I remember two books from my childhood very distinctly, both unusual for a child barely learning the mechanics of reading. One was my Mother’s college biology book with exquisite transparencies of the insides of frogs. The other was a glossy book with photographs, specifications, technical schematics and the history of Japanese war planes from the Second World War, picked up by my Father because it was beautiful. The second one I would never truly read beyond the pictures because it was all laid out in intricate Japanese text, but I pored over those boldly painted airplanes with inordinate interest as a child, and aircraft would become a fascination, both absorbed and inherited.
Part of the inheritance came from my Mother, who was so fascinated by all things aeronautical, that when she was in her teens, she famously took a dozen younger kids from her neighbourhood for a little picnic to the airport, so that they could all look at the planes. When I’m in the old neighbourhood, I still hear of that trip from the now not-so-young benefactors of that airport adventure, many decades ago. From my Father, who had lived most of his childhood at various spots along the flight-path of the Bombay airport, I received the inheritance of identifying aircraft. What my Mother did in walking down side lanes pointing out trees and shrubs to me by their Latin genus names, my Father did in introducing names such as Fokker Friendship, Comet, DC-10, Boing, Antonov, and Gnat into my vocabulary, whenever there was a droning sound above and an aircraft darted through the blue strip of sky between the rooftops.
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