personal insights into flight

As we celebrate a hundred years of flight today, I wish to share my experience. I can hear a plane preparing to deposit its load of passengers and take to the skies again. Mankind has always been satisfied about flying. It must be because we have no way to lift our bodies off the ground. This deepest desire to take to the skies is well reflected in all mythologies. Almost every religion on earth has a figure who could fly. You can find that almost all superheroes in modern day fiction have an ability to fly, either on ther own or through devices. I don't know about girls, but I know every boy's fondest ambition in his childhood would have been to be a pilot. I had it too. Fascinated by planes, I recall reading a lot of books on flying and planes. I used to tear off pages from notebooks to make planes. I would then go to the top floor and let go of these paper machines. As our house lay adjoining a cemetery, it was pretty much an open space. I was so much into planes that I did not use written and used paper. All my planes were of the purest paper, cut with precision and folded with care. I had drawings of various paper plane models. I learnt the laws of aerodynamics, thermal drifts and properties of paper in my quest to make the perfect paper plane. People say try and try again. I did, meeting failure on several occasions and learning from them. I now can make the perfect paper plane. But it will not fly. The course of my various experimentations has allowed me to understand the laws of physics well. I knew what goes up must come down. The trick was to slow down that law of Newton. I learnt about ballasts. I designed planes that could fly for a few metres in a straight line and then plummet down to the ground head first. I called them missiles or suicide bombers. I learnt about aerodynamics. I then made planes that would land gracefully like a swan. Modelled on the now grounded Concorde, these planes could land perfectly. Fighter aircraft are a complex piece of machinery, but extremely maneouverable. I wanted to make a plane that would be as maneouverable as a fighter jet. Trials after trials, reams and reams of wasted paper finally gave birth to a plane that could fly and turn as smooth as a fighter planes. I realized that a simple cuts in paper could be folded and they could act as rudders or aerofoils. I could make a plane move in what ever way I wanted by simply adjusting these small flaps. I could make it glide in circles in both clockwise and anticlockwise directions. I could make them rise high and swoop down like an eagle in pursuit of its prey. Aileron rolls were a breeze. 180 degree turns were hard, but after innumberable tries I got it right. After all these years, I still wonder why I didn't pursue it as a career. Maybe some things were just meant not to be.