"Candy is Dandy but Liquor is Quicker." Ogden Nash (1902-1971), American poet.

The sound of the Airbus 310 changed from a whine to a roar as it hurtled down the nine thousand feet runway, its nose poised for flight. The markers on the asphalt blurred into one continuous white line, the coconut palms transformed into a dynamic Impressionistic canvas of tropical fecundity, the principles of aerodynamics took over and we were airborne!

Kozhikode airport receded rapidly to a mere speck on terra firma as the Air India flight to Dubai climbed to its cruising altitude. If I leaned forward from my jump seat I could just see the blue waters of the Arabian Sea lapping at the white sands far below, quickly disappearing below the tail wings. Most of the passengers sitting next to a window seat were also watching their native land slip away, immersed in their own thoughts. They were leaving their families behind, perhaps for an extended period, to work in an alien land of sand dunes and shopping malls, far removed from the comforting sounds of paddy fields and mountain streams, the bright blue flash of a kingfisher diving into an emerald lake and coming up with a glittering silver fish in its red beak. "God's Own Country", proclaimed the state's glossy tourism brochures and yet most of its inhabitants had to leave its shores to find economic salvation.

Airbus A310 on the tarmac at Kozhikode airport

For the passenger seated on seat 23A (Mr.X), the immediate concern was to drown his melancholy in a rapid and copious intake of liquor as the service trolleys trundled down the twin aisles. Half an hour later the trolleys trundled out again, this time dispensing the lunch trays. The combination of booze and biryani strained the digestive apparatus of Mr.X to such an extent that a stream of rice, chunks of chicken, bits of vegetable matter and spices sprayed forth from his mouth, riding on a million molecules of whiskey  as if launched by an aerosol can, effectively coating the head and neck of Mr.Y seated on seat 22 A. This was followed by a second deluge, the contents clouding the Plexiglas of the window and depositing a gooey mess on the carpet at the floor of Mr.X.

Pandemonium broke out in the cabin. It was time for disaster management. A quick conclave of the crew in the galley followed and with the advice and support of my colleague and assistant, I confronted Mr.X. Human Rights activists are going to frown on what happened next.

"Can I have your ticket, boarding pass and passport?" I said in my best Gestapo accent, deliberately omitting compromising words like "please" and "sir".

To my utter surprise, he handed over these documents meekly. "These will be given to the police in Dubai when we land," I said. "Meanwhile, take these tissues and clean up the mess on the carpet and the window and your fellow passenger." I walked away towards the front of the aircraft and disappeared behind the curtains cordoning off the Business Class section.

Half an hour later I returned to the galley to find three passengers who might have been friends of Mr.X pleading with my colleague. "Please, sir," they said, "please return his passport.....he will be imprisoned otherwise...we assure you he will be sober for the rest of the flight." We shook our heads and kept the charade going. This little drama had the desired effect. Mr.X cleaned up the window and the carpet; he apologised profusely to Mr.Y and to us and took an oath never to get drunk on a flight again. Of course we returned his documents just before landing into Dubai and wished him well!

What I have just narrated is perhaps the worst case I have seen in my 28 year career as a flight attendant. I always viewed the serving of liquor on board a flight with mixed feelings.

Back in the late seventies and early eighties, the airline experimented with all sorts of protocols, including one which prohibited the serving of liquor to passengers flying a domestic sector on an international route, due in part to the rules of the Indian Customs department. Many domestic passengers would cajole an international passenger sitting next to them to request a drink on their behalf!

Over the years, many changes to the rules were made :

• If you were a First Class or a Business Class passenger, the drinks were complimentary.
• Alcohol could be purchased for consumption in the Economy Class. Later, the fee was waived as the airline had to compete with other carriers who were waiving the Free Liquor card at prospective passengers.
• A quota system was introduced for Economy Class passengers : you could only have 2 drinks! Needless to add, many found this limit rather muzzled their enormous appetites!

Many instances of unruly behaviour, aggression and causing a nuisance in the cabin could be directly attributed to the consumption of liquor.

Times have changed, of course. With the advent of the so-called "No Frills" aviation sector, thankfully the airline industry seems to have realised its main reason for existence : to provide a safe, comfortable and efficient means of getting from point A to point B. For those who expect a wide selection and endless supply of booze, the local pub should be the natural choice.

The intake of liquor at 30,000 feet in a pressurised metal tube has always been a cause for concern. Can you imagine the scene during an emergency evacuation when a hundred inebriated souls are trying to jump out of the emergency exits in the precious seconds before the aircraft is engulfed in flames or explodes? If drinking and driving is regulated throughout the world, how come there seem to be no laws governing the serving of liquor on flights? Is alcohol an appropriate nourishment for a bus load of passengers? Would you drive a minivan full of your friends with a case of beer being passed around? P(o)ints to ponder over!

Decades ago, smoking on board a flight was permitted and fairly common. For health and safety reasons we learnt to live and fly in a smoke free zone. I am waiting for the smoke to clear on the contentious issue of airline alcohol! Cheers!


Here are some links to other airline stories on this topic :

The remedial measures taken that I have described pales before the first incident below!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/drunk-passenger-duct-taped-gagged-aboard-flight-article-1.1233554

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9675659/Russia-cracks-down-on-drunk-air-passengers.html

Paris - City of Light, Love and Lust

The invigorating spring air caressed my sweating face and hands and expedited the cooling off process as I slowed down to a trot, then to a brisk walk. The morning jog  in the Bois de Boulogne had helped to clear the fuzziness in my head, always the result of long distance flights operating out of India at some ungodly hour when sanity screamed, "You should be sleeping!"

Family boating in the Bois de Boulogne

The morning light filtered through the oak, cedar and plane trees, casting nebulous shadows on the leaf litter carpeting the track I was walking on. A couple of pigeons and a finch caused a slight flutter in the otherwise quiet stillness. On an earlier occasion I had glimpsed a pheasant scurrying away at my approach as dusk was falling in the park.

Suddenly, I became aware of another human approaching from the two o'clock direction. He was male, obviously French, and looked to be in his mid fifties. I paused and said hello and we exchanged a few pleasantries, he in halting English. I would have loved to converse in French but my vocabulary was limited to Bonjour Monsieur and Merci. He began to walk with me, changing his original trajectory, and I sensed that he obviously loved to talk. My hopes of discussing art and literature and the works of Rousseau and Jean Paul Sartre were quickly dashed when he asked me what I did for  living. When I told him that I was a flight attendant with Air India, he nodded and wanted to know more about our lifestyle.

"So you have to be away from your wife or your girlfriend for extended periods of time?" he said after some time. I nodded.

