Letters from India: Air India - Hostesses et. al.

Before leaving for India, some of my good friends tried to do what every good friend should do when he comes to know that I am flying from Air India: make me nervous by recounting their horrendous experiences while flying with the carrier. Their rants usually were thinly veiled in statements like : "the food is great and they give lots of it too, afterall it never reaches on time" or "you will never miss a meal since the air-hostesses will wrench your ear if it comes to that if you do not wake up to eat it" etc. So I said to myself, well, how bad could it be, huh ? I mean, I am not someone who is especially famed for the size of his appetite and the expanse of his tummy. Neither am I a particular stickler for punctuality. And all that drivel about monstrous air-hostesses should really be an over-exaggeration of minor inconsistencies. Needless to say, and contrary to my expectations, my flight with Air India was more than interesting. Let me just mention the good things with Air India and be done with them in the begining:

1. The food is good.
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Now that I have painfully listed all that was commendable with the service, lets get on with the more interesting part:

For beginners, there is not such thing as a young, beautiful Air India hostess. You might as well find unicorns roaming around in your backyards before you get to see one of those female mythical creatures who are supposed to serve you murg mussalam, look below 45 and occupy an Air India flight all at the same time. Thats the stuff legends are made of. I might as well, someday, tell fabled stories about young stewardesses serving in Air India to my grandchildren. Anyways, they were over the hill, hopelessly face-painted, frustrated aunties who do not find it inappropriate to snub passengers at the slightest possible pretext. There was this one guy who was sitting beside me and the lady came over to ask him if he wanted some water. He said no so she moved on. I do not know what happened then but the guy stopped her when she had moved ahead and asked her for water again. She turned back, took a glass, gave it to him alright but not without an expression which said "Don't you dare do this again and if you do, might as well provide your eye balls in a platter since I will anyways gouge them out of your freaking sockets". I am not exaggerating when I say that I almost choked out of fear. He would have done all this one more time had I not caught his arm and force his head down to damp the last syllables of his fateful sentence "Can I have the Orange juice". I swear, she turned, and her eyes were blood shot and I almost caught the glimpse of the hidden hatchet. I would have given him up. Seriously, I want to live. I would have given him up but maybe she did not hear the full sentence. She just saw my fear stricken eyes and the dude beside me struggling in the grasp of my arms, gave me a menacing look, and silently creeped ahead. If ever there was a guy who had a near death experience, it was me. And I am not exaggerating.

Then there were all these ill made informational videos coming on the 'SHARED' television sets in the plane. The most notable among those videos was the one where they tell you how to wear the life jacket and inflate it. My bullshit detector went berserk when it showed a young air-hostess. And she was smiling too. I instantly realized that this particular video was not meant for this particular flight and began to watch them with a more objective eye. They were all smiling and laughing while strapping on the jacket. Now I am not an expert on human emotions and expressions when subjected to conditions of extreme stress and tension but I find it hard to believe that someone would be rollicking merrily when told to strap on a life jacket because the plane will have to make an emergency landing on the Atlantic Ocean. I never get it. How come all these emergency informational videos and posters show self-assured, happy people? By definition, an in-flight emergency instructional item refers to a time when you would do well to rein in that useless smile of yours and try to do something more important like, um... I don't know, maybe SAVE YOUR LIFE. But no, even the kid is laughing in the video. Which brings me to the kid who was behind me all the time blasting my ears off. How much do they weigh ? Maybe 40 pounds ? I don't know, shouldn't they be counted as extra baggage ? How come I dragged my 50 pounds baggage from the domestic terminal to the international in LA (atleast 15 miles) just to find that I had to check it in and the people behind me got to bring this 40 pound shrieking machine right into the plane ? Please for god's sake, atleast put them in the compartment above... Hee Hee Hee... Just kidding...

Seriously speaking, it wasn't all that bad really and I do have this obsessive compulsive disorder of adding a bit of spice to everything. Life would be too darn drab, if it were to be coloured just with the monotonicity of reality.