise eyebrows because he was with the wrong crowd. A place where he could fail, or flirt, or fall — and no one would write it into his permanent character record.

Maybe it was naive. Maybe the US wouldn’t be what he thought it was. But the truth was, he needed to try. He needed to breathe.

There were parts of himself he hadn’t even met yet. He wasn’t going to find them while trapped in the role of “good boy.”

His full scholarship had made it impossible for his father to say no.

“All right,” Appa had finally said. “Go there. And come back fast.”

But Bharath knew he wasn’t going to come back the same.

The last few passengers were still trickling in when it happened.

A soft whiff of something floral and faintly citrusy floated past his nose.

He turned slightly — and saw her.

She was walking slowly up the aisle, scanning seat numbers with the kind of effortless grace that could make a Bollywood director weep. Slim jeans. Lavender kurta top. A loose bun of silky black hair that looked like it had been twisted up in a hurry but still managed to look like it belonged on the cover of Femina. A dusty-blue Jansport slung over one shoulder. A Sony Walkman clipped casually to her waistband like it had been born there.

Bharath froze.

Abort eye contact. Retreat, retreat!

He snapped his head toward the window, suddenly fascinated by the infinite magic of the tarmac.

Don’t look. Don’t be obvious. Act natural. What does natural look like? Am I breathing weird? Why are my hands sweaty? I haven’t even done anything yet.

Inside, his brain was spiraling into a desperate backroom negotiation with the universe.

Please. Please let it be 34B. Just this once. I’ll start going to the temple regularly. I’ll stop skipping shlokas during sandhyavandanam. I’ll even apologize to that dog I accidentally kicked when I was seven. Just ... please, let this angel descend into the seat beside me.

He casually adjusted his collar, then realized it was a T-shirt. He had no collar. No problem. He pushed his sunglasses slightly higher up on his head — no sun inside the plane, but surely it added mystery. Then, leaning back in what he imagined was his best “brooding intellectual” posture, he turned his head just enough to track her progress with his peripheral vision.

She was slowing down. She was checking row numbers. This could be it. This could be his boy-meets-girl moment. The one they would talk about fondly in future dinners with friends and relatives as they held hands.

She slowed near his row. His pulse quickened. He clenched and unclenched his hands beneath the tray table. She was close. So close now.

She paused.

His breath hitched. His heart held a pose like a Bharatanatyam dancer mid-step.

And then ... she turned casually into Row 31 without so much as a sideways glance and disappeared behind a curtain of other heads.

Bharath sagged into his seat like a punctured balloon. So much for fate. So much for cosmic signs. He sighed. Then he built his hopes up again. Surely he had seen another good looking girl before he had boarded the plane. He still had his chances to charm a beautiful lady. And after all there were still the stewardesses on the plane. He couldn’t explore the skies the way they were meant to be if he had a girl next to him. Just when his spirits had lifted sufficiently someone shuffled next to him.

“Excuse me, thambi?”

The voice was warm, slightly nasal, and came with the distinct scent of coconut oil and mothballs. Bharath turned to find a sweet-looking older woman in a maroon sari smiling down at him, clutching a handbag that looked like it might contain exactly three hundred peppermints and a live pressure cooker.

Her husband was already peering suspiciously at the overhead bin like it owed him money.

“Is this 34A and 34B?” she asked, already nudging past him.

“Yes, aunty,” Bharath said, standing up as gallantly as the cramped aisle would allow.

The old man grunted and squeezed into 34A with the grace of a sandbag being loaded onto a truck. Bharath moved aside to let the woman into the middle seat. She settled in with a satisfied sigh, patting her bun into submission and giving Bharath a kindly smile that radiated pure, unsolicited moral judgment.

“First time abroad?”

He nodded. “Yes, aunty.”

“Ah, I could tell,” she said, patting his arm. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. You have such a good face. Honest face.”

He gave her a polite smile and leaned toward the window again, this time with a touch more resignation than anticipation. So much for the sky-bedroom fantasy.

In the row ahead, he caught a glimpse of the girl’s bun bobbing slightly to music. The headphones had gone on. She was gone to the world now.

Just as the last of the cabin bags were tucked away and the safety demo began, the old couple beside him pulled out tiffin boxes wrapped in layers of foil and cling film. The unmistakable scent of lemon rice, pickle, and fried appalam wafted into the air.

“Sir. You are not allowed to pull out the tray tables before liftoff sir.” said one of those elegant stewardesses to the uncle.

He huffed as he put the food away and stowed the tables back.

The old man looked at Bharath sideways and grunted. “Plane food is rubbish. I am a diabetic you know.”

His wife smiled. “Have a murukku?” she offered, holding out a tissue with two perfectly spiral pieces.

Bharath took one, unsure whether to laugh or sigh. The murukku was delicious.

Well, he thought as the plane began to taxi and the engines roared to life, this is just the first leg.

The runway blurred outside. The wings tilted upward.

As the wheels lifted off the ground, so did he.

Into the clouds. Into his new life.

The flight had been ... fine.

