Being a ‘middle’ man

I hate B & E …. the middle seats on domestic flights. One has to move out and give way, should the passenger at the window come in after you, have to jostle for space on the armrests, have some anxious moments when your window neighbour tries to hand over a tray with half-eaten food to the cabin crew right in front of your nose and God forbid, if you are stuck between two heavyweights, well… you feel like the vada between the pav.

Thanks to a goof-up by our Travel desk during web check-in, here I was allotted a middle seat on this flight from Bengaluru. I slowly walked to my seat like a man walks to the gallows, only to find that I was the first in my row. Planted both hands on the arm-rests on either side and hoped this should continue all the way to Mumbai.

One grey-haired, bearded gentleman walked up and indicated that he had the window seat. I got up slowly sizing him up. Windowman seemed pleasant enough. He got into his seat opened the tray-table, placed his mobile there holding it with both hands and started watching some comedy serial with ear-plugs on. He did not stake any claim for a share of the armrest. I breathed easy. Soon the announcement was made that boarding was complete. The seat to my right was vacant and I was about to let out a ‘ yahooo’, when a slightly tubby, young man walked over to the aisle seat.

Aisleman placed his bag in the overhead bin and it was then that I noticed he was carrying a huge brown paper bag too. He too opened the table-tray and like a magician pulled out a KFC snack-box out of the brown bag. He quickly attacked the chicken legs with gusto amidst slurps from a Pepsi cup. Once the chicken legs had been polished off, it was now the turn of finger chips. Aisleman must have wanted to finish dinner before take-off, I presumed. Soon enough we were airborne and with both my hands on the armrests, I dozed off a bit.

There was some smell which woke me up. I looked to my left and found Windowman’s whole body shaking and he was laughing noiselessly. Must have been a truly funny serial he was watching. Looked to the right and …. Aisleman had opened another KFC box and was biting into the chicken- breast. The routine of munching on chicken, finger chips and slurping Pepsi continued. OMG escaped my lips.

Now the lights had come on. There were intermittent tremors from Windowman who shook with noiseless laughter. Food trolley came along and even as I was wondering if I should take my pre-booked dinner, up jumped Aisleman and told the air-hostess he wanted to buy something. What did he buy? A tin of potato wafers and a Paperboat and as an afterthought he added a chicken cup noodles. Opening his laptop, placing a paper napkin on the key board, his food on that and he multi-tasked…… chomping on the food and watching a movie. Now I had a chomping sound to my right and noiseless tremors to to my left. Windowman had refused to buy anything.

Soon, Aisleman polished off all the food and immediately I let out a belch, having watched him go the whole hog.

As we prepared to land all three of us had happy faces — Windowman, his mind filled with laughter, Aisleman his stomach filled with chicken and me because I had both armrests all to myself….all through.