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.