Airborne

(June 2005)

Captain Sharma looks out ahead of him. The glass window in front of him is shaped like a horseshoe, stretching out from behind the plane that joins his eyes and curving ahead, a couple of arms that meet three feet ahead of him in a clasp just above the shiny black nose of the aircraft. The runway is a taut grey-black ribbon, streaming backwards. He holds on to his controls, and feels, not for the first time, a bizarre sense of kinship with the cowboys he has seen at rodeo shows in the American Midwest, riding giant animals, clutching at their horns. The screens, knobs and dials before him merge in a dazzling melange of flashing colours that blinks, twists and bobs about at a pace that becomes increasingly frenetic. Meanwhile, the sound of speed emanating from the tarmac becomes more and more insistent, until the combined aural and visual effect is one of some ridiculous symphony of machines. Captain Sharma would not be surprised to see row upon row of little machines in evening dress waiting to applaud rapturously at the end of the movement. What he does see, through the corners of his eyes, is a landscape that becomes increasingly blurred – trees, isolated buildings, hillocks. Then he takes a deep breath and lifts the controls just the right bit – until the mammoth machine turns its shiny nose up at the tarmac like some high society snob, and then begins its dizzying ascent. The city becomes smaller and smaller until it is a modern-day Lilliput, and Shirish Sharma sits back, smiles, and removes his special goggles. “Great going, guys,” he says to the eagerly waiting men standing behind him. “This game is a sure winner. Why, even Disneyland would buy this from you.”