Part 1: Reality to Dreams
She had woken up early once again, after barely having slept for four hours, as she had done for the past week. On the other days, it was to get to the office early and finish some work, before the others arrived. She was going to be out of the office for a good two weeks, and there was a lot she had to complete before she left. Today was the last of such days though, as she woke up to pack her bags for the much-awaited trip.
And then when she dragged the suitcase to her office, she struggled to maintain speed while minimizing the risk of tipping it on its side. She had been about fifteen minutes late, courtesy of Bengaluru traffic. With festivals on the horizon, it felt like everyone in the city wanted to get somewhere quickly on this day. Her manager’s stern look as she entered the office set the tone for her workday, as she clumsily dragged in the suitcase and settled that in, before joining him in the daily standup meeting.
The only silver lining was that her hard work over the past few days had paid off, and she was on track to close out the rest of the items today, catch her flight on time, and escape away for two full weeks, first to the mountains to catch up with friends, and then back home, to her parents. She was not a fan of the mountains, but every trip her friends’ group from college planned seemed to be for them. Being brought up near the beach, it’s something the others yearned for. For her, who was staying away from home, eking out a living in a landlocked city, a visit to the beach was all that she yearned for. But she missed her friends as well and all the fun they had on their previous trips. She wanted to make it to this one.
The day moved at breakneck speed, but nothing she couldn’t handle. At 5.05 pm, she began searching for cabs on her phone, while closing out one last email to John, a client who had been assigned to her. The moment she hit the “Send” button, the email disappeared from her screen, while her phone lit up, with details of the cab driver, who was three minutes away. Perfect timing, she thought.
And it was. She barely managed to get into the check-in queue with minutes to spare. Her government ID and her phone with the ticket were handy, and her trolley was right beside her while waiting to give the damn suitcase away when her manager called her. He called beyond work hours only if it were something serious, and this was serious. He was furious. The mail she had sent to John, or rather intended to send to John, had been sent out to another John, an intern who had joined recently.
She was pacing forward and backward, one step each, given the limited space the check-in queue afforded her, chastised by the silly mistake she had committed. These kinds of fumbles were not expected of someone with her years of experience, and her manager made sure he called it out in no uncertain terms. He asked her to send it to the right John immediately and disconnected the call. She thought, if he could’ve slammed the receiver down, he would have. But with mobile phones, especially the expensive half-bitten fruity ones, slamming phones down wasn’t a luxury many could afford.
Just then, the queue moved, and she fumbled to hold her ID, switch back to tickets on the phone, and move her trolley when it ran over her toes. She shrieked out in pain. A member of the airline’s ground staff helped her move the trolley a few steps, to the check-in counters, partially out of concern for her, and partially for the long queues of people heading out of this migrant town for the festivals.
Having checked in and finished security checks, she finally got to sit down and breathe for a minute. She then opened the mail app on her phone to send that email to the correct John. Her eyes welled up with tears as she was doing this. “Why isn’t this over yet,” she thought to herself. She wanted to double- and triple-check the email ID box to ensure she was sending it to the correct John, but blurry vision due to tears and fatigue did not help. However, she kept breathing consciously and took more than a minute to confirm the email ID before hitting the “Send” button. She then went to the Sent box to verify that it had indeed gone out. And that was it.
She was tired of all the work that she did this week. She was angry at her manager for calling her out on such a minor matter. It wasn’t that some confidential client information was sent out to some other client. It just went to someone else within the firm. There wasn’t any confidential information to begin with. And even if it had gone to someone from another company, people are usually courteous and do not make a huge fuss about these things. Amidst all the chastising the manager did to her, and all the rationalizing she was doing in her head, what went unstated was that if the email hadn’t reached the correct John that evening, the consequences for her and her company would have been loss of a huge deal. Even still, one mistake is all it takes to negate weeks and months of hard work, she thought and believed.
