May i have your kind tension please

“Goood evening lads and gentmen,

The inflight announcement crackled through the speakers. Apparently they don’t like ladies and gentlemen inside the flight anymore and prefer to greet only the ‘lads and gent men ’.Whoever they are

May I have your kind tension please?”

I wasn’t sure if I fitted the category of a ‘lad’ or a ‘gentmen’ but I sure had lots of stress and tension with me that I was more than willing to give away to that pretty inflight attendant who made this strange request. Why would she request others for their kind tension? Or was it kind attention?

Mr. Nara…aa..ya..n…

Even in deep sleep I could sense that someone was having a fight with my name. I woke up in time to save the struggling flight attendant and more importantly my name (actually that’s my father’s name) by helping her with my rather easy to pronounce …Bhaskar

Sir you have a pre booked Veg meal. May I have your boarding pass please?

As I pick my boarding pass and hand it over to her, she poses a tough question

Would you prefer vegetarian or non - vegetarian, Sir

If I prefer a non-vegetarian meal, why would I pre book a veg meal? I chose to show my annoyance by showing a V symbol (for veg) with my fingers. I was too sleepy to answer anyway. Can I have a sandwich please? Not because I like it but because that’s the first option I could think of.

Cucumber tomato or spinach lettuce or paneer sandwich?

Another multiple choice question. After a quick inky-pinky-ponky in the head I took that tough decision – “cucumber tomato please”

Sorry sir we don’t have it.

Annoyed as I was my ego did not permit me to go back to the poor spinach and panneer that I said no to in the first place. So I asked for a fruit cake

Sorry Sir, it’s out of stock

I felt like screaming out loud. I was in row 3 for God’s sake. How can something go out of stock when the food service had barely started, But I held back my frustration and politely asked the girl, “What else do you have”

Sir, please go through our menu in the inflight magazine kept in your seat pocket

Now that strange request made by the flight attendant as soon as we boarded the flight - “May I have your kind tension please” made sense to me. She probably wanted to collect as much tension as she could from the others so that she could pass them all on to me. Unfortunately for me, she succeeded

I didn’t know if I was more hungry or angry staring at the small box of chilli pepper cashew in front of me. Apparently that’s all the vegetarian choice they had for me.

By the way, I had asked for a box of salted cashew.