Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red. And Me.

I'm happiness, I'm depression, I'm choleric, I'm sanguine, I'm me. That's the succession of thoughts running through my head as I watched the plane take off from the Mumbai Airport and tremble onward over the sea. After a minor fiasco at the airport which involved going through a security check twice (and a little raised-eyebrow, "do you mind?" session with a travelling companion), I was glad to know I'd bagged the window seat.

Take-off is one of the most amazing sensations I have ever experienced - everything inside you just...dips, and rests in the soles of your feet. The air hostess announced that we were required to keep our seat belts on as we were going over water. I peeped out of the window and saw muddy waves running over each other, classic KS style. (Yeah, it just struck me - one wave riding on top of the other to see who reached Nirvana faster.) I continued watching with wide-eyed wonder as the airplane travelled almost perpendicular to the ground, over the sea. For a minute I even considered the possibility of us crashing, and me turning into an evil water nymph, wailing all night.

But that wasn't the best part of the journey.

It happened out of the blue. Literally. Clouds ripe with rainwater had closed in on us from all sides, casuing major turbulence and messing with the navigation systems to the extent that we went a little off the route. Finally, we emerged through the deceptively calm mistiness into pure cloud land - milky white clouds all puffed up and drifting around languidly. I was just about to get back to my book - ironically titled "100 shades of white" - when I saw it.

A rainbow. Pastel against the backdrop of clouds. And then vibrant with colour as we crossed cloud country towards a clearing that revealed the colours of the earth in all their glory - dark brown with precise, geometrical patterns of rich green.

I refused to let the vision dissipate, pressing my nose against the glass, foolishly thinking that now, now I could tell people where the rainbow comes from. I wasn't interested in knowing where it ended. I didn't want it to end because it filled me with renewed hope about life. It restored my faith in all things good and pure. It filled me with an insurgent energy.

Then reality happened, and the rainbow vanished. I kept catching glimpses of it, so light and fleeting. But it was enough. I was a new person again. My mind's eye captured the vision in a freeze-frame - the vision of a rainbow thrusting upwards out of nowhere and disappearing into nothing.

Seeing it from 80,000 feet below is exciting, but seeing it from up there...wow. I don't know how many others have seen it from up there, I don't know what they felt when they saw it. But for me, it was an experience I'm not going to forget easily. Life holds many disillusionments for all of us. But it's easier for me to tackle them now because I have this most beautiful image of a rainbow traipsing with me across the sky.

I was strapped in a plane. It was free. I was full of passivity. It was bursting with life. And it was kind enough to infuse some in me too.