The €6,000 Flight Disaster
My flight from JFK to Johannesburg was cancelled. The travel agency had made an error with my booking, and I wasn’t on the alternative flight through Atlanta they offered. After a stressful night at the Marriott near JFK and numerous phone calls, they arranged a new flight for the next day.
The price? The new ticket had gone up from €2,900 to €4,200. Total flying cost for this trip: €6,000 for a single economy ticket.
Discovering The God of Small Things
While waiting at JFK for my rescheduled flight, I wandered into the airport bookshop and bought The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.
The novel tells the story of fraternal twins Rahel and Estha in Kerala, India. It’s about forbidden love, family tragedy, and how small moments shape entire lives. Roy won the Booker Prize for this debut novel in 1997.
Reading in a Dreamy Half-Conscious State
The flight was less difficult than expected, though I slept less than I hoped. I watched three movies: Bewitched (crap), Batman Begins, and Caché with the most beautiful woman on earth: Juliette Binoche.
Between the movies and fitful sleep, I finished The God of Small Things.
The book is wonderful, though in my mind, I’ll always associate it with the dreamy state of half-consciousness I was in while reading it somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Roy’s lyrical, fragmented narrative style matched perfectly with that jet-lagged mental fog. The way she plays with time and memory—jumping back and forth, revealing the tragedy in pieces—felt right for reading at 30,000 feet with no sense of time or place.
Maybe that’s the perfect way to read this particular book: untethered, floating, between worlds.
I checked in at the Sandton Sun and Towers hotel in Johannesburg. Villamoura, the hotel’s restaurant, is an absolute must—their calamari is exquisite. I collapsed after that, still thinking about Rahel and Estha.
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