This week the world is celebrating the centennial of powered flight. Giant leaps have been taken ever since those two famous brothers, whose names escape me at the moment, became the first heavier-than-air humans to fly at an altitude of six feet above mean sea level, and remain airborne for exactly 2.5 seconds before smashing into a parked horse. The exhilaration! The thrill! The excruciating pain!

It is natural for us, living as we do in the technologically superior age of double-decker Airbus 380s, mothballed Concordes and Twin Otters with no toilets, to pooh-pooh the achievement of those early aviation pioneers. Just try doing controlled man-powered flight yourself. Go on, attach a pair of wings to your bicycle and attempt to soar into the wide blue yonder while coasting down Panitanki downhill. Not so easy is it?

Ever since early hominoids gazed up at the birds and watched them swoop across the heavens to drop guano on the heads of unsuspecting passersby, he has yearned to do the same (swoop across the heavens, I mean). In the course of trying to imitate the birds and the bees, mankind has had many false starts during which unexpectedly, and without warning, the force of gravity has made its presence felt, and mankind has had to be scraped off the asphalt so he could try flying again another day. But by and large, we must say that, we as a species, have made progress in the last century in pinpointing the main cause of deep vein thrombosis.

Here in Nepal, the Ministry of Uncivil Aviation has in the past 50 years gone through a lot of trouble to ensure that the romance of domestic airline travel keeps abreast of the latest technological advancements by making it mandatory to have family-size barf bags on all flights to Jomsom after 9AM.

Modern aviation is governed by Murphy's Law, which states inter alia that the guy with the window seat on a long flight has to be the chap with a technical malfunction of his bladder. Or, it is always the most garrulous gentleman in the universe with his ample girth who gets to sit next to you. On a direct night flight to Europe, the bulkhead bassinet in front of you must be occupied by a baby in an advanced state of colic who wails non-stop right across the airspace of all the ex-Soviet Central Asian republics. Sooner or later another flight to Biratnagar is going to fly to Bhairawa, but as long as it doesn't collide with a catering truck, we don't mind.