Aero Show - Leaving you open mouthed!

This Valentine’s Day, I thought I was gonna date some of the hottest birds of the sky. But I was left sorely disappointed. The Aero Show was a big big let down. You have to take my word, despite the glowing reports you must have read in the media. My friends will vouch for me when I say that the Aero Show was a big waste of time, energy and money. It was ‘wow’ for about five minutes. After that I opened my mouth only to yawn. In fact, I was so traumatized by the experience that I start yawning whenever I see anything flying!


This Aero Show was supposed to be the biggest in South Asia. I guess the biggest need not always be the best. Guys and gals who think otherwise are mistaken. The entry was chaotic. There were just two entry points for thousands of spectators. It soon turned into a free for all shoving and pushing contest. The Ram Sene guys would have had a field day in this ‘V-Day bash’. After a great struggle we stumbled through the checkpoint. We were in! The air show had begun. But it was boring. The same jet went back and forth numerous times. Then it landed and another took off. And did the same thing. There were no formations, no heart stopping stunts, nothing. Then some choppers came and tried some things. I think we enjoyed that part a little because we were so fed up by then, that we might have enjoyed V.P. Agarwal’s lectures then. The peacocks (what a cheesy name for a combat machine!) tried their best. But that also fell well short of expectations.

After a couple of hours on the scorching tarmac, we had had enough. We thought the stalls might have had something to save the day. Alas, they were an even bigger disappointment. There was nothing in there besides models. We had to satisfy ourselves by gazing at models. Nope, not hot sexy babes, but miniature plastic models of jets and choppers. Even the kids looked bored. No presentations, no actual parts on display, no engineers explaining the sophisticated technologies used. An hour of ‘war machines’ on the Discovery Channel would have been much better. We tried our best to do ‘paisa vasool’. We clicked pictures of the models and ourselves. We read the charts. But even if we had done that for a year, we wouldn’t have got our money’s worth.


Then we thought we could try to eat away our sorrows. We headed to the ‘food court’. It was like the kumbh mela. It was overflowing with people. Many were dining on the floor. I had to take one step at a time, carefully, to avoid all the land mines, read people and plates, to make it to the stalls. While the air show didn’t take my breath away, the price list certainly did. I thought the inflation rate in India had reached Zimbabwean proportions. A muffin was for 50 bucks. Maybe they had prepared the food in space, or used stealth technology to enhance the taste! Yeah, whatever.

Why should life be so cruel? Why can’t a guy enjoy himself without a gal on V-Day? [:P] After all the glowing reports in the media, it was a big letdown. The 800 bucks could have been to better use. Maybe charity or watch three Himesh movies or drown my sorrows in a pub and get beaten up! At least the latter would have given me a great story to tell for aeons to come. So that was the crash landing of my soaring dreams of a great air show.