Actually, good, technically. It was smooth. The takeoff was uneventful. The crew was efficient. The food, surprisingly edible. But still, somewhere deep inside him, Bharath felt an unfamiliar tightness—like he was already being let down by a dream.

He had imagined this flight for months.

The moment he’d gotten his visa stamped, he had spent a week replaying every international-flight scene from every Hollywood movie he could remember. Rich leather seats, flirtatious stewardesses, champagne flutes. One of his friends had even said, “Bro, on Emirates? You’re basically royalty in the sky.”

And here he was, in row 34, jammed next to a talkative old lady and a deeply opinionated uncle, neither of whom showed the slightest interest in giving him five minutes of peace. Not that they weren’t nice. The aunty beside him had smiled at him warmly from the moment she sat down, and hadn’t stopped smiling—or talking—since.

“You know, when my nephew went to America, he cried every day for two weeks. Such a soft boy. That’s why I told his mother: no need to send. But she didn’t listen.”

“Uh-huh,” Bharath nodded, attempting a smile that looked attentive but was secretly trying to calculate if he could plug in his headphones without looking rude.

“And you’re going for computers, no? My niece also is in software. She works in Phoenix. Very big company. They make ... something to do with accounting, I think. Always flying around.”

“That’s great, aunty”

A moment of silence. He reached for the headphones in the seat pocket, but—

“Do you eat meat?”

Bharath froze. “Uh, no. I mean ... maybe? I don’t know yet...”

“Hmph,” the uncle grunted from the aisle seat, finally joining the conversation. “Don’t. They put all sorts of hormones in it. That’s why the Americans are like that—big but no stamina. You see, Indians have ancient digestion systems. We are made for ghee, not meat.”

“Right,” Bharath said, forcing a chuckle. “That makes sense.”

He stared longingly at the small screen on the seat-back in front of him. The Emirates entertainment system was slick—movies, TV shows, music, even games. For a brief, glorious moment before takeoff, he’d spotted an episode of FRIENDS listed under comedy.

He had watched a lot of English TV back home - on Star TV, but his friend Sathya insisted that he keep up with the latest in American pop culture and had loaned him pirated VCDs of Seasons 1 to 4 of Friends. He’d fallen in love instantly. Monica, Chandler, the Central Perk sofa — all of it. Watching FRIENDS while flying to America? That was poetic. Symbolic, even. They made girlfriends so easily on that show. Even nerdy Ross. He wondered what his first girlfriend was going to look like?

But now he didn’t dare select it. What if aunty looked over and asked, “What is this? Why are they living together without marriage?” What if there was a kissing scene? Or worse—one of those episodes?

He swallowed and scrolled cautiously through the options. Documentaries. Nature shows. Something safe.

Meanwhile, aunty was back at it.

“My niece told me, in America, you have to cook your own food every day. Can you believe it? In this cold also! I told her to just marry someone and settle down, but these modern girls ... what to do? Even worse, you don’t even have water to wash yourself after you go potty. They use paper it seems!”

“It’s all a CIA conspiracy I tell you.” nodded uncle sagely as he seemed to be having a parallel conversation with Bharath without him knowing about it.

Bharath nodded politely, wondering how to steer the conversation without being rude. He couldn’t just shut it down. What if she complained about him to Amma through some extended-family grapevine? What if she turned out to be related to someone who knew someone in Atlanta?

And then, to make things worse—he glanced ahead.

Row 31. That girl. The one with the lavender kurti.

She had headphones in earlier, but now she had taken them off. She was talking to someone. Some guy — short hair, glasses, and annoyingly confident body language. They were laughing, leaning slightly toward each other.

Lucky SOB.

Bharath didn’t even know who the guy was, but he hated him already. They were sharing a pack of Mentos. She was animated, expressive, brushing her hair behind her ear when she smiled. The kind of smile that wasn’t polite—it was real.

He glanced down at his armrest. The uncle’s elbow had somehow crept over the shared boundary around aunty and was now fully claiming territory. Aunty, meanwhile, was adjusting her footrest and had managed to kick Bharath twice by accident.

He was cramped, slightly sweaty despite the air-conditioning, and smelled wildly of Wild Stone, lemon rice, and betrayal. The cologne was making him choke now. He wasn’t sure the advertisers were very honest with how it made women feel. Maybe he hadn’t used it right.

“Where in America are you going?” aunty asked again, for the third time.

“Atlanta, aunty.”

“Oh! That’s a southern place, no? My husband’s cousin’s daughter lives in ... California? Very close only.”

Bharath was about to correct her geography but stopped himself. What was the point? He was going to be in Atlanta. Alone. Surrounded by strangers. Cooking his own food. Avoiding meat. And apparently never watching FRIENDS again.

He leaned back, closed his eyes for a second. The low hum of the engine filled his ears.

When he opened them again, the cabin lights had dimmed slightly. The stewardesses had just passed by with coffee. He had smiled at the one nearest to him—a beautiful woman with a sharp jawline and perfect makeup—and she had smiled back, professionally. Efficient. Warm, but not interested.

No flirtation. No lingering looks. No “Excuse me sir, would you like to see our sky bed?” Nothing. Nobody even came and knocked into him by mistake giving him a coy smile asking if they could do anything to say they were sorry. Real life documentary it seems. He would take care of Mukund later.