He looked at me and then threw me this - "What do you do for sex?"

I had not expected this, so I was taken aback and paused to think of an appropriate response. His gaze was now rather more intense and a shiver ran down my spine which had nothing to do with the morning chill. I had to think quickly on my feet. "Excusez-moi," I said, "even as we speak, I have a nymphomaniac waiting impatiently for me! I gotta go dude, adieu!!" As I jogged away, I could see that he was a little nonplussed. I ran towards the light where the sun was just turning the blossoms on the bushes into a gorgeous turmeric yellow.

Spring blossoms in the Bois de Boulogne

The only other time I had an experience of a similar nature happened in Chicago. At the crack of dawn I went out of the hotel and was heading towards Michigan Avenue when two women, one black and one white, dressed in the skimpy garb of sex trade workers, yelled out to me from across the street : "Hey mister! Stop, we wanna talk to you!" I gave them a friendly wave as I began jogging. "Good morning ladies, have a nice day!" I said.

They giggled. "You've got a nice ass!" one of them shouted, "let's have coffee!" I thanked them for the compliment but politely declined their generous offer; I have never considered myself an Adonis, so I treated it as the good humoured banter that it was....perhaps business had been slack for the girls over the night and they needed comic relief to face the day.....Jogging has its perils!

When Paris became a layover station for the crew, everyone was very excited. It is always with keen anticipation that the crew welcomed new cities on their routes : Amsterdam, Cairo, Tehran, Mauritius, Harare, Montreal - these were names to conjure with, full of possibilities, art, history, adventure.

To be accommodated in a hotel within walking distance of the Eiffel Tower was a bonus; tourists paid huge amounts of money for the same privilege. One evening, while walking towards the tower, I stopped to chat with a man selling tourist souvenirs and Parisian bric a brac on the pavement. He looked of South Asian origin. On probing further, he turned out to be from the Punjab and he was in France without legal papers. He had made his way to Europe through illegal channels, landed in Italy, worked as a farmhand there for some time, before drifting north. I asked him if he ever had any problems with the authorities. "Yes, the police do come around sometimes and harass people like me," he said cheerfully, "but they are always willing to come to an understanding!" and he winked. I got the picture. I could see that he was an optimist and would go far in life. I thanked him for his time and bought a little plastic model of the Eiffel Tower made in China.

The Arc de Triomphe

View from the top of the Arc towards Montmarte and the Sacre Coeur Basilica

Sacre Coeur Basilica on Montmarte hill

Impromptu band plays on the steps of the Sacre Coeur....

.....while a mime artist stands up for Liberty!

The passengers who made up the bulk of the traffic on the Mumbai - Paris - New Jersey sector were an interesting mix of mostly Gujaratis heading out to the USA to manage and grow their businesses there and Tamils from Pondicherry ( an erstwhile French colony ). These fluent French speaking South Indians reminded me of a woman in a sari selling delicious pineapples on the flour - white sands of the beach at Trou-aux-Biches in Mauritius who spoke only French and Bhojpuri. I wondered how the French would go down in the states of Uttar Pradesh or Bihar where her ancestors obviously came from!

A working knowledge of French is decidedly an advantage when going around the City of Light. My friend Jayanti spoke the lingo fluently and this added a whole new level to the Parisian experience. The waiters in the cafes would have willingly jumped into a pit of vipers as she smiled at them with her big bright eyes and flashed her dark eyelashes at them while flattering them in French! Needless to say, we got away with tipping a tad less than the norm!

...and serene flows the Seine....

Wedding photos in a park in the City of Romance

Inside the Palace of Versailles

The splendour of the Palace of Versailles, the gems of art and the much touted Mona Lisa in the Louvre, the animated conversations in the cafes, the history and architecture so blatantly visible on the streets: yes, all this I can instantly recall in my mind's eye after all these years; but what I can never forget is a short layover in the summer of 2003 when France, indeed all of Europe, was engulfed in a heat wave. Walking the short distance from the hotel to a small eatery to buy my lunch, I was struck by how hot it was, the heat reflecting off the cobbled streets: I could have been in Delhi for all the difference the northern latitude made! I saw ambulances evacuating elderly people out of their Not Made for the Tropics apartments. An estimated 15,000 people succumbed to the heat - http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/majorhazards/activites/murcia_26-27oct2009/HeatWave2003_Lagadec2004.pdf

Sculpture on the Pantheon - like facade of the Church of Mary Magdalene

As I walked below the steel lattices of the Eiffel Tower I remembered a story I had read in the Reader's Digest about the con man Victor Lustig who succeeded in selling the structure for scrap twice! (For more info on this audacious hoax, read http://www.uselessinformation.org/lustig/index.html ).

Egyptian obelisk in the Place de la Concorde

Divine Transport or mobile art?

Cathedral of Notre Dame

Notwithstanding such bizarre incidents, for me France remains the cradle of democracy, where the fall of the Bastille heralded the French Revolution, ended hundreds of years of rule by monarchs and despots and gave us ordinary mortals a chance for liberty, equality and fraternity! C'est la vie!

Cheers!

....and you say Paris never sleeps?!

From Russia with Love

He was vertically and horizontally challenged and his pigmentation favoured the first few letters of the rainbow as I was taught to memorise them in school - VIBGYOR (Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red). He was also obnoxious. As he swept into the doorway of the Ilyushin 62 he pointedly ignored the warm and friendly greeting that Natasha (not her real name) extended to him. She looked at me, made a face and shook her blond head. I nodded in commiseration. Suddenly, the cold October air on the Sheremetyevo airport tarmac dropped a few degrees lower. I braced myself for battle.

The Ilyushin 62 aircraft leased from Aeroflot and deployed on the Delhi - Moscow sector

He called himself Mr.Chaddha (again, for liability issues, I am compelled to conceal his real name) and he was flying First Class on the Moscow-Delhi sector on board the Aeroflot Ilyushin 62 leased by Air India to operate on this sector. The cockpit crew consisted of Aeroflot employees as did the Cabin Crew, of whom Natasha was one. To reassure the mostly Indian passengers who flew the Delhi - Moscow - Delhi route, Air India injected one male Flight Purser and two Air Hostesses into the crew complement. I happened to be the hapless male on that particular flight.

"Get me a glass of Blue Label whisky on the rocks," barked Mr.Chaddha even before his ample bottom had touched down on his seat.

"I am sorry, sir, you will have to wait till after take off for your drink," I told him politely.

He scowled. Then he fumbled around in his baggage and came up with two small packets wrapped in aluminium foil.He thrust them at me.

