suited and booted!

put me in a plane with a bunch of indians coming back from any of the asian countries and chances are i can tell you which community each one is from. if not his community, then i can tell you about his profession. and if i laid a wager with the chinese sitting beside me in each of these trips i would be richer by quite a few yuan! (no matter which flight you are on and in which part of the planet you will always find a chinese and an indian on the flight! check it out yourself!)

1. the software sales executive is usually carrying a laptop and wearing worn jeans and a cool shirt.

2. the senior executive is always checking his blackberry and is usually wearing casual formals (or is it formal casuals?).

3. the punju trader from delhi is usually wearing a loud shirt, carrying on a louder conversation with his fellow-traveller and is guzzling whisky and water like its the last bottle on earth.

4. the gujju bhai is usually wearing a safari suit and is calling up his wife before they shut the door asking her to send the driver to pick him up and also asking her to cook some good dal khichdi and roti saag for dinner!

5. and if the flight is from some gulf nation and if there's a mallu lady on board, then she's usually wearing enough gold to cause some serious overloading on the flight. (they get away because the airlines haven't begun weighing the people yet!)

and the usual expats that you will find on the flights to india are :

1. the tourist on a budget trip and who looks and smells like he's just landed up on the flight straight from bed!

2. the ubiquitous old white man with a young oriental girl wearing a skimpy outfit. and no, thats definitely not his daughter! (i guess i'm just jealous.)


but the person who never fails to amuse me is the tam-brahm mama (an elderly tamil brahmin gentleman) who will board the flight wearing a full suit and tie and the works! but he's either going straight from the airport to his hotel or has just checked out of his hotel and is on his way back home! (i think they do this because most of the tam movies in the 60s always showed the hero travelling by air in this fashion! but i might be way off the mark here. maybe one of you could enlighten me.)

and each of the flights, i have taken, always has a professional rip-van-winkle who can sleep off the minute the wheels leave the tarmac and wake up just as the plane is touching down. and that is i :)

just when i thought it couldn't get worse!

just when i was smug with the belief that i have had the worst flight experience in my life, the universe conspires to show me that i still have a long way to go!

i am trying very hard here in this post to see the humor in the entire episode, so help me along by laughing with me :-D

in my attempt to surprise myself, i reach the airport about 4 hours before my scheduled flight (jet lite S2109 from delhi, etd 2020). (my wife will shake her head in exasperation and say something like, 'why does it always have be either extreme'?) the lady at the check-in counter serves me with a smile and refuses to accommodate me in the earlier flight. i smile back at her, but i think the sub-text is lost on her. she instead chooses to smile at the next passenger in the queue.

over the next few hours i have managed to look at all the shops in the concourse, eat and drink as much as i could, finish reading the book i am carrying (the calcutta chromosome by amitav ghosh), read all the possible complimentary newspapers including the delhi times (and if you thought the mumbai times is pathetic, think again!).

and then i notice that all the flights are running about an hour late. only one of the airlines believes it necessary to make regular announcements that the flights are delayed because of congestion at the airport. (no prizes for guessing which airline it is). after some time i think the announcer was too exhausted to make any more announcements. and the person operating the controls for the display board also has lost interest in updating the revised times.

i sat and watched life pass me by. no actually, i watched passengers of all other flights stream by and depart for their respective destinations. and then finally i board my flight about 2.5 hours after the scheduled time.

and if you thought with that my travails ended, keep thinking again. it took another 15 minutes before we got clearance from the atc (air traffic control). that was after the initial 10 minutes lost in trying to trace one passenger who seemed to have disappeared. (my bet was that he was blissfully sleeping in some corner of the airport.)

and then finally we got airborne with the shrill engines reminding us of how well they have served humanity for a very long time! and then well into the flight the captain suddenly remembered that he had to apologise to us for 'all events beyond the airline's control'. and he ended his monologue by saying that he hoped to reach us to mumbai as planned unless 'the atc and events beyond his control' had other plans in mind for us!

after munching through some insipid fare being passed off as veg burgers and a cup-cake which had been pulled out of the oven before it was fully baked, we all decided to lean back and await our collective destiny which awaited us in mumbai.

and wonder of wonders! we landed in mumbai without any 'traffic congestion' or 'atc clearance' holding us up. but before we could start feeling amiable towards the airline, disaster struck. the plane taxied into its holding bay and then we had to wait for almost 15 minutes in the aircraft waiting for the ground staff to find the ladder for the aircraft! one of the passengers could be heard explaining very patiently to his wife that the ground staff seem to have lost their ladder and they are asking the passengers to either jump off the aircraft or sleep in in the aircraft until they found a ladder!

i finally reach home, at 2 am, three hours later than my scheduled time, tired and battle-worn, but glad to be back in one piece!

flight to nowhere!

a mumbai-ahmedabad Go Air flight took off on 13th december without 24 passengers. (read all about it here).

no i am not going to shout myself hoarse that this is grave injustice and that the airline should refund the money. nor would i say that the passengers deserved such treatment for reportedly being abusive and violent with the airlines staff.

i think the truth, like it mostly does, lies uncomfortably somewhere in between.

(i recently had a similar experience on my way back from delhi. waiting for your flight in delhi airport after your security check is a very depressing experience as compared to any other airport in the country.)

- the airline for some inexplicable reason chooses not to keep the passengers updated on the status of the flight. why don't they realise that passengers would be less upset if they were told about the problem upfront?

- i don't like to crib, but the state of the delhi airport brings out the worst in me (maybe bangalore is a close second) - its usually dirty, there are not enough chairs, the air-conditioning is either too hot or too cold, the snack counters sell food at a premium, the indicators are usually not working, ... i could go on and on... but like i said, i don't like cribbing :-)

- and passengers don't help the situation any. they normally tend to do one of the following

• start pouncing on the poor ground staff as if they have purposely delayed the flight and are taking perverse pleasure in agonising the passengers!


• start crowding around the gates demanding to know what is happening, when they will be asked to board, will they get some refreshments, will they get a refund, will they be accommodated on another flight, etc?


• demand that the airline charter another aircraft because the aggrieved person who is making this brilliant suggestion has to reach his destination to meet some other equally important person at any cost (as long as he is not bearing the cost!)


• threaten the afore-mentioned ground staff with dire consequences and demand that the top honcho of the company appear in front of them right now and give them an explanation for this mess.


• or threaten to drag the airline to court for the mental torture and trauma caused and the irreversible damage caused to their delicate psyche! (how about the poor staffer who's wondering what sins he had committed in his past lives to land this job!)


• and the smarter ones are trying to negotiate free life-time flights, upgrades to business class, use of the vip lounge, etc. to compensate for the inconvenience.

sometimes i miss the good old journeys by train!