# 8 - Dangers of Sound Sleeping - The Hijacking-I

Willie was traveling on a plane for the first time. He went inside the plane to look for his seat. According to the boarding pass his seat was 11B.

He went to the row 11. Due to a strange quirk of fate he had always been given a window seat whenever he had travelled in a bus or a train. So quite naturally, he assumed 11B to be the window seat.

Due to another aberration in his fate which would freakishly dramatically alter the course of his life, someone was already sitting by the window.

‘Excuse me; I think you have occupied my seat’ said Willie as gently as possible. This was the first time he had stepped inside an airplane and he didn’t want to annoy anyone.

The other person measured Willie from top to bottom, and then casually replied ‘But why do you think so?’

‘Hmm... I don’t know may be the boarding pass says so that’s why?’ Willie replied equally casually.

‘What does your boarding pass say?’ asked the other person.

‘It says 11B’ Willie was still standing all this while.

‘And what does your boarding pass say?’ asked Willie

‘11A’

This other person was Rick Shaw. He was also traveling on a plane for the first time.

Both had well understood that 11 meant the row number but they hadn’t been able to figure out that the alphabets corresponded to a particular seat in a row.

They thought it was a conspiracy. How could two persons be assigned the same seat and that too in the same plane?

So they both started to brainstorm about how to reveal the conspiracy and resolve this seat issue.

Willie was still standing, and so he was all the more eager to get done with this as in a few minutes the plane would start to fly and he didn’t want to fly to wherever he was flying to standing all through the journey.

‘I have an idea’ said Rick excitedly.

‘What?’ Willie also cheered up.

‘Let’s call the air hostess’ beamed Rick.

‘Have you gone mad? I can’t do that. I can’t ask an air hostess where my seat is. She would think that I am flying for the first time’ gravely said Willie assuming an air of upper-handedness.

Rick then thought if this stranger was not flying for the first time he should have known the seating arrangement. Instead this crazyhead was doing everything than finding his seat.

Anyways Rick couldn’t care less. Even he was flying for the first time and no way was he going to let this butt head know about this. The same exact thought was going inside Willie’s head also.

So they thought about the problem for some more time.

‘I have another idea’ said Rick.

‘I am not going to the pilot’ glumly replied Willie looking rather bored.

‘Let’s get even.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Let us also plot a conspiracy! We are both going to sit here only and we will not tell anyone about this.’

‘What if they find out?’

Rick thought for sometime and then added ‘Hmm… forget about it for now’. He always preferred to forget about a problem if he couldn’t find a solution.

Finally Willie sat down – on 11B only which anyways he was supposed to occupy.

As they were sitting on seats 11A and 11B only so naturally no one came to bother them. As soon as the plane started to taxi on the runway they both heaved a sigh of relief, and congratulated each other that their conspiracy was working finally.

‘By the way I am Willie.’

‘I am Rick. Rick Shaw. Pleasure meeting you.’

‘So you are also going to Antarctica?’

‘Yeah… I think so.’

They were both going to Antarctica on fully-funded projects.


© 2007 Ankur Shanker
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