Travelling in airplanes...

Flying for me is an ordeal!
I hate flying and I try to avoid it as much as I can, I blame it on my fear of heights, acrophobia, which might be the contributing factor to a large extent but I guess the memory of a turbulent flight is also one of the reasons.

I'd tried all the tactics that I could to keep myself occupied and take my mind off the fact that I am flying thousands of feet above the ground. Some of these tactics proved to be fruitful to some extent but there is one which I think can put you in a very awkward situation unless you don't mind being hooked into a long distance relationship with some stranger who lives on the other side of the world.

This happened somewhere in 2002, I was travelling(for the umpteenth time), with my mother(who usually dozes off during the flight) and we were seated on the window side. Unfortunately, for me this plane had 3 seats in each row on the window side and as I preferred the aisle one, I got the middle seat as we had been allotted the seats nearest the window.

This time I had thought of trying out my new tactic: striking up a conversation with a stranger just so that I had something to talk about until the ordeal got over.
Wondering who would be occupying the seat next to me and whether I would be able to have any intelligent conversation with him/her, I looked on hopefully at all the passengers coming in.

Finally, when I had started to lose hope of anyone even occupying the seat next to me for the whole flight, a middle aged, suit clad man walked in and hovered near the seat, tallied the seat number on his boarding pass with the ones stamped above the seats, opened the overhead luggage compartment, put his hand luggage in it, gave me a smile, pointed to the seat next to me and said, "That's where I am going to be sitting."
I gave him a courteous smile in return.

He was a middle aged man, dressed in a black suit, traveling from England to Pakistan via Dubai.
I didn't have to make the effort of starting a conversation, he took the burden of that off my shoulders, by himself striking up a conversation.
He seemed to be a very chatty sort of a person and talked on different topics. He complimented me a few times on various things but I let that pass unnoticed without reading anything much into their underlying meaning.

He told me that he was a divorce e, though he didn't mention that he was on the lookout for a bride.I sympathized with him about life and its trials and tribulations and how one should go on, being completely unaware of what he was reading into my words.

The time passed on, and the end of the flight showed me what an awkward position I'd gotten myself into. Just after the plane landed and taxied down the runway, he handed me his visiting card and told me, quite insistingly that I give him a call sometime and told me all the details of his stay and his whole itinerary. He also mentioned that if I wont be able to call him up for long, due to any reasons, I just call him and give him my number and he would call me back!
This was the time when I finally caught on with his insinuations and I was so shocked at what all he had assumed in the harmless conversation, that I had with him for the span of around 3 hours that I just stared back at him and blinked!
By this time the airplane had come to a stop and the doors had been opened, he took his hand luggage from the overhead compartment, told me how nice it was talking to me, hoping to hear from me soon, he walked away leaving me staring in his wake, completely bewildered....

Lesson learnt: NEVER talk much with your fellow passenger WITHOUT dropping the hints(even if they are false) about your imminent engagement or marriage, if you are single, that is and assuming that you are not looking to get involved with a stranger hailing from the other side of the world, or just a fling :)