Are we going to Johor?
A couple of months ago, I flew back to China through Kuala Lumpur -- Kozhikode to Kuala Lumpur, then Kuala Lumpur to Chengdu. Nothing unusual about the route, except for one detail: it was on AirAsia, which had briefly started flying out of Kozhikode. That route doesn't exist anymore; it turned out to be one of their last test runs before they pulled out.
I only found out later, while idly checking flights, that the service had ended -- and that's what brought this whole memory back. It was also, oddly, my first time flying international out of Kozhikode. Normally I connect through Kochi, Bangalore or Chennai for that. So the terminal itself already felt a little new to me before anything else happened.
The itha
I had my usual aisle seat, second row. I got there early and watched the plane fill up -- a guy took the window seat next to me, and then, just before the doors closed, a woman rushed in for the middle seat.
She was wearing a hijab, and looked like she was somewhere in her late twenties or early thirties -- I couldn't quite tell. I mentally filed her as "Itha" -- a respectful Malayalam term some Muslim communities use for an older sister, the same way "Ikka" is used for an elder brother. It's the kind of thing that's not really about religion -- back home we're all just culturally wired to address people this way -- Itha, Ikka, Chettan, Chechi -- regardless of what community you represent.
From the moment she sat down, I could tell she had a very particular energy. She stowed her backpack overhead, sat, and immediately asked me to get it back down so she could grab something. I obliged. Seconds later, right as the cabin crew announced phones should go into flight mode, she asked again -- she'd forgotten her phone was still in the bag. Down came the bag a second time. I figured: okay, she's just one of those restless, scattered travelers. No harm in that. I can be like that myself, just not usually mid-flight.
"Are we going to Johor?"
About ten or twenty minutes after takeoff, she leaned over and asked the man on her other side, "Are you going to Johor?" He looked completely lost -- he had one of those AirAsia in-flight route maps open in front of him and thought Johor might be some country. He asked her to point it out on the map.
I'd overheard enough to jump in: I was fairly sure Johor was actually a place in Malaysia, though I didn't know exactly where -- my own knowledge of Malaysian geography stops at Kuala Lumpur. That settled things enough for the three of us to do a round of introductions: he was headed to Australia via Malaysia, I was headed to China, and she -- she was going to Johor.
A few minutes later, she asked quite seriously, "So after we land, are you planning to take another flight or bus?" That's when it clicked for both of us: she'd assumed everyone on the plane was headed to Johor as some kind of shared destination, and that we'd all be figuring out the last leg together. We gently explained that no, we were just passing through Kuala Lumpur -- Johor wasn't on our way at all.
She took it in stride and moved on to small talk, first with him, then with me. Her accent was distinctly local to Kasaragod, one of those parts of Kerala known for having a strong, colorful dialect all its own, and she had a lot to say in it.
The food situation
At some point she got hungry and asked whether we'd be served food. I explained the AirAsia system -- you only get a meal if it was pre-booked. She handed me her boarding pass and asked me to check. I couldn't tell from the ticket alone, so I flagged down a crew member. But she couldn't communicate with them directly since she only spoke Malayalam, so I ended up translating both ways. Verdict: no meal booked. Not unusual for an overnight flight. I hadn't ordered anything either, just brought a small pouch of mixed nuts for myself.
A while later, mid-turbulence, she asked if I could get some chips out of her bag for her. I told her to hold on until things settled down. She agreed, but I could see the frustration building -- she was clearly hungry and unwilling to wait much longer. So I just handed her my mixed nuts instead. She lit up and happily ate them.
Between bites she kept talking, endlessly curious about everything, and at one point I overheard her telling the other guy that her husband was working in Johor, and that this was just a normal trip for her. Which told me she'd probably done this route before -- she just had a naturally chaotic, funny way about her regardless.
Landing
Eventually she dozed off, and she turned out to be a restless sleeper -- shifting and swinging around in her seat the whole way. I almost felt bad I hadn't offered her the aisle seat, but old habits held...the aisle is non-negotiable for me.
When we finally landed in Kuala Lumpur, she pulled out a small Hello Kitty backpack, slung it on, and we all went our separate ways with a quick "appo sheri...(yeah, bye)."