Time for Laughter

20 November 2017 - exactly two years ago, several colleagues and I took a flight to Mumbai to attend various workshops. The poem below was written just after we landed.

Time for laughter returns

Sweeping strongly in currents that uplift

In snowy drifts upwards

Two knots, three? No we want four, at least; we paid for more.

Airlines cups become screens for odd productions

Props turning from earrings to glasses to nose rings

While air hostesses’ buns are questioned for authenticity 

And laughter underlies it all

Cracked up cracking that echoes through a flight

Till the pilot announces, 

“This is the captain speaking, from the flight deck”

And we collapse with laughter, 

For where else could you be speaking from, you moron?

Jaipur, perhaps, having boarded the wrong flight?

Oh no no, from a parachute - look out of the windows to your right

He’s waving out, wish you a great landing (we’re testing the auto-pilot for landing safety)

And since we’re over land, don’t bother to pull out the life vests, folks;

Or maybe, he’s speaking from the loo - but wait, did we hear some unidentifiable mini-explosion? No, so not the loo.

Oh there he is, on the wing-tip, sitting pretty as in his living room...

And while our laughter fills the aircraft, stewardesses pause to grin and giggle with us -

How many of you could say that

You too made someone laugh today?