An emergency for just that one time!

I am not a sadist. No never been a masochist; never been in the likes of those like Al-Quieda.

But then sometimes, like those times when you get thoughts, because your dreams weigh down upon you, the aspiration for that one moment where you could do that one thing which in usual way of the world you wouldn’t be allowed to do, that one moment of being everybody’s hero; for that one chance of being that one being who could twitch that muscle just when needed never more; and so many of those other just one times.

So it wasn’t usual.

I boarded my flight from Bangalore to Hyderabad. I always take the window seat. The excitement when you can hear the roar of the engines when the pilot puts the thrust to 100% or when the flaps and slats deploy or when the air brakes are deployed is just too big to explain in words; and also that there are just too many people wanting to visit the loo when the whole flight time is itself 45 minutes.

So when I was given my seat though it really didn’t make much of a difference on the boarding pass, but in the aircraft it made all the difference in the world that it could ever make. The seat was as usual a window sear but also happened to be next to the emergency exits on the wings. Now that is a very good place to sit and fly. The seats here provide with the most real estate when it comes to leg room.

So as the Captain welcomed us on-board one of the cabin crew members approached us to explain how to open the emergency exits and that if we feel that we are not competent or comfortable in doing it we can ask for a change in seat. But all these instructions to open the emergency exit came with a rider “DO NOT TOUCH THEM UNLESS THE CABIN CREW YELLS AT YOU FOR DOING SO”. Message registered.

I then so badly wanted some kind of an emergency to happen so that I can just for once operate that.

It is not that simple. The urge to just for once open that emergency door, throw it, let the slides deploy and jump to slide on it. Well not a very noble, “And for the world piece” (hmm sorry peace) kind of a thought. I cannot agree no more. But I never want it to go into an emergency while in flight that is catastrophic. What I really wanted is like, when we touch the tarmac, the main exits would for some reason be jammed and fail to open, for some strange reason the cabin pressurization system would fail, or the lights would go off, something like a failure of Level C software on board. It is an emergency in the sense that the emergency exits have to be opened but at the same time is not catastrophic. No one needs to die. No one even really needs to cry too. All for the sake of that just one time opportunity!