Friday, January 18, 2008

Air travel

remember? long time back when air travel was a luxury and air hostesses were all supposed to be former some kind of beauty queens. he he. I travel Indigo all the time and now I am at a stage where whenever i fly, i know some one on the plane. Someone from the crew. They have the best planes and the sweetest air hostesses i tell you. really nice. i remember so many of them. but as a personal policy i dont take names.

the first time i boarded a plane , i was in 9th std i guess and it was an indian airlines flight and i remember i was sitting in the tarmac bus waiting to be taken to the plane. Mind you, that was the first time ok. I thought we were getting late as per the ticket timings and i went to the bus driver and said "uncle hamara plane miss ho jayega. jaldi chalao". uncle just smiled. when i went again and said the same thing, uncle said "beta sabhi log usi plane mein jayenge". but the air hostess was nice.
after capt gopinath crashed the travel fares for airlines, it was easy to fly. from 12000 bucks for a delhi bangalore ticket they came down to 2500. in real terms it got even cheaper.

but not all of them are nice. i was coming back from london to delhi and the air hostess (she must have been somewhere around 35 or may be 40 without makeup) was thrashing the passengers with verbal assaults when ever they asked for something. Though I got my packet of potato wafers but when my sidey asked for an extra packet he was told to "pehle jo hai voh khatam kar lo fir aur le lena". ha ha. i couldnt stop laughing and the sidey was all sharam se pani pani.

then there was this young girl in indigo who came to have a chat. You know its good to know that these days people have so many options. many people do their degrees by correspondence and instead work along. good thing to do. what do you do in a degree college anyway (yeah they have most fun i agree). She was all burdened with work as she would believe. "You know these airlines, they pay you good but they make you work like dogs". I asked howcome. "We have to work for 7- hours a day. can you believe that". And all i could say was yeah yeah poor air hostesses. So much work (8 hours) for such a pay packet. I wish i could be an air host on a part time basis.

on my latest trip from calcutta to delhi i had a different experience altogether.
so what i had around was ....

two air hostesses. very nice. one from goa and another one from delhi. now how do i know this. there was one old (young at heart ) uncle who was as curious as a 5 year old kid. uncle was telling these three marketing guys about everything from india - australia match to finer aspects of marketing.

and these two shady kind of characters who were sitting besides me. the conversation went something like this:

uncle: hi. how are you. you know indigo is the best airlines.
airhostess1: big smile
airhostess2: big smile
marketing pro1: uncle is very happy haan
marketing pro2: he he
uncle: where are you from?
airhostess1: goa - mumbai
airhostess2: delhi
marketing pro1 reclines his seat to maximum
uncle: yeh kya kar rahe hain. humne bhi paise diye hain.
marketing pro2: to itna bhin bhinane ki jaroorat kya hai. hum kya koi happy hours mein baithe hain. ek ke saath ek free.
airhostess1 brings some water for uncle.
uncle: so nice of you young lady
my neighbor: saala tharky boodha


Quite a trip actually. Though its been some time since i boarded a public bus but i am sure i am not missing on any of the action

Thursday, January 10, 2008

tourists in danger

noticed something. now almost everyday there is a news abt some tourist being molested in some corner of india. i wonder why suddenly. or is it that media has become active in public interest. suckers they are. now when that they have an issue they will even pay people to molest women.

i know of one such incident where they paid some college student to rag juniors. what to do? but yeah a lot of things can be explained by thinking abt incentives.