"These are parathas and bhindi subji," he explained peremptorily. "Make sure they are heated to the correct temperature and served to me for my dinner. I don't like the f*****g c**p you serve from the galley." He had already switched to Hindi. I held my tongue, it was too early in the skirmishes to nail him with an appropriate one liner. I took his precious cargo and handed it over to the pleasant young Soviet man slaving away in the galley. This gentleman would spend at least half of the next six hours plying the cockpit crew with an endless supply of food and drink. It had come as a shock initially that the pilots and the navigator and the engineer in the cockpit needed such vast amounts of nutrition to keep the IL 62 aloft!

Perhaps it was the nature of the land itself : the Soviet Union was the largest country on the planet, I recalled from my long ago geography lessons. It was only after recovering from the shock of seeing the sheer size of the wide wide roads and the huge sculptures of Lenin and Stalin and various war memorials around the city that I had been able to focus on the finer points of Soviet life. And even though the ballerinas of the Bolshoi ballet could be petite, overall the Russian physique struck me as leaning towards the XXL sizes.

Lenin frowns at kids playing hide and seek around his greatcoat!

Mr. Chaddha, though physically cast in a more modest mould, could match the cockpit crew when it came to feeding his appetite. Worse still, when Natasha trundled the trolley laden with hot appetisers into the cabin, he ambushed her before she could proceed to the next row of passengers and greedily helped himself to the entire contents of a casserole containing spicy chicken kebabs. Natasha had to dash back into the galley and grab the only remaining one, camouflaging it under a spare table cloth and moving swiftly to the other rows before Mr.Chaddha had finished gorging himself on the first round. He had already downed a few pegs of Johnny Walker Blue Label whisky and the effects were beginning to show: bits and pieces of the cashew nuts that accompanied the liquor service were sprouting around his thick lips, adhering to the skin with the saliva that was leaching from the sides of his mouth. He was certainly not a pretty sight.

The call bell rang and the little button light lit up above Mr.Chaddha's seat - for the umpteenth time. He had been punching the attendant call button with his swollen digits ever since the aircraft had been airborne and now Natasha was weary of him and his constant demands. I decided to relieve her and stepped into the cabin to accost him.

He embarked on a litany of complaints:
1. His seat was not comfortable
2. The air vent above his seat did not work. (He had not turned it on)
3. The heating in the cabin was not adequate
4.The dinner had not been hot enough
5.The tea served to him was lukewarm and tasted awful
6.Why was he being attended to by the "badsoorat" (ugly) - his exact words - blond Russian girl? "I do not wish to see her face!" he exploded. The first thing that came to my mind was, Have You Seen Yourself in the Mirror Lately, Mr. Chaddha? Natasha may not have been the epitome of Russian beauty but she was far from being a plain Jane.Then it occurred to me that perhaps he had made an obnoxious pass at her and she had spurned him, so now he was out for revenge.
7. Where were all the gorgeous sari-clad Air India air hostesses?
8. Why did Air India not operate its own aircraft on this sector?
9. How come there wasn't any more Blue Label whisky to be served? (He had consumed the entire stock)
10.Why didn't Air India change the caterers out of Moscow.
11.Why didn't the pilot fly the aircraft faster?

Reasoning did not help with Mr.Chaddha. I was tempted to draw him into a metaphysical debate: "Which Came First, the Egg or the Chicken?" would be a good start! He became more agitated and vociferous by the air mile and nothing that we did was good enough for him.

"I want to see the Captain!", he exploded. The desire may not be mutual, I suggested to him. More importantly, I reminded him, the pilot had more pressing tasks at hand - like getting us safely over the Hindu Kush to Delhi. Did Dilliwala Chaddha speak Russian, I wanted to know.

"Do you know who I am?", he shouted. I have noticed that this identity crisis generally afflicts persons with super sized egos. If he didn't know who he was, how the hell was I supposed to know?

"Perhaps you should look at your passport, sir. Such documents generally include the name of the person it belongs to." He glared at me, unable to recognise the barb.

"I fly this sector every week," he ranted, "and I have never had such a horrible experience ever. I will have you fired! I want your name, employee number, department. I know the Commercial Director personally and I will tell him how terrible the Air India service is!"

I unclipped my ID card from my shirt and showed it to him.

"You will find all the information you need on this, " I said. Who is he kidding, I said to myself. If he knows the Commercial Director, then I am dating Marilyn Monroe! I knew full well that he had absolutely no idea who the Commercial Director of the airline was and once his alcohol induced frothing insanity subsided, he would have absolutely no recollection of the flight.

Looking back on things now, Mr.Chaddha stands out as the only fly in the ointment as far as flying to Moscow was concerned.

Back in the late 1970s,  the mere thought of going to Moscow sent a chill down my Kolkata bred spine. Visions of the frozen tundra and the vast and super cold Siberian landscapes filled my mind. Even Hitler's army had been mauled by the Russian winter.What would it do to a frail body nurtured in the warm and humid Ganges delta? In Oct 1978 I found out and discovered to my relief that it wasn't so bad after all, I could cope; but then, it was not yet winter!

Air India had equipped me with woollen long johns and underwear and a warm fur lined jacket and boots: they all came in useful. When I went in to take a shower in my room in the cavernous Hotel Ukrainia, somehow the hot water outlet did not work and my skull nearly froze to museum specifications as the brutally cold water impacted my head. However, as I staggered out of the bathroom, a delicious tingling set in all over my body and I realised why the Polar Bear swim is so popular throughout the northern latitudes!

Discovering the delights of Moscow was a great adventure. This was the land of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky, of Chekhov and Pushkin and Dostoevsky, of the Gulag Archipelago, the Kremlin, and the mausoleum of Lenin, home of the Russian ballet and circus,both of which were a treat to attend. The supermarket of Gum was a curious place: there was more jostling around than really buying; there wasn't much to buy, anyway, other than crystal glass. What sticks in my memory is the way a mysterious queue would form suddenly and if one followed the line it would terminate in a jolly middle aged lady who would be selling ice cream! When she finished selling her stock from a portable dispenser she carried, the queue would disappear as mysteriously as it had formed. Needless to say, the ice cream was both cheap and delicious!

The GUM supermarket in the post perestroika era, a far cry from what I saw in the late 1970s

Ogling the treasures of the Czars and the sumptuous wealth of Catherine the Great inside the Kremlin museum, it was easy to understand why the Russian revolution had swept the country. I suppose like most royalty, the Russian ones lived in a world far far removed from the harsh realities of their peasant subjects. So communism found fertile ground and after an immense upheaval the people overthrew their oppressors. In time, the Союз Советских Социалистических Республик (Sojúz Sovétskix Socialistíčeskix Respúblik, "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics") was born and in the course of the Cold War it became a dominant world power. The Cyrillic acronym CCCP had stuck in my memory since the days when I used to collect stamps as a hobby and saw these four letters on Soviet philately.