As she seated herself in the aircraft, she was still angry, but more so tired. There was nothing more to do at this point than to sleep, and she had no trouble falling asleep and slipping into dreams. Her face smiled as she dreamt about her hometown.
She was yearning for the warmth of the tropical beaches. Bengaluru’s cold and dry weather was something most people liked about the city. Not her though. She preferred the warmth and humidity. She was sitting on an armchair in the courtyard, wearing her sunglasses, sipping coconut water. She could hear the whirring of the coffee machine in the background. Was she at a cafe? Honestly, it didn’t matter much to her. Just the perfect amount of sunlight escaped through the trees and the branches. She chuckled as she dreamt of doing such touristy activities at home. But she vowed to do it at least once this vacation. She was well aware that vacations at home, especially around the holidays, meant more work. But she was determined to do this just once, for a few hours.
She could now feel the heat of the sunlight on her skin. A little bit more than what she would’ve liked, but who was she to control sunlight? But then, the heat began to singe her skin. She could see that the sunlight was becoming brighter. It felt like the sun was hurtling towards her. This was the point in the dream where one would wake up.
She did not.
Part 2: Dreams to Reality
Sunlight shone bright through the window this morning. A partially drawn curtain and some plants near the window try to provide shade, but when the floor-to-ceiling windows are installed, designed specifically to let sunlight in, it does just that, he thought with a smile. A smile of pride was it? Contentment, he would convince himself. But who was he lying to? He was proud of this beautiful little mansion he built for himself and his family at the edges of Prague. He looked to the side table, which had the golden Seiko wristwatch ready for him to wear, as he had done for the past three years since it was gifted to him by his loving kids. Well, they aren’t kids anymore, but aren’t they always kids to their parents, he thought.
First day back at home, after retirement. He had thought of what he’d do during his retirement for many years now, specifically, a couple of years before he bought this land and built this house. A morning walk, an hour towards the city center, and an hour back. A good mix of nature and the modern, he thought. It would be followed by whipping up breakfast alongside his wife of thirty-three years. He had spent far too many days away from her, as a globe-trotting pilot. Way too many, he thought. It won’t be all about this house, I gotta take her around the world, be her tour guide. But this is day one of retirement, and he’s spent the past hour lazily lying in bed, counting his blessings. He’s already an hour late, but he decides to take it easy, it’s just day one.
Just then, he hears radio conversations. The sort he’s listened to all through his career. Something’s not normal. But he can’t put a pin on it. He knows it’s nothing he cannot manage, but he’s disturbed that a serious situation has come up, that now needs to be handled with his full attention. But where’s this radio communication coming from?
“Captain? Captain?”, calls out the First Officer, in his thick heavy Indian accent. That’s when he wakes up. It was just a dream. Well, not entirely. The house where his family awaits him to join them in a few days has already been built. The wristwatch his kids gifted him is exactly where it should be, on his wrist. What about radio communications?
The First officer brought the captain up to speed on the weather at their destination and summarized his conversation with the Air Traffic Controller. “The Air Traffic Controller has informed us that their radar is unserviceable at the moment. He has also denied descent clearance, as there are aircraft waiting to land at this airport at lower altitudes.”
The Captain was bummed at having such a wonderful dream interrupted. Exactly two years and ten months to go, he thought. But now, he had to focus on flying the aircraft and then, landing it. This segment of the flight was his responsibility. It was indeed a responsibility, because this was one of the more challenging airports to land at, and only Captains were allowed to do so. He had done it sixteen times earlier, at this very airport. He had landed aircraft thousands of times earlier, at various airports internationally. Yet, each time is different, and needs its attention, he thought. And this time, the surprises thrown by the Air Traffic Controller were indeed unique, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He had to bring the aircraft down faster than usual. The First Officer kept communicating with the Air Traffic Controller, as he had done the rest of the flight, informing him of their position and altitude, since the airport’s radar was non-functional, and requesting permission to descend, which came through five minutes later.
