Airport in Hasan

This article in The Hindu talks about a fairly ambitious airport development project in Hasan.

I am all for promoting aviation. And this project includes setting up flight training centres in the new airport so it is even more encouraging. However, a few thoughts came into my mind when I read this.

For a project being encouraged by the first family of Karnataka politics, where is their concern for all the land that farmers will lose in this project? Is their concern only for farmers everywhere except in their own backyard? So land use for infrastructure development everywhere is to be condemned whereas the same in their constituency is for generating employment and economic growth?

Or is it that the only "farmers" affected are the self same family, and they can afford such a big sacrifice for the good of the region? A huge payout from increasing land values nearby would help no doubt.

Also, as with all things in Karnataka, I foresee the aviation academies being swamped by ambitious young men and women from all over India while our own grandsons and great-grandsons of the soil are content sitting back and complaining about the invasion of foreigners. I am ashamed to say this, but we are a very unenterprising lot.

Of vegetarianism and word play

The current saga of Michael Vick, an American Football star who has been caught up in a huge controversy over “brutal” dog fighting is frankly amusing to me.

Let’s back up a bit. I am a vegetarian. That is more for reasons of my upbringing, religion, health and preference in taste than any concerns of cruelty towards animals. I gladly wear and use leather and do eat many things that might have animal products (including dairy) like cheese (did you know that some cheese include stuff from inside the stomach of calves called rennet?), jelly (made from bone gelatin in most cases) and Indian sweets with the silver film on them (those films are made by beating silver sheets in between cow hides and guts which ends up transferring blood and other particles to the silver). I eat it not because I like that stuff, but sometimes there’s just no way to make sure that I am not eating non-dairy animal products.

I therefore have no ethical stances on vegetarianism. People need to eat and they happen to eat animals.

What cracks me up however is that in Western countries, people indulge in a lot of sophistry to define cruelty towards animals. While there are huge meat processing plants that butcher millions of animals every day, these are supposed to be done in a “humane” way. Excuse me, but I think if you can stomach (pardon the pun) killing an animal for eating it, you shouldn’t feel outraged if an animal is killed for sport. Or any other reason. Just because your steak comes from a cow that you didn’t see being killed doesn’t mean your conscience can be clear if at all it is a conscionable act.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this “humane” business is more about people feeling better about themselves than animals not suffering.

Western culture has also sought to make eating meat ethically acceptable in other ways. Notice that animals killed for food are not “killed” but “butchered”. And who does it? A “butcher”, who happens to be a human being! You take the guilt out of the act by humanizing it, in this case by naming the fellow the same way. How’s that for sophistry? Or the mass killing of deer for example (to control populations) is really “culling” and not killing.

I therefore like the terms that are used in Kannada. There are no allusions to moral correctness (or wrongdoing for that matter) in my language. When people want to eat mutton, they “chop” the goat or sheep and eat it (kaDidu tinnu). Simple!

I am a pilot

OK I admit it. I have been taking flying lessons for the past many months. I passed my exam a little over a month ago and I am now officially a licensed Private Pilot (as opposed to Commercial etc.) here in the US. I can legally fly an "ASEL" i.e. Airplane (i.e. not a glider, helicopter etc.) Single Engine (not multi-engine) Land (not sea i.e. airplane that can operate from the water). I am a PP-ASEL.

I didn't disclose it on this blog because
a) I didn't want my mother to know about it and wanted to surprise her when she came to visit me
b) isn't the above a good enough reason?

I deliberately didn't inform her when I started my lessons because I knew of her objections
a) It is too dangerous
b) It is too expensive

I am glad to say it is neither, but then my family wouldn't say I understand the concept of danger anyway. I don't know if they think I am a responsible spender either. I therefore decided to present this as a fait accompli.

I had told my father and my brother, the former with the same outlook towards "dangerous" activities as mine and the latter who is generally eminently disinterested in such matters. He'd much rather build a successful website.

My mother however did find out about it. I scanned my new license and emailed it to my father and brother forgetting that my mother is usually the one who checks my father's email. One day of arguing, and two days of not talking later, I finally convinced my mother that this was nothing to be ashamed about. I am glad to report that she finally thinks I am a decent human being, though just barely.

What is it like to fly? I believe I am normally an articulate person. However, words fail me for the most part when I describe the feeling of flight. The result is another blog that hasn't been updated in a long time. I will give up trying because one poem - a classic in aviation circles - tells you everything. It is beautiful for those who are earthbound, and it is sublime for those who fly for they have felt these verses.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, —and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark nor even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

- John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

It is true, I feel a peace when I am flying that I have never felt so far.

It is also true that this has turned me, generally a cynic, into an incurable romantic that embarrasses even me sometimes.

With that, I don't have to explain to anyone why I fly. I wish God gives me the strength and the means to do it until my body fails.