But had things for the common man really changed? The Soviet Union could deliver  a megaton of nuclear warheads to targets in the USA thousands of miles away, but its citizens still lined up for bread! Perhaps the politburo had paraphrased the famous phrase attributed to Marie Antoinette of France who, when learning that the peasantry lacked bread to eat, said, "Let them eat cake"! to "Let them eat enriched uranium!"


For my part, I learned to eat six-egg omelets, accompanied by fat sausages dripping with lard for breakfast at the cafeterias on certain designated floors of the Ukrainia hotel, washed down by a massive glass of liquid yogurt - a far cry from the frugal vegetarian breakfasts of my native land! I guess the Russian climate demanded a more robust intake of calories than the humble Upma was capable of generating.

Bread or no bread, you could still travel the entire Moscow underground train network for the mere payment of a measly 5 kopeck! And if you took the time to admire the artwork on the walls of the metro stations you could say that you had been inside an art museum for a pittance. A rumour circulated amongst the crew that a Moscow cab driver would willingly take you sightseeing all day in his Lada to all parts of the city if you paid him with a carton of Marlboro cigarettes instead of roubles. I cannot vouch for this: I was deterred by the many Lada jokes I had heard.

Lada Joke # 1

Q. What do you call a Lada at the top of a hill?
A. A Miracle!

Lada Joke # 2

Q. Why is a Lada like a woman?
A. Because when you put your foot down there is no response!

The Lada Limousine!

An hour before touchdown in Delhi, Mr.Chaddha passed out. He slumped into an untidy heap on his seat and soon gravity relocated him to the floor. Loud belching noises mixed with resounding snores filled the cabin as his lungs struggled to keep him alive.

When the Fasten Seat Belt signs came on, Natasha and I hauled him up into a semblance of a sitting posture, used the seat belt extenders to truss him up like a turkey ( I must confess that the thought of shoving some stuffing did momentarily occur to me). He remained inert all this time, only the thud of the landing gears making contact with the runway and the roar of the reverse thrust on the rear mounted engines finally nudged him awake. Mr. Chaddha had come home!

As for me, I was ready again to play the crew version of Russian Roulette : I wonder where my next flight will take me to and I wonder if there are any more Chaddhas plaguing the earth?

****DISCLAIMER : THE USE OF THE NAME CHADDHA IN NO WAY REFLECTS ON THE INTEGRITY AND PERSONALITY OF PERSONS BEARING A SIMILAR TITLE. THE NAME HAS BEEN USED MERELY AS A LITERARY DEVICE AND HAS NO BEARING ON REALITY.

First Flight and Spreading My Wings

Even at two o'clock on an August morning, the air was warm and humid. I loosened the knot on my tie and placed a carefully folded handkerchief between the back of my neck and the collar of the white polyester uniform shirt to prevent the perspiration from prematurely inducing a wet limpness to the fabric. The dark synthetic cloth of my trousers stuck uncomfortably to my legs. I paced the little garden of Rosy Apartments in slow measured steps, careful not to work up more sweat which might be misconstrued for nervousness as I waited for the crew transport vehicle to pick me up: I was about to undertake my very first flight as a trainee flight attendant, and I resolved to appear cool!

A dog barked desultorily a hundred yards away near Linking Road. North Avenue, where Rosy Apartments stood, was quiet except for the soft swishing of the fronds on the coconut trees. Suddenly, the silence was shattered by the sound of a rude diesel engine mounted on a van which rattled and shook as it bore down the street. I had been warned to watch out for what the Air India crew affectionately referred to as the "Dog Van"; in reality it was the crew pick up transport. It came to a screeching halt outside the gate, the engine shuddering in its idling state.

I grabbed the little briefcase issued to me by the company and stepped inside the dark interior. There were indistinct shapes inside. I mumbled a polite, generic Good Morning in the general direction of the shapes and sat down on the one spot that was vacant on the front bench seat. One of the shapes responded, while the others seemed to be fast asleep. I caught a whiff of "imported" after shave lotion in the air which confirmed my suspicions that the dudes in the indistinct shapes were really Flight Pursers in Air India! In 1977, the luxury of access to brand names like Armani or Chanel belonged only to the well heeled, those with the right connections, sailors frequenting far away ports like Singapore and crew flying with international airlines. Ah well, I comforted myself, I was taking my first step in that direction, even though my first flight was going to be just a turnaround to Doha.

At the Cabin Crew Movement Control Office at Santa Cruz airport, I introduced myself to the rest of the crew of the Boeing 707 flight that we were going to operate. My anxious nerves benefited greatly by the friendly welcome extended by my two trainers, George Taylor and Gieve Palkhivala. I shall always remember these two kind gentlemen for introducing me to the secret workings of the galley equipment and the challenge of getting along with the other crew members. After completing some paperwork, the crew passed through the Customs counters and walked nonchalantly to the aircraft parked some distance away on the tarmac. The ugly head of terrorism had not yet surfaced in air travel, apart from the occasional hijacking for various political reasons, and the manufacturers of X-Ray machines and metal detectors had yet to see a boom in sales. We ascended the shaky step ladder and entered the aircraft.

The steady whine of the aircraft engines as it taxied slowly to the east end of runway 27 reached a higher pitch as the pilot lined up the nose for take off. The whine changed to a fulsome roar, the fuselage trembled and shook, and suddenly the metal tube was hurtling down the runway, the thuds from the tyres coming rapidly as it accelerated and in a couple of seconds we were airborne, the runway lights receding rapidly under the wings. The aircraft climbed to cruise level and the noise abated to a steady purr. I was amazed at how stable and relatively quiet it had become in the cabin. The big oval dome light in the centre of the ceiling in the cabin glowed a soothing blue, the stars painted on it looked almost real as they became back lit. I had no time for stargazing, though. The No Smoking and Seat Belt signs went off and it was time for me to creep into the confines of the galley and begin my career!

First, I had to learn some sign language: as I passed by the partly curtained section of the Crew Rest area opposite the First Class galley, I heard a soft whisper. The Check Flight Purser whose face I could only partially see in the dim light had positioned one of the fingers of his right hand horizontally. This finger was supported vertically by another finger from his left hand. I was nonplussed. I ducked into the safe haven of the galley where a seasoned colleague was watching the dials on the oven. I told him what I had seen. He laughed. "He means he wants you to make him a cup of tea!", he explained; ah, the penny dropped: his two fingers had formed the letter T and I should have been savvy enough to interpret that. Charity begins at home, therefore service to your fellow crew always took priority!

