Traversing the Heavens

Anyone visiting South East Asia should probably study their basic Gods, their powers and modes of transportation. Brahma, the creator, sits at the top of the Hindu trinity, bestowing blessings, meddling in the affairs of humans, and generally just chilling. Shiva, the destroyer brings destruction to the universe and should not be approached. He rides a bull called Nandi or possibly Mandy. Vishnu is the protector and has the ability to change forms—lion, boar, fish, pigeon. Vishnu flies Garuda, despite their poor safety record. That’s all I know so far. Sarah and I have never flown Garuda but we have prayed aboard many of South East Asia’s cut-priced airlines. There’s Nock Air—“We fly smiles”, there’s PMT Air. No joke there. Sarah and I took a flight out of Kuala Lumpur with an airline called Firefly. (“We fly fire”?) Let me tell you a little about Firefly. This carrier operates out of one lonely gate at KL’s former international airport, Subang: Subang is a ghostly complex of abandoned halls where the only things still in operation are Muslim prayer rooms, and Firefly. We reached our plane by crossing the tarmac under a sky as black as smoke. After takeoff the drinks trolley was trundled out by two lovely Fireflettes, and I ordered coffee. No one else on the plane ordered anything. As the ladies were preparing my brew the plane struck turbulence and I quickly began to realise why I was the only customer. It’s because the other passengers aren’t mental. As you know, sign language in foreign countries can often be misinterpreted, and in Malaysia, clearly, waving both hands and saying “No, no, it’s ok, I don’t want coffee now,” is the signal for “No milk for me. But please fill my order as quickly as you are able.” The pilot yelled something over the intercom that could only have been “Ladies, buckle up, some shit is about to go down.” One lady passed me my coffee with trembling, painted hands and flashed a taut smile before they both sprinted off down the aisle.

Now, anyone who suffers from fear of flying will find that being left holding a Styrofoam cup full of boiling liquid with a laminated air-safety procedure card clamped over the top while your pilot flies the aircraft directly into a tropical storm is a great way to transform your brewing anxiety into an essence of pure panic. The egg-shell thin cup is the perfect metaphor for the fragility of your position, but the act of keeping the liquid in the cup, the burning sensation in your hands, the hot liquid dribbling down your sleeve, is a fine way to distract yourself from reality. You’ll be oblivious to the tortured screams from the propellers as the craft is thrown around like a paper dart; the gasps from the other passengers; the look of horror on your loved one’s face; the fact that you’ve chosen, of your own free will, to fly with an airline that contains the word “fire”, from an airport that contains the word “bang”, and into a storm front that only minutes earlier you’d observed from the ground as a black wall pulsing like a cosmic discotheque. You’ll pray gently, earnestly, to whichever of the Gods you believe in, or whichever one you once believed in before you went to university, or whichever colourful deities command the skies in this part of the world. You’ll almost cry when the plane finally punches through the storm-clouds to reveal a magnificent scene: an ancient sun rising over a golden ocean above a densely jungled coast. You’ll almost laugh out loud when the Fire-foxes appear beside you with their trolley, and one of them hands you two paper napkins to mop up a small, grey puddle of spilled coffee, and the other leans in and quietly says, “That will be 4.80 please”.