I have miles to earn ...

There are concerns about the globe heating up, but there sure is another phenomenon going on for a while now, that is the shrinking of its radius. With globalisation and the concept of global village, enterprises are furthering their businesses across countries and continents. People are feeling unprecedented urge to go to Far Far Away, to explore the world, to see the people there. and for numerous other reasons. For some, there is also a hidden desire to earn more miles. These are ones who will feel proud if they have to apply for a new passport with reason "No Empty Page Available" and will indulge in narrating stories after looking at a VISA and Port of Entry stamp in their passport.

Air Miles, Jet Lag, Connections have become ubiquitous terms these days. Just type the words Jet Lag in google, and it will return thousands of pages describing numerous ways to tackle it. They will describe ways to dupe the body clock, to induce sleeping and waking durations by using caffeine or sleeping pills. For a frequent flyer, these are the rules to live by as are ways to control sugar for a diabetic. He cannot afford to spend time to recover from jet lag on a two day trip from New York to Shanghai. Fighting jet lag is a part of what he was signed for and through experience he has learned how to tackle it.

Distances across continents and oceans has been reduced to number of hours you have to sit in the airplane to cross these. The feeling of having come half way across the globe is termed as experiencing jet lag. Friends and family will prescribe ways to handle this feeling to someone who has just come from India to US. He has flown thousands of miles, over oceans and continents to reach where he is now, and yet it seems so trivial. This is just the start for him, he has just earned one stamp, there are others for whom the immigration officer has to look for space to put another stamp in the passport.

With lot of traveling across the US and Canada for work and few flying visits to India from US, I would well have earned tens of thousands of miles in this year. I also had to experience disorientation and felt sleepy at odd hours as a result of being transported across time zones. I have taken days and at times a full week to get accustomed to the new day-night schedule. What I felt was that one should try not to curb jet lag and along with that the feeling of flying across the globe. Jet lag which is looked at as an after result of flying should rather be experienced as the feeling of having traveled thousands of miles and crossed oceans and continents and the feeling be relished and absorbed slowly as the body would in a natural way. One can call this "Organic Flying", free of artificial drugs to curb natural body behaviors.