The Tiny Plane – A True Incident

It was late Autumn in 1987, as far as Tubing could recall. The rice fields in Ziro had turned brown and withered down to their roots. The sun was setting, casting an orange hue across the sky, and everyone was returning home. The only sounds reverberating in the quite, parched air, were the laughter of children playing in the fields among dry rice stalks taller than themselves.

Tubing, a tot at the time, played with his makeshift wooden toy in the dusty soil. Suddenly, a plane zipped right above his head—a Lilliputian-sized plane. Tubing, who had never seen a plane before, let alone a toy plane, followed the peculiar-looking bird with his eyes fixed on it, determined not to lose sight. The tiny plane emitted smoke from its rear, flying in a zigzag pattern as if its engine had failed. After some zigzagging, the miniature plane disappeared into the dead stalks.

Tubing ran towards the direction where the plane had darted into. He panned the area, pushing away the towering stalks with his small and feeble body, only to be disappointed as he could not locate it.

Even today, he vividly recalls the image of the tiny plane—the sputtering noise, the smoke billowing from its rear, and its erratic flight. Tubing still wonders if it was merely his imagination or a genuine encounter. However, the vividness of what he witnessed seems to challenge his rationality.

Now a grown man, Tubing reflects, “If the tiny plane was real, then perhaps tiny people exist too.”