Calls in the cloud

This week the government gave its stamp of approval on internet and mobile communication on board flights. Happy news, you’d say. After all, it’s one more example of how India is forging ahead in the field of technology. Now we can tell other countries — and international carriers, such as Lufthansa, Emirates, Virgin Atlantic et al — look here, we too can surf the Net and make calls while cruising at an altitude of 30,000 feet or thereabouts. 

Yet I let out a yelp of alarm when I read the news in my morning paper. Don’t get me wrong — I’m all for high-tech stuff. I totally dig new technologies and the brave new world they lead us into. Under normal circumstances, I would have been thrilled at the prospect of being able to chat with friends while they were on terra firma and I up above the clouds. But alas, other considerations dimmed my joy.

Now, I’m a firm believer in the doctrine of live and let live. However, I know not why, I undergo a personality change once I am airborne. After going through the queues, the body check, the wait, the delays, the overpriced watery cappuccino, and more queues, by the time I take my seat in cramped cattle class on board the aircraft, I become kind of intolerant of others. I become the child-hating monster who gets up and ticks off the little human who has decided to alleviate the boredom of spending two hours in an airplane by delivering repeated kicks to the seat back (mine) in front of her. I engage in a steely elbow tussle with a neighbour if he or she tries to take over the arm rest and there have been occasions when I’ve felt like declaring, à la Duryodhan, that I wouldn’t cede a needlepoint of territory without a fight. And I seethe silently when passengers around me talk loudly into their mobile phones right up to the moment the plane begins to taxi for take off. Or when, as soon as it touches down, they switch on their phones and feel compelled to shout out the momentous information that the plane has just landed.

Passengers will soon be making in-flight calls

Hence I have always been grateful for the rule that mobile phones needed to be switched off or kept in airplane mode during the flight. That peaceful interregnum — well, barring the odd squealing child — made air travel bearable. But I shudder to think what one will have to endure now. Once wi-fi-based in-flight calls become routine, passengers will be unstoppable. They will holler: “Hanjee, mein hawai jahaaz mein mobile se bol raha hoon” — or words to that effect in a medley of Indian languages and English. Endless noisy yakking about business deals, household matters, what was eaten at breakfast — all this and more interspersed with many bellows of “hello” will assault one’s ear drums until one becomes a candidate for stark raving air rage.

Besides, if voice calls come, can video calls be far behind? Not that it would make any difference to the decibel level in the cabin. But imagine having to sit next to a person grinning and preening and swinging his phone around so his entire family can get a look-see at his mile-high environs. Privacy? Forget it. When the person in the next seat doesn’t care about his, what right do you have to whine about yours? The last time I took a flight, I saw a man having a video chat on the bus to the aircraft. The big screen of his smart phone showed a woman lolling lasciviously on a bed. Okay, okay, I did look away, but the insouciance and self-absorption of the mobile phone addict left me slack-jawed.

In-flight calls won’t be cheap, of course. But my bet is that there’d be plenty of people who’d be happy to pay for them and then do paisa vasool by yelling at the top of their voices.

Well, I’m off to buy a pair of sturdy, noise-cancelling headphones. How about you?