The Fingers Of God!

I have flown before, but not like this. The fears and hopes of a getting into a new country and a new life will last only the first time. The next time one flies, one does it as a veteran.

I have always been fascinated by the landscape 36,000 feet under me, separated by the thin steel hull of the aircraft. Trees often fifty to sixty feet tall on land, appears as tiny as the nail on my little finger from air. The buildings would as well as have been not there.

This fascination for the landscape often made me demand a window seat where there were often none. I demanded that I should see the land below me move back like a floral carpet with intricate colour patterns – green, brown and grey, as only god could have ever designed.

This fascination was the same emotion which made me look ahead to a different colour pattern on the same big floral carpet – that of the Gulf, which would be my home for quite the foreseeable future.

If in India, the designs were all intricately woven into one another, in the Middle East, the grandeur lies in the vast palette of the same colour. It was the blue of the ocean that first greeted me, and then it was the gradually lightening shade of the same colour as land gradually kissed the ocean. And then the golden hue opened up and stretched as far as the eye would go.

Even as the announcement of the captain came over the P.A system that the plane was readying for landing procedures, the fingers of god was made visible.

The massive cloud ahead of us that completely hid the sun suddenly developed tears through out it's under belly. Even as we watched, the purest of lights shone down. One mighty beam of light shone brightly on my window and illuminated my face. I saw that the seat behind and ahead of me was shadowed by the massive cloud while I saw light. It was a personal message, I believe, hand delivered, in person.

I craned my neck as the light passed and saw the man behind me shut his window to escape the fierce light. Gentle tears formed, but amazingly, it did not burst forth, as sometimes it does. The cloud dissipated and once again the voice of Captain Kenneth boomed through the interior, ''We welcome you to Qatar, please prepare yourself for the landing…''

Somehow, I know that the Qatar phase of my life is being watched upon by the force, the same one which made itself visible through my most beloved phenomenon on earth– The Fingers of God.