And thus I embarked on the long and steep learning curve that is required in this profession. I learned the little time saving shortcuts in preparing the food trolleys before they were rolled out into the First Class cabin by the Air Hostess and the Flight Purser. I learned how to anticipate their requirements. I learned to ensure that the recalcitrant ovens performed to heat the food casseroles to the right temperature and the Veuve Clicquot champagne was appropriately chilled in the drawer of ice. I learned that the tiny paper cups used to dispense water and juice to the passengers were called "lily cups" and I never found out why. I learned how to keep my ears tuned to catch the chime of  the attendant call from the cockpit. I learned not to panic when I saw the navigator stand up on his seat and poke the sextant through the roof! I also experienced the pain and discomfort of going to work at ungodly hours, the strain of jet lag and keeping irregular hours and the gnawing uncertainty while on standby duties. My new colleagues were a wonderful assortment of personalities who came from disparate backgrounds and each one of them taught me something new about human nature. Like any other workplace, they could be classified into The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (as in Temperament!).

Manhattan from the top of the Empire State Building. Nov 1979.

Slaving away in the cramped galleys of the Boeing 707s, I had little to do in dealing with passengers. That dubious privilege was the domain of the Air Hostess and the Flight Purser! There was a clear demarcation of functions of the Assistant Flight Purser (hapless me), the Flight Purser, and the Air Hostess. Air India even had manuals printed defining the exact duties of each category of flight attendant. Thus, for 10 years I was spared the anguish of dealing first hand with troublesome passengers (believe me, there was no shortage of them!). It took me ten years to be promoted to Flight Purser. The Flight Purser and the Air Hostess comprised the infantry : they were the first to take on the flak - the real, faked or imagined problems that passengers in the cabin faced; but more of that in a separate episode. Fortunately, that was in the future.....meanwhile, time flew past, and each flight was an exciting adventure to a new city, to new discoveries, to new experiences....

Times Square, New York. The  Evita and Aiwa ads are clues as to how dated this picture is!

Geography had always been a favourite subject of mine and I had dreamt of some day seeing as much of India as possible; but it had never occurred to me  that I would be able to travel beyond its borders, and that too for free! Air India changed all that. Some of my Mumbai friends began to joke that I was now commuting as much to London as they were to Ghatkopar! Within the first five years I had covered some exciting ground : Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Perth, Sydney, Nairobi, Accra, Lagos, Harare, Moscow, Teheran, Cairo, Rome, Frankfurt, London, New York, Montreal, Amsterdam....and even more exciting destinations were in the offing.

Spontaneous dancing breaks out in a Tokyo park during the Cherry Blossom Festival

Downtown Tokyo

St.Peter's Square, The Vatican, Rome. The blue spots are not divine luminiscence...merely blemishes on an old photo!

The saints go marching on the roof of St.Peter's, Rome.

Geography, though, proved to be a relatively simple matter when you are hurtling through the air at 500 miles an hour. The more serious challenge was to navigate through a series of Trainee flights, then fly "solo" for three months and be subjected to a Pre-Confirmation Check (PCC). Three months later, one had to clear the Confirmation Check (CC) hurdle.

Understandably, I was not amused when the Senior Check Flight Purser, in his infinite wisdom, put down this comment on my PCC report : "He tends to sweat a lot"!! I could have argued that it was natural for the pores of your skin to excrete cooling fluids when you are cossetted in wholly inappropriate synthetic fabrics and executing Houdini-like gyrations in the limited space of the 707 galley and being periodically buffeted by the hot air emissions escaping from the ovens. I could not really see the relationship to the quality of my work....

Notwithstanding my propensity to perspire, I did eventually pass my Confirmation Check! I hoped that the rest of my career would be as effortless as cruising down the Rhine on a boat....

The Rhine, Germany

A crooner on a Rhine cruise...

Say Cheese!

Bombay was like a breath of fresh air, though admittedly tainted with the odour of rotting fish and a noxious cocktail of chemicals being spewed into the air. It was fresh for my young heart as the train breached the Western Ghats below Igatpuri station. I am a great fan of railway chai and in all my travels there are few places that can rival the vendors on the platforms of Igatpuri station for the invigorating brew! In 1977, the precious liquid was still sold in eco-friendly cups made of baked mud and flavoured with cardamom. Little did I foresee that for the next 28 years I would be brewing endless cups of tea and coffee in the confined spaces of aircraft galleys. But it would never come up to the high standards set by the Igatpuri chaiwallas..

I stood on the platform sipping my chai and glanced to my left, to the south. Rising in the distance through the morning haze I could make out the faint outline of Kalsubai - at 5400 feet this is the highest peak in Maharashtra. Jutting out like the prow of a great battleship into the plains of Kasara was the fort of Kulang, with its companion hill, Madangadh which looked like an elephant's head because of the massive gap in the rock below the summit which morphed into the eye of the beast as you looked. Of course, at that time I was clueless about the geography of the Sahyadri; but thanks to a wonderful invention by the Air India Cabin Crew Association called "Time Off Plus Twenty Four" I would have loads of free time to explore these hills over the next few decades! (For the uninitiated, the formula of Time Off Plus Twenty Four worked thus: if your flight pattern took you away from base for, say, ten days, you were entitled to a Time Off of five days plus 24 hours! Of course I am biased, but I think if all corporations followed this golden rule, their workers would achieve the perfect Work / Life balance that Human Resource Pundits pontificate about in their fancy seminars!)

The guard's whistle followed by the plaintive horn of the engine brought me back to earth. The train coasted down the grades to Kasara and picked up speed. The platforms of Khardi and Atgaon flashed past the windows in a blur. The train twisted like a serpent through the hillocks before Asangaon, the needle like pinnacles of the Mahuli range appeared like a phantasmagorical illustration from some novel by J.R.R.Tolkien and then a new smell wafted into the carriages as we slowed down past Shahad and trundled into Kalyan Junction. This was the quintessential smell of Bombay that would stay with me for the rest of my life : slightly fetid, laced with the odours of boiled eggs and drying fish stirred with a little sea salt. Every city in the world has a characteristic smell and this is the Scent of Bombay, if you discount the Scent of Money! This smell would later assail my senses as I rode the local trains between Bandra and Mahim Junction. For me, this smell spelt Bombay. Coming from Calcutta, a fresh water port where the Hooghly flowed for at least 40 km more before meeting the ocean at Diamond Harbour, the heavy sensation of the coastal air was new.

