One hundred and twenty senior citizens from Devarayanpalayam near Tirupur, said their prayers at the village temple before boarding their maiden flight to Chennai recently

Recently, textile businessman M Ravi Kumar, made headlines when he took 120 people, most of them senior citizens, from his native village Devarayanpalayam near Tirupur, on a flight to Chennai. The 44-year-old wanted to give back to the village that defined him. The idea occurred to Ravi a few years ago, when he travelled by flight for the first time, on work. “I was fascinated by the experience,” he says. “I wanted people from my village to experience it too.” Ravi booked tickets, and planned a short bus trip from Chennai to temples in Kanchipuram, Vellore and Thiruvannamalai. He spent around ₹4 lakhs on the expedition.

Dressed in white saris, co-sisters and friends S Lakshmi and P Padmavathi, are seated in a courtyard in the quiet village. It’s been more than a month since their maiden flight trip, and they’re still talking about it. Lakshmi, who places her age at “somewhere over 70”, hasn’t stepped beyond Coimbatore for years. “She lost her way home just the other night when she was returning after watching an oyilattam performance in our village,” says P Padmavathi, laughing at Lakshmi. “She can’t be trusted to even walk home from her neighbour’s.” But Lakshmi got into that airplane because she felt she would neither get such an opportunity again, nor have the courage to push herself like she did.

A trip to remember Of the 120 people who flew, 90 were women, most of whom never stepped beyond Coimbatore

Lakshmi doesn’t mention her deceased husband’s name out of respect. A child bride, she spent all her productive years on the handloom at home. In fact, every house in the village, that has around 300 families, once had a loom. “There was no time for us to go anywhere else, for if we did, we lost out on our income,” says Padmavathi. “We had to keep working without a break.” So travelling, even to nearby Coimbatore, was a luxury. “Our weekly trip to the Avinashi sandhai (fair) was just about the furthest many of us went,” she adds. Which is why Ravi’s gesture means so much to these women.

Lakshmi was terrified of flying. “But once I was inside, I was comfortable. The flight was smooth, unlike the buses I’ve been on,” she grins. “But you know, I thought we were inside water when I saw all the blue around us outside the window,” she says, in all honesty.

Padmavathi covered her head with a scarf, to “protect it from head injuries” she may incur on board. She laughs when she talks about it now. “Before I left, a relative asked me where I kept all my money at home. She told me that it’ll come in handy if I didn’t come back,” she says.

Fifty-five-year-old S Saraswathy, regrets the windows being tightly shut on board. “If they were open, I would’ve grabbed the clouds,” she says. Once the group landed in Chennai, they went to Marina beach. “It was beginning to get dark when we went there,” says M Palaniammal. “So we didn’t go near the water.” But they did join hands to form a large circle on the sand and did the kummi, a traditional dance involving rhythmic clapping.

The oldest in the group is 103-year-old N Kuppathal. Dressed in a white sari sans blouse, Kuppathal exclaims, “I’m not afraid of anything,” when we ask her if the journey unnerved her. She wouldn’t mind another trip too. Neither would Padmavathi. She realises how much she’s missed all these years. The idea of packing her bags for a journey, seeing new things, and travelling by a means she never dreamed of, scared her. She prayed at the village temple as they were about to leave, for she honestly believed she wouldn’t come back.

But why did she sign up for the experience then? Says Padmavathi, “I thought, if I were to die on the flight, so be it.”