Getting there is half the fun

Happy Diwali, said the smiling cabin crew staff in accented English welcoming my mother-in-law and me on board the flight to New Delhi from Dubai.

I half expected the East European crew member to join his palms together, bow his head and bid her ‘namaste'. My mother-in-law wears really colourful saris, is tiny, walks extremely slowly, but she's got a personality which makes people jump up quickly, open doors for her and wish her very warmly.

Strangers come up to her and say how nice she looks and she has made more friends in The Gardens during her short visit than my wife and I have over all these years.

The flight was packed as almost everyone was going home for the festivities and travelling cattle-class can be quite uncomfortable at this time. I am glad my mother-in-law refused my idea of moving seats next to the washroom. I thought it would be easier for her than hobbling to it all the way from the front.

As soon as the plane took off and the seat belt sign switched off, there was a ratcheting noise of seat belts un-clicking and people rushed to the toilet as if they were holding back for hours. The area around the seat I had suggested was packed with people with painful expressions.

Like me, my mother-in-law loves to travel, and like me is terrified of air travel. I picked up a paper and the front page headline said, ‘Planes grounded after parts fall off in flight', or heart-stopping words to that effect.

I quickly hid the paper and showed my mother-in-law how to relax. "Take deep breaths and move your feet side to side, and up and down", I told her. A passenger in the aisle seat next to us looked at us both as we went through the relaxing routine and quickly looked away.

My mother-in-law believes the fate of the plane she is travelling in rests with her and that she cannot move from her seat. She thinks that a slightest move to try and go to the toilet will jeopardise the whole fly-by-wire system of the Airbus plane.

The crew went through the routine of handing out menus to make our mouth water over the conveyor-belt-lunch. Even though my mother-in-law already had lunch she ordered the chicken stroganoff and when I wanted the same, it had run out and I was stuck with the ‘kadai chicken', ‘parattas' and ‘ras malai'.

[I had told my doctor I would try and control my high cholesterol without medication and he had agreed and given me a month's time. But unfortunately, I love greasy Indian food and the sickening, sweet sweets].

The captain told us we had a strong tailwind and that our travel time will be cut short to only 2 ½ hours. "I hope that does not mean there's turbulence," my mother-in-law said.

"Cabin crew prepare to land," said the captain immediately after we literally fed our faces. Suddenly, we heard and felt the horrendous thud of the landing gear going down.

As we climbed down slowly, metre by metre, the blazing, bright lights of New Delhi came in sight. Firework star bursts lit up the sky as we flew over a road jammed with cars. Suddenly, without warning the pilot revved up the engines and climbed up like he was an Iraqi jet fighter pilot.

He later told us jittery passengers that the ATC wanted us to hover around because of the high traffic, but that explanation didn't ring true.

We eventually landed into what seemed like a war zone, thick with smoke. The next day the fire department said it received 200 calls and a research lab said the noise pollution from the fireworks was very high this year.