Clutching my precious appointment letter from Air India a few days later, I boarded the slow train at Churchgate station. My aunt at Navy Nagar had briefed me on how to negotiate the perils of Bombay local trains : "Make sure you are on the appropriate side of the carriage before the train slows down for its brief halt at Santa Cruz station!", she had cautioned. I was lucky: it was the morning commute for the hundreds of thousands of people streaming into south Bombay for their daily bread. Fortunately, I was headed in the opposite direction. Compared to fighting my way into the green and cream coloured Bandel - Howrah local at its penultimate stop at Liluah on the other side of the subcontinent, getting into the chocolate and cream coloured carriage of the Churchgate - Borivali train of the Western Railway was a breeze.

I made sure I was on the correct side of the platform as the train approached Santa Cruz. As opposed to the auto-eject facility that you can benefit from during the rush hours, I made a pretty soft landing on to the concrete. BEST bus # 311 took me to the gates of the huge Air India facility. There was a security checkpoint where I registered and asked directions to the Cabin Crew Training School. I was directed to what appeared to be an old aircraft hangar from World War II. Once inside this cavernous shed, I could be forgiven for thinking that I had entered the aircraft service bay of the Engineering Division instead of the hallowed portals of the In-flight Service Department : the bulbous nose of a Boeing 747 filled my vision! The only aircraft I had seen up close was an old DC-3 (the good old Dakota!) at Dum Dum airport in Calcutta when as a kid, an indulgent uncle who worked at the airport had sneaked me into the cockpit! It took me a few seconds to realise that the Boeing 747 towering above my head was only a mock-up. Inside this is where I would be trained in the finer points of In-flight Service. Inside this is where the newbies would have an opportunity to savour the Air India Maharaja's fine cuisine during what I learnt later were called "wet drills", which was like a full fledged dress rehearsal for First Class meal services conducted on board those fabled flights, with real food and real caviar and real Burgundy and Chardonnay! And exotic fruits like the Kiwi (remember this was 1977, and not many people in India would have had the luxury of laying their hands on such imports) which up till then I was not aware even existed.

But all this was later, first I had to get past the Keeper of the Castle! Mr.Noronha took one look at the letter I nervously handed over to him. He looked up at me as I happened to be slightly taller, his large eyes opened even wider in disbelief, he fixed me with an incredulous glare and then came the clincher. "Have you finished your medical check up as yet?" he barked, or at least that is how it sounded in the confines of his air conditioned office. "Come back when you are done with that."

I retreated to seek succour in the office of the friendly young lady who was the assistant. She had a great smile on her face and the twinkle in her eyes seemed to say,"He always does this to the new ones!" She directed me to the Medical Clinic where my troubles were just about to begin...

I have mentioned in my previous post that I was certainly young then, but positively not pretty. Well, the medical department was looking for perfection, perhaps an Adonis, so when the doctor discovered I had a couple of small warts on my neck, well concealed under the collar so the casual observer would never notice them, he decreed that I have them removed. "One more thing," he added, "your eosinophilia count is extremely high.....take these tablets three times a day and come back in ten days." He handed me a little prescription. Since technically I was still not an employee, I could not use the facilities at the company clinic nor did I have access to the free drugs...

Up until then, I did not know how to spell eosinophilia. Life is a learning curve and as I was to discover a couple of weeks later, I was still at the bottom, flat section of the graph.

I went looking for an affordable clinic in Santa Cruz west where I now moved to be closer to the centre of the Air India universe. The kind souls at the Ramakrishna Mission Hospital agreed to remove the offending flesh for a nominal fee. There was a hot glow as the doctor brought what looked like a welding iron to my untrained eye close to my neck. There was a sizzle like a hamburger frying, the smell of burning flesh filled that little room, and hey presto, the warts disappeared! I was whole again!

The eosinophilia took a little longer to reign in. The weeks went by, storm clouds gathered over the skies of Bombay, the humidity levels rose to unbearable levels. The bright turmeric-yellow blossoms of the copper pod trees that lined some of the avenues wilted and fell to the pavements and transformed them into carpets of gold. On other streets, the gulmohur trees sprang to life, their bright  flowers painting their canopies in myriad shades of dazzling orange and red. Then, one day, a high wind swung through the teeming city, dark rain bearing clouds scudded low and fast over the tops of the apartment buildings, rolling thunder boomed across the heavens, lightning flashed in the distance, and fat rain drops fell, the earth soaking up the first volley and releasing that heady, heavenly aroma that the first shower of the season invariably brings. The monsoon had arrived.

Wet and soaked to the skin I faced Mr.Noronha again. He looked at me, looked at the sheets of paper from the Medical Clinic and the Human Resources Department, and said, "Great timing, son. You just missed the batch that has started training already. I'm afraid we'll have to slot you in for the next one."

I let this information soak in, pardon the pun. I looked at him disbelievingly and finally manged to stutter,"When will that be, sir?"

"In about a month's time," he said. "I have to wait for the other candidates to show up to make up a decent number for a new batch."

What cannot be cured must be endured, I told myself. I am happy to record that I did not waste my time. I set forth to explore this new city with a vengeance. Bombay was to be my home for the foreseeable future so I might as well know a little more about its character, its little nooks and alleyways, its little enclaves, its suburban railway system, its water supply, its national park at Borivili, its ubiquitous little Udipi restaurants with their "Rice Plate is ready"  and Grade II signs handed out by the Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika, its Irani hotels where I could eat "baida gotala" for a song, the bhel puri and pau bhaji stalls on Juhu beach and outside VT station, the men who sold roasted corn on Marine Drive and which lovers chewed on with their feet dangling from the seawall over the rocky shoreline, watching the pale monsoon sun set over the Arabian Sea.

This was a city of entrepreneurs, from the rag pickers and panwallahs to the diamond merchants in Heera Panna building and the jewellers in Zaveri Bazaar. This was a city of the bold working class woman, the maid who swept and swabbed the floors and washed the dishes in at least ten houses a day; this was the city of the incredible dabbawalla network; this was the cricket crazy capital of the country, of multiple cricket pitches at Shivaji Park, the city that had nurtured the legendary talents of Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar. This was the city of the sophisticated urban woman, riding the local trains fearlessly in the late hours of the night when her sisters in Delhi and Calcutta feared to venture forth. This was the city where the early morning trains disgorged fresh vegetables at Dadar station and the rural folk squatted on Tulsi Pipe Road which ran parallel to the tracks outside the railway fencing and conducted brisk, "cash only" business, stuffing their income into well concealed folds in their saris and dhotis.