Now was the time to put his years of experience into action. Speed brakes – deployed. Flaps 40 – deployed. These are more than what one would usually do to bring an airplane down to the ground, but he needs to do more this time, they are way too high. Landing gears – deployed. Usually kept for the last few minutes, there was a lot of altitude they had to lose, and that meant doing more than usual.
“It’s too high”, the First Officer called out.
Every landing is different. But this is when the gravity of the situation hit the captain. Gravity, he hoped, would pull the aircraft down faster.
“Go around?”, asked the First Officer. Their approach into the airport was too unstable to be safe, he thought. But at these kinds of airports, it was the Captain’s aircraft, and all he could do was to ask.
The aircraft started speaking too, making all kinds of beeping and alert sounds, informing the pilots that the plane was descending at a faster rate than usual.
“That’s what I’m bloody trying to do, in fact, I want to descend even faster, help me with it?”, thought the captain.
The Air Traffic Controller radioed in asking if they had been able to get onto the planned flight path.
It was the First Officer’s duty to respond, but the Captain’s decision to confirm what their response should be. The options were simple. Confirm that they were on the flight plan, and somehow get into the planned flight plan by reducing altitude quickly, and land. Or let the Air Traffic Controller know that they were not yet on the planned flight plan and that they will need to go around and fly about a bit more as they get to a lower altitude, and land a bit later.
The decision generally was a simple one at this stage. The First Officer had just requested a go-around since they were not yet stable on the approach. The flight systems had been screaming the same. But the Captain was in the middle of getting the altitude reduced quickly, and going through this decision-making detour was not what he had in mind. He asked the First Officer to confirm that they would continue the approach so that he could continue what he was doing. The First Officer was left without a choice and communicated the same to the Air Traffic Controller.
Well, they could still change their minds, in fact till the very last few seconds before they land.
The runway was finally in sight. They were still twice as high as they should be.
“I can do this”, he thought.
Forty.
Thirty.
Twenty.
Ten.
They were just ten feet off the ground. He had brought the aircraft down. But not early enough. Two-thirds of the runway had passed by them already.
The First Officer called out once more to go around.
The aircraft touched the ground, and the captain braked hard, as he should on any landing, especially this one.
He held hard onto the brakes for the next ten seconds, when he realized there wasn’t enough runway left.
He pushed the throttles to full speed to finally go around.
The aircraft says, “No can do, sir”. It’s too late.
The next twenty seconds were a blur. The aircraft jerked hard as it overshot the runway, onto the grassland for a few meters, hit some airport equipment, broke through the airport’s boundary wall, and crashed into the gorge right after.
A huge fireball erupted into the sky, as the fuel in the tanks on the wings spilled out and ignited due to the heat of all the friction and the impact of the crash.
For the first time in the last twenty minutes, his thoughts went to his passengers, who trusted him and him alone to land this large metal flying bird safely on this plateau. He wanted to quickly get up and go back to the aft of the aircraft and check on them.
However, his seatbelt was jammed, and that’s when he sensed the smoke filling the cabin and the smell of burning fuel. He turned to his left to find that the First Officer had already died due to the impact of the crash.
The captain was more awake than ever. A man had died due to his actions, probably a few more lives. One mistake was all it took for his legacy, his career of over thirty years to come to a nasty end. He was in agony at the thought of how this was an unfair representation of who he was.
He closed his eyes, trying to go back to the dream interrupted by the First Officer twenty minutes ago. Sunlight shone bright through the window. A partially drawn curtain and some plants near the window try to provide shade, but when the floor-to-ceiling windows are installed, designed specifically to let sunlight in, it does just that.
He could now feel the heat of the sunlight on his skin. A little bit more than what he would’ve liked, but who was he to control sunlight? But then, the heat began to singe his skin. He could see that the sunlight was becoming brighter. It felt like the sun was hurtling towards him. This was the point in the dream where one would wake up.
He did not.
