ek dum fresh

ek dum fresh bole to.....ek-dum aaj ka experience hai......

Today I was travelling in the Indian Airlines/Air-India/Indian flights........and I must say.......after the opening up of the Indian skies for the private players, it was my second trip in the Indian Airlines plane(s). Needless to mention that the high point of all my air-journies have been the air-hostess. [Air-Hostess is one topic on which I believe I have gathered a whole lot of information, and if someday I try my hand at business, I would probably open a Air-Hostess training academy. (arre bhai ... already there are thousands of institutes for Engineering, Medical and MBA, so this remains to be the only logical avenue)].

Hitharto unknown, I saw a new face of the Air-Hostess fraternity, courtesy......Air-India/Indian-Airlines........

Eversince I was a kid I had a huge fascination for the air-journies, and I guess it was year 1991 when I boarded my first flight from Ranchi to Delhi (which had nothing less than 3 stops en-route : Patna, Gorkhpur and Lucknow), for the first time I saw the air-hostess aunty, who was not only serving the food, but also cleaing the place, and at the same time was also capable of speaking english which remained undecipherable to me and my entire family on board. If nothing else, I was at least amused to see those english speaking aunties.

And today after 18+ years after that first air-journey I guess there was just one difference in the whole scene - those english speaking aunties have grown up by 18 more years, and nothing else has changed. Looks as if Air-India or Indian-Airlines has decided that they will continue with these aunties until they cry and beg for their release from such a job which is meant to be done by dynamic young girls.

On one side we have Mallaya saab.....who claims to have hand-picked those red coloured butterflies for his guests in his Kingfisher arena, and on one side we have these sari-clad women who are showing no signs life while on board. The public announcement appeared more as a formality rather than informative, and the service was as lifeless as Rahul Dravid in the 45th over. Female crew-members were either over-aged or absolutely useless.

The smile which you get while boarding and the see-off are ofcourse plastic and un-natural in all the flights, but it was slightly ironic to see the complete absence of the same in this case, and it did raise some questions in my mind - Are these ladies/aunties are not paid enough to be smiling on their duty? Or are they facing the same which Jet Airways did to its employees few months back? God knows whats the actual reason.

If I were to draw a parallel between the kind of service I got to the kind of job I am required to do in my day-to-day work, it will be something like this one - While attending the conf-call with the clients I give all the status report, explain them the technical details of the work done, and at the end I say 'Please dont call me again, because I am not enjoying my work'. Ironical and disgusting!

Well, all was not that bad in the flight.....there was definitely a high point during the journey. A co-passanger was quite a known personality and it was pleasing to see that such a towering person maintained such a low-profile during the whole journey. Rajiv Pratap Rudy, the man is a politician of Bihar and can be always seen on TV during this election season. I got a chance to talk to him for quite some time and it was a pleasure to realise that he entertained a common man like me even though he was quite busy with own work.

In past I have seen and met many other towering personalities (and mostly on flights or the air-ports), and have seen the kind of distance they maintain and the air they create around themselves. (By the way, while I was travelling for the first time in air I got a chance to shake hands with Mr Jagannath Mishra, the ex-CM of Bihar, courtesy....Papa, or else how do you expect me to recognize the ex-CM of Bihar at that age?? Later I met many more like Lalu Prasad Yadav, Nitish Kumar, etc etc).

Coming back to the flights and air-hostess, and adding a new angle to the story with the politicians travelling in the Indian Airlines flights, how many of you know that Ram Vilas Paswan (yet another big personality of Bihar Politics) has married a Air-Hostess, the affair started while in the air and it ultimately resulted into the marriage of two domains - Politicians and Air-Hostesses. God knows how many more politicians followed the foot-prints of this politician, but it is certain that Indian Airlines didn't like the attrition which came as a consequence of the 'love, while in the air' and hence it took the most stringent effort by not recruting the new and young staff members and hence save the young politicians like Rahul and Varun Gandhi from falling (in love) while in the air.

Added later : See Mallaya saab is again saying that he has handpicked his crew members.....