Kochi: At the airport, they held each other's arms, partly in excitement and in fear. When the flight took off, some of them closed their eyes, heart pounding, while others peered out of the window to see clouds roll by. A bunch of women from Palakkad, employed as Haritha Karma sena workers was on a flight to Bengaluru from Kochi; their first flight ever.
For almost a year, they had saved up from their meagre savings for this flight. Every day they would sweat it out under the blazing sun, collecting dry waste from households.
By month end they would earn somewhere around Rs 10,000 and 10 per cent of this earning would go to their trip budget. Within a year they had eked out the amount needed for their first flight.
“The day we booked the tickets was so joyful. I will never forget it,” says Sulochana, one of the 37 HKS workers who went to Bengaluru. They returned after a day's trip on Tuesday.
None of them had an inkling about Kannada. But that wasn't an issue. “We mostly dealt with Keralites and language wasn't a problem,” says Aiswarya, the group co-ordinator. They had mustered the courage to board a flight for the first time, but nobody dared to experiment with Kannada cuisine. “We had biriyani, which some of us have never had so they opted for plain rice,” says Aiswarya.
No matter how little they earn, these women have a way of saving up for big occasions. Usually, it is Onam or some other festival. This time it was for themselves, their dreams.
It all began with a journey to Kochi. "Some of us dearly wished to see the airport, but we weren't able to do it then. We joked about how one day, instead of merely seeing the flights pass through the clouds, we should actually travel on it. Suddenly everybody was like why not? Since then we started saving for our trip,” says Aiswarya.
They don't remember the exact places they went to in Bengaluru. They toured the city in a bus and did some shopping in a mall. They bought chocolates, new clothes and shoes- all for themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives.
“One of our members was 60 years old, we even had people who never travelled by train,” says Sumisha another group member. “Now we are excited to travel on a flight again. I hope my kids will also be able to go like me,” she says.
How did they overcome the fear of flight? “We were all so thrilled...but by the time the ones who were scared got over their fear, the flight was over,” Sulochana laughs out aloud.
