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…

The Mountain of contentment

“It is not the ascent that separates the men from the boys but the descent… for it takes both courage and grace to stare down at the rocks at the bottom, to stare down death, and say, ‘I’ll take my time… you’ll have to wait.” These words were etched on a board hanging from a cross, next to a forest trail I was following that wound its way through the Alpine pastures and mountains and ended at the mouth of the Schwarzsee, the black lake at the foot of the Matterhorn… As I walked, the wind whistled and I listened…

When I returned to Zermatt, I drifted off towards a group of old timers exchanging stories at the steps of the local church. A short chap was regaling the audience while the others cheered and laughed. They were conversing in German so I couldn’t really figure out what they were saying but they were pointing repeatedly at two different spots on the church steps… I walked up to the short man and asked “Excuse me sir, what are these gentlemen pointing at?” The man whirled around “Hi, I’m Peter… curator of the local museum… these guys… oh… they’re just trying to figure out where Ulrich would sit most often…” and he turned and got back to their pointing game. “Oh..!” I wondered, “… where Ulrich would sit most often…” and I was supposed to know who Ulrich might be…? I let the group haggle for a while but curiosity got the better of me and I interrupted him again “But sir, who exactly is Ulrich… and (with measured trepidation) is he… er… around?” For a moment he looked like he had swallowed a mosquito by mistake. He blinked and after considering the question for a while, asked “Who? You mean Ulrich? Oh ho… ho… ho… you don’t know Ulrich? Ulrich Inderbinen?? He is almost as famous as the Matterhorn… the most famous guy in Zermatt… he is dead now, of course? Yes… yes… been dead for a while now… you have time? We could tell you his story… we’ve all seen him.”

I eased out of the backpack, set it down on the stairs and nodded and smiled. Peter spoke to the others in German and then pointed at me; the others looked at me and nodded, I nodded back, wished the old-timers and said hello. Then they all sat down and Peter asked me to sit on the steps too and he sat down next to me…

“Ulrich Inderbinen was born in the year 1900 (on 3rd December as I later found out) and died five years ago, in the year 2004 (on the 14th of June), nearly 104 years later… in many ways Ulrich Inderbinen represented this century (the others nodded in unison). At the beginning of the century, this wasn’t a very prosperous community, and Ulrich too had to work hard to make ends meet. From dawn to dusk, little Ulrich would help on the family farm, barely making enough to survive. Indeed, he was lucky to have survived his first few winters for Zermatt would get cut off by the snow and there were no doctors in town. Many of his siblings and others of his generation died of hunger and the bitter cold… He must’ve been pretty tough to have lived through all that in the first place… Until the time he was 20, he had never even ventured outside his village, but Ulrich realised that mountain-tourism was becoming popular in Zermatt and so he decided to become a mountain-guide. Now, to be accepted for the mountain-guide’s training programme, Ulrich needed to have climbing experience. So, what do you think young Ulrich happens to do?” I shake my head and stick out my lower lip…

“You’re not going to believe this… he decides to climb the Matterhorn… and not just by himself… he convinces his sister, her friend and her brother to come along for the climb. Astonishingly enough, without any equipment (and girls, reports say, wore long skirts), this group of four clambers to the top, and comes down safely without incident.” Now, those of you who might not have read a previous column and are not familiar with the Matterhorn, and might mistake it for a glorified molehill, here’s some insight on what it takes to climb the Matterhorn in the words of a certain Theodore Roosevelt... “(It is more) difficult than climbing the Jungfrau (amongst the tallest in Europe)… the Matterhorn has acquired a certain sombre interest (because of the deaths on it)… (climbing) it is like (going up the) stairs on one’s hands and knees for nine hours…” He wrote these words to his sister Anna after completing a successful ascent of the Horn. Anyway, back to Peter’s story… “So, young Ulrich acquired a reputation for climbing the mountains, and doing it safely… as though he had a guardian angel protecting him, and by extension, his clients all the time. He became very popular with mountaineers… especially the English ones… He climbed all the peaks around here (Peter pointed at the jagged giants that sprung all around us) but his greatest love was the Matterhorn. He called it the most beautiful mountain in the world and climbed it more than 370 times… in fact he climbed his last mountain at 97, the Breithorn…” Breithorn? I’d heard that name… ah yes… at the graveyard I remembered seeing the gravestone of a climber who died on the mountain with the words… “On the Breithorn I chose to climb…” So mind you, this wasn’t a walk in the park either…

Ulrich Inderbinen, like the town, wasn’t poor anymore. He was a celebrity, just like the mountains, and yet he never bought a phone or a car or a television… not even a cycle. He walked, or if the slopes allowed it, he skied. And in the evenings, he spent his time at the church square, sitting on the very steps where I was sitting. If somebody wanted the best guide in the mountains they couldn’t just dial a number… they had to come here and ask for Ulrich in person.
So how did he look? Peter took me to the museum across the road and pointed at a picture on the wall. Staring back at us, from behind sun shades and thick handle-bar moustaches was a sun-burnt face and an expression that said, “I will stop at nothing”… “Big guy?”, I asked. “Nah! Tiny fellow (takes his hand to his armpit) That short. But (points to his arm) strong, and even stronger here and here (points to his head and his heart).”

I didn’t get it. Every book I’d read about the mountains and mountaineering had said that climbing a mountain is like gambling… do it long enough and you lose… the mountain, like the casino, always wins…

“So, what was his secret? How could he cheat death so long and so well?” Peter looked up at the darkening sky and the church tower. And then he said “Ulrich used to say, ‘I live my life the way I climb a mountain… slow and deliberate, but steady and determined’. He didn’t climb the mountains for records or for fame. He climbed because he loved to climb and he loved the mountains, and the mountains loved him back.

He didn’t want much. He loved his family and his little village and the mountains. He didn’t seek fame or money and was happy with all he got. Everything he needed was here. This was his very own mountain of contentment and he was happy on it… and happy people live long”. I thanked Peter and left.

Next day, I left Zermatt for Geneva and after reaching the hotel, switched on the TV and heard of Michael Jackson’s death. As the young MJ in an Afro from long ago sang, “One day in your life… though you don’t need me now, I’ll stay in your heart…” I was stunned by the contrast between the two lives. Michael Jackson climbed his own great mountain but like on all mountains, maybe here too, it was the descent that was perilous… Perhaps he lost his nerve and his footing. Given a chance again though, maybe they both would’ve still lived their lives the way they did… One, free climbing, and the other, freefalling… guess, to each his own. RIP!