Airshow at Unkal

There was a low culvert on an irrigation ditch at the place where the road forked and I sat there facing the western sky as another glorious sunset painted scarlet and crimson colors on the cloud bank above the grassy hills of Unkal .

From the fork one road went to the village of Shivalli after climbing a minor gradient and the other one ,smaller and broken in places, crossed a nullah and went to Gopankoppa through fields of green gram and soyabean planted in neat parallel rows.

There were many birds here,darting from bush to bush and the air was full of musical bird calls.There were doves and bulbuls and small black birds the size of sparrows which flew low over the fields and made soft sounds like water gurgling in a spring.There was a black-shouldered kite which hovered about 50 feet above the ground on the Shivalli road.It stayed afloat with slow graceful flapping of wings ,suspended in air like a helicopter, looking for quarry in the fields below. After a minute or so it moved further away along the road and climbed to a fresh vantage point, scanning the ground below for movement with laser sharp eyes.

It was very quiet except for the sound of the breeze in the trees and distant shouts of workers winding up the day’s work and getting onto tractor trailers to head back home. I turned back and saw my old friend ,the brown dog lying spread-eagled in its usual place in the field behind the culvert, its eyes on the setting sun. He would usually be there at this time of the day, coming in from the direction of Gopankoppa to see the sun go down by the side of the Navanagar hills in a stunning riot of colors. This dog was a connoisseur of sunsets.

A group of young boys and girls came on scooters and halted near the culvert. They were carrying a model aero plane with them. They were students from a nearby Engineering college and this was a remote controlled plane they had built as part of their project. They wanted to test fly the plane here.

They had chosen this road because the road was straight and smooth and mostly empty. The plane looked somewhat fragile. Its body was painted red and the wings were in a washed out shade of blue.

They set up the plane and and fiddled with the controls to make it takeoff. A strong breeze from the west was making it difficult to control the plane. In between they had to stop twice, first to let a bullock cart, and later a tractor trailer go past.

The sun had almost set and the hill to the south , which marked the edge of the town, now held deep shadows in the foothills.

The kids were growing impatient .The wind had changed direction slightly and now it was blowing from North west and this gave the kids the idea of experimenting with the direction of the runway. Instead of taxiing from Shivalli end they shifted it to the school end so that they had more wind assistance for takeoff. This worked and with the wind squarely on its back the red and blue bird rolled along with renewed vigor and after a moment of wobbling at the road’s edge eventually took off to cries of jubilation from the cheering students. It climbed up in wide circles and reached a height of about 50 feet when a sudden gust of wind halted it in its track, the tiny motor unable to make headway against the force of the breeze.

A few feet away was the black -shouldered kite ,and for a about half a minute the onlookers on the road had the privilege of looking at two hovering objects side by side, one flapping its wings rhythmically, the other with unmoving blue wings. One was a child of the sky ,plugged into the power source of the universe, while the other was a toy living dangerously ,tethered to the ground and operated by uncertain human hands.

The gust of wind died down as suddenly as it had begun and this upset the delicate equilibrium which was keeping the plane afloat and it veered off to a side with a jerk. The hands of the boy handling the remote flew over the controls ,but there was nothing he could do as the plane rapidly spun out of control and went into a nosedive into the soyabean field by the side of the road.

The kids ran into the field and picked up the plane from among the bushes .The soft mud had cushioned the impact and except for a twisted wing the plane looked fine.

The students climbed back on to the road talking excitedly amongst themselves .They were planning to make another attempt tomorrow.They started their scooters and went back into the town, one of the boys riding pillion, holding the bruised toy in his hands.

In the gathering dusk I could see the kite, the hero of today’s airshow ,waiting for one last chance to spot a quarry before darkness swallowed the fields.

The dog had already slipped away sometime during the commotion on the road and the mound of mud on which it lay was empty and dark.

I was the last person to leave the place. As I reached my car the lights came up on the hillside but the hill itself was no longer visible in the darkness.