Ah...those good-old paper flying tickets

The lure, charm and unending curiosity of airline paper tickets with brightly coloured frontages and different logos are now an item of a bygone era in the aviation industry. However, there once was a time when this writer and his elder brother eagerly awaited their parents' subsequent trips abroad - purely for the sake of new toys, and yes, also for those dazzling foreign air tickets stamped with travel tax stamps and baggage coupons. Once at hand, we played with them by fashioning ourselves in the guise of real travellers. Now- a- days I have learned to compensate that hobby by collecting airline boarding passes.
Some of the most eye-catching among those fascinating travel documents were the tickets printed and issued by the British Airways, the blue and yellow Lufthansa, the deep solid green PIA, the blood red Indian airlines and classical white and green Cathay Pacific ticket. My favourite was the Thai air ticket with its purple and gold motif that usually came with a big jacket folder for storing all documents inside.        
However, that nostalgia of playing with paper tickets - etched in my mind forever was re-lived  once again , when my dear friend and collector of all odds , Saiful bhai paid a surprising visit last week carrying hips of paper tickets in a leather bag. Within seconds after seeing them, my mind was travelling in time. The Blue Biman ticket reminded of an epoch when Bangladesh Biman was expanding by introducing newer routes to Athens and New York. Much way back during the early 80's, it appeared a promising flag career. One Dhaka-London-Dhaka flight in the year 1981 via Bangladesh Biman's ordinary class was 15,220 Taka when travelling to European destinations, except for expats, was considered a rare luxury for the elites. The endless curiosity, what lay beyond our borders was mostly shared by the expats who lived there, and we joked, if you could lay your hands on one of their tickets 'you went in that plane too'. Though flying has become much easier and affordable for many of us, but it's those mesmeric travel documents which are not in print any longer. The E-ticket seems more of a travel pass lacking in designs and colours.  However, thanks to Saiful bhai's sincere endeavours for collecting and preserving some of the printed remnants of the old aviation industry. Similar to collecting of old newspapers, valuable documents and rare philatelic items -Saiful Islam had spent innumerable hours in some of the most inhospitable of trading localities - hunting down those forgotten but ever gleaming flying tickets. His collection now varies somewhere between 1200 - 1500 varieties of air tickets of some 90 countries. Defying all barriers of time, money and age, his amassed collection only echoes of the passion he stands for - preserving the heritage of whatever it may be.   
If there is any single bliss that this writer badly misses during his frequent flying habit these days - it is absence of those flying tickets.  
     The writer is a journalist