Aira is the second letter of the Gurmukhi painti and the middle of its three vowel bearers. It differs from Ura and Iri in a way that matters at the first lesson: written bare it is not silent. Gurmukhi gives every sign an inherent short a, and the bearer is not exempt, so Aira with no vowel mark on it is read as a. The open and diphthongal vowels are then built on that same frame. The vertical stroke called kanna, written after the letter, gives the long aa. Two small strokes above, the dulavan, give ai. One stroke above joined to the kanna, the kanaura, gives au.
Because so many Punjabi words open on an a, Aira is the bearer a reader meets most often, and it is the one that appears in the grammatical particles that hold sentences together. It is also the bearer used when a word must begin with a vowel that has no home elsewhere, which makes it the default of the three. In the recitation of the alphabet the three bearers are read as a group before any consonant, and Aira, having a sound of its own, is the one the group is usually named for. Its written shape is a stem from the headline with an open bowl to its left, near enough to Ura in a hurried hand that separating them cleanly is one of the first things a Gurmukhi teacher corrects.