The morning I departed for New York clouds grew like mould on the opressive blanket that was the early morning sky. Dawn is supposed to be beautiful, but Bangkok’s pollution made it repulsively ugly. But then again, this was probably a transferred epithet. I was not in the best of moods, having been foreced to wake up at way-too-fucking-early o’clock to begin a full 36 hours of airport lounges and fitful sleeps on airplanes. And to top it all of, I was flying in Economy class. As someone less articulate would say, ‘OMFG KILL ME NOW.’ My family was what in India would be called ‘upper middle class’. We were rich, but not rich enough to leapfrog our way into the ‘high class society’ that had a whole tax bracket to themselves and were the reason for the progressive tax system. Of course, when I say ‘we’, I mean my parents. My sister and I had done nothing for our family’s wealth but spend it (and sometimes in my case, squander it too). Hence, I was used to travelling business class on flights (upper middle class meant you weren’t rich enough for first class) and the thought of spending almost a whole twenty four hours in the cramped seats of economy made me squirm a little. However, I wasn’t snobbish enough to make a fuss, and this economy class ticket to New York was expensive enough as it was. This is the opening of a short story I’m planning to write, but I don’t have a plot yet.