This was a happening city, all right. I was glad that I had left Calcutta when I did. At the risk of offending my childhood friends, I will say this : it is a sobering thought to remember that the Calcutta metro railway took almost 25 years to complete, and only a relatively short portion of it actually runs underground! I had grown up negotiating the potholes and craters of what appeared to be the work of enemy bomber fleets; the CMDA (Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority, known to the cognoscenti as the Calcutta Madmen's Digging Authority) had turned the urban landscape into that of an open cast mine.

Suketu Mehta  got it right when he called Bombay "Maximum City" : things happened here at breakneck speed.

There are always exceptions to the rule, of course. I waited patiently for my batch to "form", to coalesce into a bunch of eager flight attendants, garnered from various parts of the country. Alas, it was not to be.

In the end, there were only five of us : Jagdish from Jaipur, Narayanan from Trivandrum, Deepak and Chris from Bombay and I from the east : you could say that the country was well represented! There was one little problem, though. How can you justify training a batch of only five? The solution was delicious in its simplicity : throw these louts in with a batch of lovely ladies who were preparing, in the lexicon of Air India, to be Air Hostesses. Thus killing two birds with one stone; and please, no colloquial pun intended!

The five of us were to be trained as Assistant Flight Pursers. What this meant in lay terms was that we would be the galley slaves toiling away in the background, burning our fingers in the aircraft ovens, kicking and shoving recalcitrant equipment till they worked as designed, and generally maintaining a smooth flow of goods and services to the masses crammed into the hundred seat economy section of the venerable Boeing 707 jets. We would also occasionally work in the First Class section and pander to the needs of the rich and famous, forming the shadowy support team that ensured that the champagne being rolled into the cabin was appropriately chilled and the French labels which said "Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin" was placed at the optimum angle so that the discerning passenger in seat 1A did not damage his or her ocular muscles in an effort to read, in the dimmed cabin lights, the lineage of the contents while he or she lay slumped at an angle of thirty degrees to the horizontal in the luxurious seat.

If the truth be told, I struggled in class. My education had taught me to identify iambic pentameter and analyse the structure of Shakespeare's sonnets, but when it came to telling the difference between a canape fork and a pastry fork, I was at a total loss. I had been brought up to think that cheese consisted of only two types : one was Paneer, and the other one was called Amul, available from the store in little round tins; as far as exotic strains were concerned, I was only familiar with yak cheese which required a residence of about a week in my mouth to be fully assimilated by my body! Out here, in the sophisticated world of Air India First Class Cuisine, I was bombarded with the names of cheeses I could barely pronounce the names of : Rocquefort, Camembert, Gouda, Bel Paese, Beaufort, Gruyere, et al.

The wines were even more confusing. How can plain old grape juice have so many different names? I was convinced that this was a plot to bar peasants like me from the high life! Deepak and Chris, both with a background in catering, fared better than Jagdish, Narayanan and me. They helped us country bumpkins to negotiate the minefield laced with names like capers, caviar, cocktails and mocktails, hors d'oeuvres and champagne collation, appetisers and After Mints. Somehow, I survived.

While the girls were busy honing their skills with eyeliner and lipstick in the Grooming class, the five amigos had all the time in the world to shoot the breeze. We had a choice of locations : if our budgets were tight, we would while away the time in the staff canteen with cheap tea traded over the counter with coupons which were sold to us in handy little booklets. If we were in a more affluent mode, we would walk across to the privately run eatery near the hangars, where the blossoming bougainvillea would shield us from the roar of the reverse thrust of the big jets as they touched down and headed for the taxiway at the far end of the runway.

Three months later, in the middle of the monsoon, it was time to put on our uniforms and pose for the graduation photos with our instructors. For me, it had been a steep learning curve. I would remember these instructors for the rest of my life for the pursuit of perfection they tried to instill in the class. There were times when I questioned their fanatic obsession : will a cataclysmic catastrophe overtake the universe if the Centaur logo on the wine glasses arranged on the dessert trolley were misaligned by a fraction of a degree? But as the old adage admonishes: if something is worth doing, do it well.

One instructor I shall remember above all the rest and he had nothing to do with unravelling gastronomic mysteries. I shall never forget him because he made a subject as dreary as Flight Safety come to life with his humour and unusual perspective. His name? Group Captain Jayasingh, ex Indian Air Force. He had thick bushy eyebrows and eyes that twinkled constantly. His greatest talent, however, was his ability to remember the names of the hundreds of students that passed through his class briefly.

More than twenty years later, my wife and I were wheeling our baggage trolley out through the terminal building at Delhi airport. There was a short, stooped, nattily dressed oldish gentleman in front of me. He was pushing his trolley with a little help from a companion clad in a sari. I recognized Capt Jayasingh instantly. I rapidly overtook the couple, stood in front of him, and smiled at him without saying a word. He stopped, looked up, rubbed his eyes to clear the thin film of glaze that was forming, squinted a little, and then his face splintered into a thousand wrinkles and that lighthouse beam of a smile that I remembered so well erupted from his eyes. "Aloke," he said, "how are you? How have you been?". I laughed, shook his hand, gave him a hug and introduced my wife. Capt Jayasingh's phenomenal memory had not failed him.

I had not failed my courses either. The theory of Inflight Service was over. It was time to put it into practice. My passport was ready, my Crew Member Certificate had arrived from New Delhi, I had been inoculated against cholera and Yellow Fever : it was time to fly!



Photo Credit : Jimmy Wadia

Air Hostess or Air Host?

The postmark was smudged over Mahatma Gandhi's portrait printed on the top right hand corner of the Inland Letter Card. However, I could tell by the handwriting on the address field that this was another epistle from Mari Marcel. The year was 1976 and it cost two rupees and fifty paise to buy and mail one of these ubiquitous self seal blank letters. One had to be extremely careful when opening these: one careless slip while slitting open the gummed sides which held the whole thing together and you might inadvertently delete some key sentence or phrase and the whole meaning and intention of the letter might suddenly appear in a different light, and not always to the sender's advantage!

"Dear Alokianathan," she began. I have never been able to fathom why she ever called me that; my genes are as far removed from South India as that of any Gupta, Singh, or Malhotra. Mari had joined Air India a couple of years earlier and would occasionally write about her exotic travels as an air hostess with the airline. Her college friends in Calcutta, among whom I was counted, would read these letters and imagine a world far removed from the one we lived in. Our world revolved around scanning the newspapers for advertisements which offered job prospects. Yes, I had joined the ranks of what was then called the "educated unemployed", another drop in the vast ocean of graduates with an uncertain future.