By the time he could think of something to charm the panties off the stewardess she was already two rows ahead, asking someone if they wanted milk with their tea.

This is not how the movie went.

He sighed.

The old uncle had now pulled out a Tamil newspaper from his bag and was reading it out loud, pointing to the headlines and explaining his opinions.

“Look at this. Government wasting money on cricket. All these ODI-type games are spoiling our youth. No one studies properly. Everyone wants to hit a sixer.”

Bharath gave a weak smile.

But he said nothing.

He took a sip of the water bottle handed to him earlier, now lukewarm. The plane shuddered slightly — just turbulence — but aunty clutched her seat and gasped.

“Oh my God! Is it normal?”

“Yes, aunty,” Bharath assured her gently. “Just clouds. Happens all the time.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Uhhh ... yes. But this is the first time I’ve experienced turbulence. But I read online. Nothing will happen. Don’t worry”

Aunty clutched his arm like he was a seasoned pilot, reassured that his knowledge about turbulence would save her.

Bharath gave up. No FRIENDS. No sex on a sky bed. No conversations with pretty girls. Just lemon rice, unsolicited wisdom, and emergency arm-grabbing.

He glanced at the small flight tracker screen.

1 hour 7 minutes to Dubai.

Almost there.

Just one more hour of being polite, adjusting elbow space, answering questions about whether he ate meat, and resisting the urge to scream into the cushion. This is still just the beginning, he reminded himself. This is the sacrifice before the glory. This is the montage scene. Every hero suffers a little before greatness.

He looked once more toward Row 31. The girl was leaning back now, eyes closed, her head tilted slightly toward the window. The other guy was watching a movie on his own screen.

Maybe they weren’t that close. Maybe on the next flight, she’d notice him. He smiled at that thought. Clung to it like a life raft.

One more hour.

“Careful, aunty,” Bharath said, reaching for aunty’s oversized handbag before it could knock into the narrow aisle wall.

“Such a sweet boy,” she cooed, readjusting the end of her sari as she navigated the final few feet to the jet bridge. “May you get a nice girl and settle down quickly.”

“An Indian girl only,” the uncle muttered behind her. “Those foreign girls won’t do cooking. All fridge food.”

Bharath smiled politely, for the thirty-ninth time since boarding in Chennai.

He hadn’t slept a wink. Between aunty’s stories about her son-in-law’s cholesterol levels and uncle’s late-night monologue about the dangers of genetically modified corn, Bharath had only managed short bursts of shut-eye — the kind that ends with your neck cricked sideways and mouth slightly open.

Still, as they disembarked into the bright, air-conditioned glass corridors of Dubai International, he felt a rush of renewed energy. This wasn’t India anymore. This was the glittering halfway point. The stepping stone to America.

The airport was massive. Every surface sparkled — floors, columns, even the decorative water features. People moved briskly in all directions, trolleys loaded with designer bags, duty-free purchases, babies in strollers, the occasional person in a suit looking like they had just stepped out of a stock photo.

And the women. Bharath blinked. My God.

Tall women in heels and tailored coats. Arab women in flowing abayas with smoky eyes and red lipstick. European women with legs that didn’t seem to end and cheekbones you could cut glass on. American tourists in athleisure. Indian air hostesses. Filipino ground staff. Japanese stewardesses in silk uniforms. It was like a United Nations modeling pageant.

He adjusted his bag, stood up straighter, and walked a little slower through the terminal.

If I were James Bond, I would have already charmed at least three of them by now. At least one would’ve asked me to stay in Dubai for the night. Probably the tall Russian-looking one near Gate C18. She looks like she likes tech guys.

But he didn’t stop. He had a connecting flight to catch. And so did aunty and uncle, who were now looking hopelessly at the flight display screens.

“Thambi,” another aunty said, holding her boarding pass up like a sacred document, “do you know which terminal is for London?”

Bharath took it from her and squinted at the gate number. He checked the nearest display, compared it to the signs, and started gently herding them toward the escalator.

“Come with me. It’s that way.”

They followed like trusting grandparents, uncle still grumbling that Dubai airport was unnecessarily big. “Chennai airport is enough for me,” he sniffed.

Twenty minutes later, after guiding them to their new gate, helping them find seats, and even explaining how to use the water fountain without pressing random buttons, Bharath finally waved goodbye.

“Good boy,” aunty said again, her hands on his cheeks like he was her own grandson. “Very helpful. You’ll do well in life kanna.”

“I hope so,” Bharath said, smiling and touched by her words.

He turned and walked away, his backpack bouncing on his shoulders, exhaustion finally starting to creep in. But somewhere under that tiredness, he felt good. Solid karma points. That had to count for something. The gods were surely watching.

And now ... Atlanta.

The long leg. The big flight. The beginning of everything.

He reached the Delta Airlines boarding area just as the queue was forming. The boarding agents looked vaguely annoyed, like people who didn’t enjoy smiling. The energy here was ... different. Less charm, more compliance. Less Namaste sir, more follow protocol, don’t ask stupid questions.