Automatic Upgrade
1:
The short story is about a young man called Ramesh who is travelling with his grandmother. They are going to visit Ramesh’s sister in England. Ramesh has given up his career as a doctor to become a salesman in the mobile phone business. And when he tells his grandmother, she gets quite upset about it.
During the flight Ramesh wakes up and finds his grandmother dead. He gets worried about the sister’s reaction, and he’s sure that she will blame him for the death of the grandmother. The stewards are at first suspicious, but when Ramesh reveals that he’s a doctor, they relax immediately.
After having been transferred to the first class compartment, Ramesh begins to think about his parents who are the only ones in the family who have ever travelled first class. His father saved for two years to buy those tickets. His sister was conceived during the parents’ honeymoon and the grandmother therefore always said that the sister was the one destined to travel, and not Ramesh.
Sitting next to the deceased grandmother, Ramesh goes through her purse and finds his grandfather’s pocket watch which his grandmother never left her home without. Ramesh also finds a letter he’d written from Boarding School the week his grandfather died.
2:
Ramesh is 26 years old and lives in India. He is a doctor, but has just given up his career to become a salesman in the mobile phone business. He is not married yet.
He seems to feel like a failure because his grandmother points out how wrong it is to give up his career for commercial selling, and he worries a lot about how his sister will react after the death of their grandmother. Also he seems very fond of the air hostesses, but is too unnerved to speak to them.
The air hostesses ask him whether they should call any of his relatives or not, and Ramesh decides to let them call his sister, because he’s so afraid of disappointing her.
3:
The grandmother is very traditional. She’s an Indian lady...