There are kids in the townships around Johannesburg who have never visited the city...
It's Aura's birthday this week. Four years since she was — Macduff like — from her mother's womb untimely ripp'd. The Spielberg lights of the Hillbrow telecommunications tower that glitter in the sky outside our home at night is her talisman — her spaceship, she says.
Neeven Soodyall, eccentric economist friend, offered her a birthday treat with a difference — he would take her for a night flight around the Hillbrow tower.
The magnificent bitterly blood-red Highveld sun dipped low on the horizon as we drove into Grand Central airport on the Midrand.
The airport building itself was almost Scandinavian in its antiseptic cleanliness, setting it apart from the squalor of downtown Johannesburg.
Neeven filed a flight plan, picked up two headsets and we walked on to the tarmac.
I've long lost count of the number of times I've flown, but those times were different.
There's something inherently reassuring about a commercial jetliner. Larger than several houses, a 747 radiates the confidence of being able to defy the wrath of a thunderstorm.
Within the sheltered walls of the heated pressurised cabin, pampered by air hostesses, you can sleep the sleep of the undead while 1000 kilometre per hour air currents scream by at temperatures of less than minus 40 degrees.
A Cessna 172 on the other hand is not much larger than a family saloon car — its single propeller with less of a span than my outstretched arms, its engine occupying less space than a pair of suitcases, looks and feels frightfully insignificant against the open sky.
The cabin is smaller than the interior of a VW bug. The body panels offer as much comfort as a fibreglass canopy on a pickup truck. The roar of the engine drowns out conversation until we slip on headsets and talk to air traffic control.
"Lima X-Ray Echo cleared for runway..."
And the ground slips away effortlessly. Johannesburg lies glistening beneath us like a land of fairy tale, the high walls and electrified fences wiped out of existence for a brief while.
"Look Kanthan, it's my tower!" chortles Aura with glee.
I think about those kids in the townships who are born and die there. There should be something more for them.
And one view of the world would have it that the resources that went into Aura's flight of pleasure should instead be spent on more basic needs.
It's hard to argue against that type of sentiment, especially since if I were a parent of one of those kids in the townships, I would want the best for them.
But to deny the joys of the flight of pleasure to anyone? John Gillespie Magee Jr. said it a lot better than I could:
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth, Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung, High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung, My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, Where never lark or even eagle flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod, The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.