Move over Bolsheviks ..I want the window seat

Taking a month and a half off from work has not been easy . The last weeks have been harrowing. Goodbyes though temporary have been rough and shopping  reduced to a tedious chore. I look forward to the 16 hours in limbo. Blessed with the ability of falling asleep absolutely anywhere , I curl up on my seat and hope to god they wake me up with a food tray.  After what seems like 5 minutes , my unsmiling next seat neighbor wakes me up.

Why do you hog the window seat if you are going to sleep ? Move over, I want to take pictures of the glaciers. 

 Well excuse me! your royal rudeness. Wait ! what glacier? 

look outside your window !

Sure enough outside the window and  thousands of miles below everything is covered with miles and miles of royal icing.  The captain announces that we are flying over Russia . Russia! I yelp out loud. Just my luck to get stuck with the pilot with no sense of direction. Does he know he is  supposed to be flying us to LA today? I have read about these over worked pilots falling asleep at the wheels . My less traveled much Google'd friend tells me that the shortest distance between Dubai and LA is via the polar route. I inch closer to the LCD screen stuck to the seat in front. I try to measure in inches and centimeter the distance between the two places on the map. How could this be the shortest route i wonder? Isn't the shortest distance between two points always a strait line? This on the other hand would be like a virtual third bracket over the globe . 

Thanks to Bengals former obsession with all things RED, books from USSR  were available long after the country fragmented into mini countries i cannot point out in a map. Translated into Bengali and with beautiful pictures , it  brought to life  fictions from a far away land. Compadre for the longest time , and later a comatose comrade. How much land does a man need in Russia now? In Dubai, Man can never have enough.