PLANE TRUTHS

I was waiting in queue at the Air India counter at Frankfurt airport for the flight to Delhi, when a tall portly matron in a red and black sari sauntered across to the next counter with a wheeled suitcase big enough to truss a corpse into. Something about her reminded me of someone I knew, but I couldn’t remember who… She wanted to check the hearse in but the clerk at the counter had a problem with it. The lady in the sari tried negotiating, then gave up, turned on her heels, and shaking her head and clucking to herself like an angry hen that had lost its eggs, walked towards us. She was lugging the suitcase behind her like a desperate mother dragging home a reluctant child, and as she passed, knocked me on the shin with her wobbly, overstuff ed suitcase. As I winced and hopped in obvious pain, the lady bent over ever so slowly to pick up the bag, just like a great tree that had been sawed off at the bottom, and just before crashing down to earth, somehow mustered enough strength to heave her great bulk into an upright position again. Then she turned and gave me a reproachful look that made me feel like I’d just stepped on her child and without so much as an ‘excuse me’ walked away, still clucking… And in that moment, when she singed me with that look, I remembered who she’d reminded me of … Priscilla!

Priscilla was the school nanny when I was in elementary school. Boy, I was terrified of her. You know how things are when you’ve just gotten out of your diapers and have been packed off to school. Bladders and bowels are used to a different rhythm and haven’t quite been tamed by the school bell, so Priscilla, quite literally, had her hands full. And she wasn’t happy about it. Looking back, I don’t really blame her… it was a definite chart-topper on the ‘Dirty Jobs’ series but back then I hated her. Whenever one of us would ‘go’ on her beat, she’d be called in by the teacher and the rest of us would shudder as if the undertaker had been called in, and like a widening circle of mourners, distance ourselves from the poor chap who had to ‘go’, or heaven forbid, had already ‘gone’ in class. Priscilla would stomp in, wag a thick knobby finger at the off ending individual and say “dirty boy… kitna dirty kiya… dekho… dekho…” and short of rubbing his face in muck, do everything else she could to thoroughly embarrass the ‘goer’. And then she’d walk away with him through the door, shaking her head and clucking like, you guessed it, a hen that seemed to have lost its eggs… and we’d all shake our heads wondering what terrors might await him.

On the flight back home, I dozed off and had a strange vision of sitting in my chair and wanting to ‘go’ but the seat belt just wouldn’t open… and Priscilla, the one from the check-in counter, shaking her finger at me, saying “dirty boy… kitna dirty kiya… dekho..”. I was woken up by a voice “Sir! Sir!!” I woke up to find my neighbour on my left , a sweet young lady, dribbling on my shoulder as she slept. The voice had come from the aisle on my right… I turned, or rather half turned to encounter a rather large sphere draped in red and black staring at my face… “Sir! The tray table please…” Gosh, a talking tummy!! That sure woke me up. I shuffled back in my seat and looked up beyond the ample sphere and spied a meal tray and beyond that, a face – Priscilla’s, the one from the airport counter…! Small world, eh? I smiled a knowing smile, and would you believe it, the face smiled back…

Food was good and I was only half done when they returned to clear the tables. As the plane progressed towards our destination, I finished lunch and as the lights dimmed and passengers slept, I switched on the reading light and fished out a Hemingway and started reading. By the time I reached chapter two, I realised that no one had turned up to clear my table so I pressed the button for the hostess and went back to reading the Green Hills of Africa. Chapter three, four and halfway through five, and still the table remained as it was… still no hostess. At that moment, I had two choices – a) make some noise and berate them for the quality of service or b) carry the meal tray to them and embarrass them without saying a word… It was a no-brainer and so with noble thoughts in my heart and a messy meal tray in my hands I walked to the pantry. The stewards and hostesses were giggling over some stray gossip and it took me a couple of ‘ahems’ to draw their attention. And the attention I got was the kind most families reserve for door-to-door salesmen who come knocking just when Zaheer Khan is about to bowl the final ball of a nail-biter… well almost. The tray was removed without a second glance as the steward in question returned to the discussion. I could’ve stood there forever and not got half as much attention as a half-open toilet door…

I trudged back as a defeated Air India passenger but I still wasn’t complaining. In fact, I was still glad I was flying AI. You see, compared to what Lufthansa had put me through, this was a mere fly in an otherwise soothing ointment…

A fortnight ago, I was flying to Zurich via Frankfurt on Lufthansa, an airline I’d fantasised about since I was a child, especially because of all those lovely print ads in the National Geographic in the 80s. But right from checking in at Delhi, where eleven of us including children weren’t given boarding cards for our connecting flight, to Frankfurt airport where we waited for 90 minutes for our boarding cards thus missing our flight, to Frankfurt airport’s ‘Lufthansa Service Centre’ which was supposed to issue fresh tickets but demanded about a 100 euros or more for the same (almost on a whim) which when we refused because ‘it clearly wasn’t our fault’ (was an argument that was immediately accepted because it was obviously logical and anyways expected), to the seats on the flight from Delhi, which seemed to have been modeled on the chairs from the camps in Auschwitz (compared to them, the ones on Air India were veritable easy-chairs) it was nothing but a row of shattered expectations.

So traumatised were we that on the flight back from Geneva, again via Frankfurt, we reached about four hours ahead of time and this time insisted on boarding passes to the connecting flight. The check-in clerks dithered and insisted on issuing them to us at Frankfurt but this time we refused to fl y without them. Our flight was late by about 75 minutes. When we reached Frankfurt, we had 30 minutes to make it through immigration and reach the boarding gates. Airport authorities having anticipated this, had a bus ready to take us through, and a really helpful Iranian attendant did his best. We were just five minutes away from the boarding gates, running and panting, with bags on our shoulders and some with children in their arms when the Iranian got a message on his walkie-talkie, “it is time. We are closing the gates”. “But we’re just five minutes away”, said the Iranian… “I’m sorry, it is time…” said the voice again. Eleven passengers, half of them children under 10, were stranded at an airport because their connecting flight (Lufthansa again) was late by 75 minutes and therefore they had reached five minutes after gates were supposed to close. In industrialised nations, things become so organised, so process-oriented and the assembly line culture is so deep-rooted, that some individuals, and perhaps some organisations too, become downright metronomic and normal human reactions and emotions seem to elude them, at least at work. There was this really sweet and helpful lady, Fräulein Pilaf, at the Lufthansa Service Centre who arranged for our food and stay and the Air India tickets to Delhi the next day, but unfortunately, she really was the exception.

Contrastingly enough, on the Air India flight the next day, we reached the boarding gates on time, thanks to a bunch of helpful counter managers and airport attendants. Once there, all passengers were asked to wait for 15 minutes because another connecting flight coming in from elsewhere had nine passengers for Delhi and that flight was late. Agreed some passengers grumbled, and the gate was far more chaotic than Lufthansa boarding gates but those passengers did not have to waste a day and go through hell and we all touched down at New Delhi on time (even if some of us carried our own meal trays). There were at least 20 passengers on that flight to Delhi who were saying ‘Thank God we’re flying Air India’ because there’s an innate goodness and an irreplaceable human touch to their service. It’s a pity that the ‘turn off ’ factors dissuade international travellers from flying AI… here’s hoping they clean up their act before it’s too late... the loss would be ours as much…