Taking wing for the first time

It was sometime around 2001, and I was going to Colombo for the first time. It was also my first flight.

The flight from Madras was scheduled for 10:30 in the morning. Since it was my first such experience, I travelled by suburban train, reached Tirusulam, and went underground to the other side to enter the international sector.

Everything seemed new. I had travelled by train and bus countless times, but an airport was different. People wheeled suitcases, announcements echoed through the terminal, passengers checked departure boards. I watched everything with the curiosity of someone entering an unfamiliar world.

At the check-in counter, I handed over my ticket and passport, and was given my boarding pass. Holding it gave me a strange sense of importance. Until then, travelling meant buying a ticket, finding a seat and getting on. Now there were procedures, counters and security checks.

I passed through immigration and security and reached the departure area. Shops displayed chocolates and perfumes far more expensive than anything I normally bought. I walked past them, more interested in watching the passengers than in shopping.

Then came the announcement for my flight.

I followed the other passengers towards the gate. When I finally saw the aircraft through the glass, I stopped for a moment. I had seen aeroplanes in the sky many times, but seeing one I was actually going to board felt different.

Inside, I found my seat and looked out of the window. The people and vehicles on the ground seemed ordinary, but I knew that in a few minutes I would be seeing them from above.

As the aircraft began to move, I felt a mixture of excitement and nervousness. The engines grew louder. The plane accelerated along the runway, and suddenly the ground began to fall away.

That was the moment it became real.

I was flying.

Buildings, roads and vehicles became smaller until they seemed like tiny marks on the ground. There was no road, no railway track, no familiar sense of where we were going. We were simply above everything.

Once the aircraft reached cruising altitude, the nervousness disappeared, replaced by wonder. I kept looking through the window at the clouds.

For someone accustomed to trains, a flight was an entirely different experience. On a train, the journey itself is visible: stations arrive, people get on and off, landscapes change gradually. In an aircraft, the world below suddenly becomes distant.

The flight to Colombo was not particularly long, but it was memorable. Until that day, flying had been something other people did. Now I had done it myself.

When the aircraft began its descent, the land slowly came closer. Roads and buildings became visible, and soon the aircraft touched down.

I had arrived in Colombo.

Flying is routine now. Airports feel like bus stations, boarding passes live on phones, and passengers complain about delays before they’ve settled into their seats.

But my first flight remains different in my memory.

It was my first glimpse of what it felt like to leave the familiar world below and look at it from the sky.

Sometimes an ordinary journey becomes memorable simply because it happens to be the first.

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