"Willkommen" were the first words I heard as I boarded the AirBus A-380. I felt the journey would be a regular one with me sleeping about 90% of it. But this time my insomnia did not allow me to sleep for quite some time. I initially started taking to my co-passenger who was a Croatian working for a oil tanker company. He was returning home after a 3 month long trip and it was fun hearing his stories most of which sounded like an impromptu. After he slept off I started watching some movies and soon got bugged of them too and then suddenly I remembered my friends words "Can we see a full lit sky when we are on a plane?" Whenever I had flown before I had never seen the stars or maybe never paid much attention outside the window. But as I peeped outside, searching for the stars I initially could see hardly a few scattered here and there. But then I stuck my face to the window trying to cover all the possible light from within the aircraft and there behold the whole sky lit up. There were nearly a billion start that I could see and it was as bright as the full moon night. From the city it is impossible to see such a magnificent site but even from a secluded area the feeling is different because now I just didn't have stars over my head but I was surrounded by them through at least 270 degrees. I was just sitting there struck in awe and the child inside me never wanted this moment to pass.
I woke up with my face still stuck to the window but it wasn't the stars that were greeting me this time around. The sun was about to rise and the entire horizon was slowly changing its color from black to blue. As I scanned the horizon I could see the gradient of blue merging into the black at the extreme edges and there in the middle I saw Venus shining with all her glory. I simply can not describe the scene but it was one of the most peaceful scenes I have ever seen. I looked below to see ground, but all I saw a white fluffy blanket stretching out to infinity. I was amazed to see such a huge cloud cover and out far in the distance one could see towers of black clouds with lightning lighting them up in a magnificent display of lights. As we descended through the blanket I realized that it was not simply one layer but multiple layers of clouds and it felt like a blissful eternity descending through them. I would have surely experienced what Moksh is if the plane was silent and there was no constant German murmuring from all over the plane. The vastness and the plain simplicity yet elegance of this scene made me realize how small I really was and how small my troubles really are as compared to this gigantic place we call Earth, who like a magic factory churns our marvelous wonders every single day.
As we came past the clouds the pictures seen in kids books were right in front of my eyes with small little toy houses and miles and miles of multicolored pastures with small narrow roads and rivers. But then I started seeing buildings and factories and big complexes and then the feeling sank in that I was about to land in the business capital of Europe... "Munich."
