Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Fear of flying

I am acrophobic or batophobic, that is, I am afraid of height or depth and this had always kept me away from the parapets and giant wheels. I still remember how every day I use to fight my fear while climbing the stairs to my classroom which was on the first floor; walking as close to the wall as possible because the veranda was narrow. All the time I had the feeling as if the building would tilt and I would fall, or maybe accidently I would slip and fall. I hate mirrored elevators and malls with glass boundries, though they look beautiful but they show me the depth and in my head the floor starts tilting and I start slipping towards the edge, for me it is horrifying.
In spite of living with this fear for all my life I loved my first air travel from Delhi to Banglore back in 2006. I liked the ripples inside my stomach when the plane took off and seeing the cars and building getting smaller within no time was breath taking. Clouds that always seemed 2D were infact huge 3D mountains, as of cotton, were awe inspiring and so were all the geographical figures from above. It was like viewing a large topographic sheet. To see some of the known and unknown places from above was amazing. Through out the journey I kept thanking the Wright brothers for inventing this terrific machine. Over all it was the journey of my life and I loved it's every bit from take off to landing and the fear of any kind was hid somewhere.
The fear came back with my first flight to the US in April 2008, on the screen when the position of the plane was shown just above the vast abyss of ocean with no sign of any land nearby the hidden phobia pricked me and surfaced once again but this time with a new name 'aviophobia' or 'aviatophobia', that is, the fear of flying. Hitting me hard were all sorts of death throes, what if .......what if......not even a land near by, monstrous sharkes, I can't even swim plus my darling little eigth months old boy with me............what if ? how will? Oh no GOD! HELP GOD. BLESS US GOD. Finally I started seeing the land and soon we landed safely but the fear always stayed because we were not here to stay for long and some day we will have to make a journey back to our sweet home.
During my over an year long stay there were a lot of air mishaps one of it taking place just few kilometers from my home when the Airbus A320 had to make an emergency landing on the freezing waters of Hudson, hopefully with no casualties the job of the pilot was commendable. But like those 155 everyone is not lucky as there were other accidents in which people were dead. After a long wait finally my husband, Vikas got a 3 weeks off from his office and we booked our tickets for a vacation to India. I was very excited, home and all my loved ones, I was eager for the reunion but these joyous feeling also got with them my fear of flying that always left me lamented.
To aggravate my fear came the news of Air France jet, from Brazil to Paris, missing with 228 people on board, later declared all dead. After few days some of the bodies were recovered with no clothes and multiple fractures. They say that the plane had entered a very heavy turbulence which caused the fortuity. Now I heard a similar case with the Qantas plane flying from Singapore to Perth carrying 313 people which suddenly climbed 300 ft and then abrutly nosedived; leaving 74 passengers with fractures, lacerations and spinal injuries. With just two days to fly I am in a bad state of mind just wishing to skip the journey some how or maybe to take some other means alas, there is no other way except by sea which is worse.

No comments:

Post a Comment