After cycling through the "apply, apply, NO REPLY" syndrome, I began to think that I was not really "educated unemployed", but "educated and Unemployable". The frustration had begun to build up. I toyed with the idea of going off to Bhutan to teach, but dear old Professor Kapadia - my favourite teacher in college bar none - dissuaded me over a beer (he paid for it, I was penniless) in a cafe on Park Street. He told me that the salary was a fraction of what he had been offered about ten years earlier by the Bhutanese government when he had graduated; they had thrown in a paid annual overseas vacation as well! So you can see that the global trend by employers to get the same work (preferably more!) done for a lesser price has its origins way back! I had earlier rejected an opportunity to work with the Statesman newspaper as a trainee sub editor for the same economic reason: low salary. Those were the days before the magazine boom which catapulted journalists into the big league, especially if you were in the glamour reporting business. Shobha De and Stardust had not yet hit the big time. Scribes and reporters were typically overworked and underpaid. Instead I went to work briefly for the Voice of America Bengali services as a freelance radio stringer. It was more or less propaganda work for the Americans and it paid comparatively well. The bottom fell out of this short romance when Jimmy Carter became president. The overseas budget for the radio station was slashed and there was no more work.

I had graduated with English Literature as my main subject and perhaps this was the problem. Poetry might fill my soul, but it certainly wasn't going to fill my belly. Mari's letter arrived at the perfect time. "Why don't you join Air India as a Purser and see the world?" she wrote. I decided to investigate.

I was aware that there were young and pretty girls who were called "Air Hostesses". In the emancipated west (or so I thought then!) they were referred to as stewardesses. I knew there were some males in those flying metal tubes: they were called Pilots! But male flight attendants? Did such a beast really exist?My only knowledge of the life of cabin crew had been gleaned from the runaway 1967 bestseller "Coffee, Tea, or Me?" by Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones. As anyone who has ever read this book will agree, it offers a pretty skewed perspective of the life of flight attendants. I had absolutely no idea that males could also work in the cabin: this, sadly, was the level of my ignorance, growing up in the backwaters of Calcutta. Needless to say, I had never set foot inside an aircraft.

I was still young, though certainly not pretty! I decided that I had nothing to lose but my misconceptions. I began to read the classified section of the newspapers more carefully and one fine day the much anticipated ad appeared. I dashed off the application and waited. A couple of months later I wrote the test in a hall at the Great Eastern Hotel near Dalhousie Square. At the interview which followed immediately, Mr.Ramachandra quizzed me about the aircraft that Air India flew and my geographical knowledge was also put to the test. He seemed pleased that I did not confuse Burkina Faso with Burundi! I was happy at the outcome of the interview: at least the questions had been relevant, unlike the one put to the hapless protagonist of one of Mrinal Sen's classic films about unemployment where the hero is asked : "What is the circumference of the moon?". The job the young man had applied for had nothing to do with the Appollo project.

And then apparently Air India forgot about me completely. Months went by with no word from Bombay; yeah, it was still called Bombay then. Now it was my turn to spend two rupees and fifty paise for a Inland Letter Card. No, I did not write to Mari. I composed an anguished enquiry regarding the status of my application and mailed it to Air India. Another couple of weeks went by and I had almost resigned myself to perhaps spending the rest of my life as a bank clerk - provided I got that job - when, lo and behold, out of the blue, courtesy of the Indian Postal Service, I received a letter asking me to report to Air India at their Kalina office in Santa Cruz, Bombay.

There was jubilation amongst my friends. We went to our favourite Chinese eatery near the college and had a celebratory meal, constantly monitoring the budget to ensure that we did not end up embarrassing our slim wallets.

Not everyone was happy, though. One of my aunts shook her head and said, "So, you are going to be a waiter in the sky?" I could see that she was already feeling embarrassed. By this time, almost two years since graduating from university and still with no prospects in sight, I had had enough. I looked her directly in the eye and said, rather curtly,"Do you have a better idea, auntie?" She flinched at the intensity of my reaction and looked away. As I packed the few clothes that I would be travelling with, I thought of the whole lopsided attitude that I had unconsciously become a part of : those were the days when the middle class in that part of the country could somehow not bring itself to see the service industry, apart from Hotel Management, as a legitimate career choice. If you served people, you were a servant, and therefore some kind of a lower being. Was this the "bhadralok" syndrome which would rather have you work as a babu in some dingy government office tying red ribbons around musty old files all day, then discussing the burning political issues of the day over endless cups of tea; rather than putting your hands to work at whatever came your way. This same mindset viewed stewardesses as Glorified Ayahs. Obviously this attitude was nurtured by the class and caste stratification which is still the bane of Indian society, though slowly and thankfully becoming a thing of the past now.

I was itching to get away, away from a world where the only options presented to you was, in the following order of preference :

1. IAS officer
2. Engineer
3. Doctor
4. Management Trainee in a multinational corporation
5. Probationary Officer in a nationalised bank

Some people asked me,"Why don't you pursue Higher Studies?"  In my defence and in order to preempt any further discussion, I told them this true story: when my mark sheet from Calcutta University for the B.A. Part I Exam was not received by my college, Professor Kapadia and I went to investigate. What followed on College Street was straight out of the pages of a Kafka novel.  After negotiating a series of interminable desks with seemingly clueless clerks behind them, we were led into a dimly lit room with cobwebs dangling from the high ceiling, catching the faint light in gossamer threads. There were mark sheets lying scattered on the floor. Kapadia and I went down on our knees and began to carefully sift through pages and pages of paper with strange, unfamiliar names on them. It was nothing short of a miracle when I found my name. We both shouted out in relief and excitement and the cobwebs trembled...

That single incident had shattered any illusions I may have harboured about studying any further.
As if to cement my case the  3 year degree course that I had originally enrolled for had stretched to more than 4 years - not because I was dim witted, but because the administration of the university could not get their act together.

I was tired of discussing metaphysics and the dialogues of Plato with my erudite and intellectual friends. I had heard rumours that things were very different in Bombay. Bombay was the happening place, Bombay was the place where people who wanted more from life gravitated to. This was my opportunity! I must not allow the old ways of thinking to hold me back, to clip my wings even before I had taken flight.

Armed with a free railway pass from my father, the letter from Air India, the contact address of an uncle in Navy Nagar, Colaba, I boarded the Howrah - Bombay Express on a warm April day in 1977. I had  Rs.250/- in my pocket. But as wisdom teaches us, when you touch rock bottom, there is only one way to go : UP. And up above 30,000 feet is where I would be spending a lot of my life from now on. But there was some turbulence to deal with first...!