Jaipur leg – 2

 Talking of cinema, the other day I was seeing a news item about the song “Mehbooba, Mehbooba”, in the new remake of Sholay. They were showing shots of that item. The number, immortalized by Helen, is being done by Urmila Mathondkar. Accompanied by a small army of dancers. And Amitabh in place of Amjad. While one’s mind does seem to allow Amitabh to step into Amjad’s shoes and try do a new Gabbar Singh, one is not so lenient when it comes to allowing someone else to step into the dancing shoes of Helen…Just didn’t feel right.But the show must go on…

As it did this week, with Sanjay Dutt being awarded a sentence of six years RI. Felt sad to see all the TV channels having a field day shredding the man of all his dignity. Felt sadder for his dad, the (late) Sri Sunil Dutt. A good man if there ever was. Life sure can be nasty.

As a lawyer remarked, it is a really crumbling experience for an accused, when the Judge pronounces a verdict and awards a prison sentence. The person’s world changes that very second. He takes off his personal belongings and hands it over to his near and dear, then and there. His purse, his ring, his cell phone, whatever. He will be taken away straightaway…He is not a free man anymore…

The Goddess of Justice has blindfolds…The law is strict about it’s course…

But an airplane sometimes isn’t. And so, there we were, diverted to Jaipur.

And there was this cine-actress in the flight.

We folks around her seat did our best to carry on business as usual…Well, we did talk a bit louder than usual, and cracked a few more jokes than we would have otherwise, but we didn’t really bother her during the flight. A few fellows did talk of large business deals and steep real estate fluctuations, but of course that was all strictly business, even if they were talking across the aisle to perfect strangers….The lady too had dyed her hair a different color (looked like a weak rainbow), and may even have thought that no one recognized her. She ignored all the chat, which now had branched off to include parking problems in Microsoft Office (the physical office…”I spent one hour fifteen minutes to find a parking place….can u imagine?’), employee satisfaction at TCS, and so many other tidbits, that kept popping up like so many pop-up windows in an unprotected browser…Of course, no one bothered her, and she continued to live in her own world of thoughts.

But once the plane was diverted and camaraderie infected the air, even she turned around and smiled at us co-adventurers, and we too immediately warmed up to her, and enquired about her health and happiness. She was family now. She did ask the elderly man next to her (he was the loudest) which movie of hers he had liked. And the fellow was at a loss, and spluttered something about his wife being her fan etc.

Meanwhile the crew had their own comedy show.

Their ground staff from Jaipur had boarded the plane and they met the aircraft crew like migratory birds meeting by chance. The crew more or less forgot about the passengers, and there were no announcements. So each of us floated a rumor. And so it went…Until the plane got clearance and the crew started a “headcount”. Well, the count didn’t tally. Soon three of four of the crew were counting independently, and from what I could gather, their counts didn’t tally amongst each other, nor with the right number either. Soon, a lady with “Security” written all over her ‘bouncer’ frame walked in and counted again…

Meanwhile we counted from one to thousand….

“Aate Rehna” (keep coming), said the ground-staff to the aircrew before they signed off and deplaned.

And then, finally, the plane took off to Delhi.

Some diversions are made of these.