Disclaimer:
Any resemblance to a person who has travelled on board the Indigo 6e217 on seat 27D on 10/04/14 is purely intentional.

On the evening of 10/04 I boarded the 6e218 to Jaipur seated at 27A, the flight and the flight crew are another story for some other day. Our hero for the day, let’s call him Mr X arrived and seated conveniently on 27D which is an aisle seat. At this time an uncle in late 40s came with her daughter to occupy the seats next to me, he gave me an interrogative look and decided that he should take the middle seat and let her daughter who clearly was my age, take the aisle seat. I understood the psyche and had a laugh. During the course of the flight we shared a few jokes and the uncle must have realised that I am not the bad guy after all. So here we are, 27 A to D occupied and the rest of the plane was almost full too. Getting back to Mr X, he was a man almost 25, fairly well built and just like any other man of that age, he must have been hoping for two young female passengers to be seated next to him since the other woman across the aisle (uncle’s daughter) was not so interesting. Mr X had two books and a couple of loose sheets in his hands. Pretending to be occupied, he was flipping through pages and referring to the loose sheets, jotting down something on them and scratching his head. The important thing to note was that he was using a pencil instead of a pen and the good thing about pencils is that they reveal identities. The sheet that he was referring to was an A3 with a couple folded A1s piled underneath. A1, A3, pencils give you a fair what the person is, yes, he was an architect. That’s how it was, an architect on 27D and an architecture student on 27A. And then there they were, the co-passengers of Ar. X, an elderly couple to occupy 27 E and 27 F, who dozed off before anybody could care. It must have been a major heart burn for X the architect. The books were basically furniture catalogues for office furniture; going by the fancy packaging of the books I can safely say that it was some good brand. So yes, it can be deduced that he was selecting furniture for various areas of an office project. All well and good, he managed to impress an onlooking student of architecture. As soon as the elderly people came over, he closed the book and began folding the drawing in disbelief and discontent, and he must have cursed whatever gods that may be, for he wasn’t the master of his fate. Nevertheless, he got up to reach a handbag that he had kept in the overhead storage and pulled out a set of fancy pencils, maybe they were supposed to bring good luck. Ar. X then jumped over to the 26th row, which was vacant till then (for some reasons the boarding and take off took 55 minutes that day). I failed to notice who his new co-passengers were but I managed to get a sneak pick of the A3, and shockingly it was an elevation of a small residence (G+1). I didn’t miss to notice the Autodesk educational stamp (unlicensed software) on the drawing. And there he was, a man who must have taken the article about architects being sexy, doing the rounds of social media, too seriously. I realized that one seat remains vacant and the other was occupied by another male passenger, so now he shifted his focus to the air hostesses, which was just another futile attempt. He came back to his original seat and was just waiting for the plane to land now. He kept the drawings in his bag (Oh btw Ar. X, the red trolley bag was an ugly piece of design in itself). Now, after the landing area. X gave wooing girls a last shot, he pulled out a small leather bag and kept the pencil set in the bag, the pretense was clear. What was wrong/ noticeable there? Well the bag was a Louis Vuitton (or a copy which was unlikely since his watch was a fine piece of jewelry). How did I find that the bag was an LV? Let’s say, I just did.
When hard luck strikes, it strikes hard, no girls to pull a conversation with in two different rows, unimpressed air hostesses and a crazy maniac who saw all this and brought it to the domain of social media.

End note:
Mr. X if you were indeed doing what I assume you were, on behalf of the entire fraternity (if not community) I take the immense pleasure to disown you. And in the very unlikely event of the reality being different, I would say 4th strike of hard luck.

PS: This article has been written on board Indigo 6e218 (my return flight) seated in a vacant row.