I turned 81 today and my thoughts went to the days of my childhood, school and college, which then brought me to the day when, armed with the letter of offer of employment, I entered the office of the Commercial Department of Air-India, located on the fourth floor of the Bank of India Building at Flora Fountain.  The date was January 21, 1957.

This day will remain vividly embedded in my mind.  I was greeted by the gracious Barbara Shivdasani who, upon reading the letter, spoke to someone and then told me to go across the road to the Bombay District office on the ground floor of the New India Assurance Building and report to Dolly Guzder, who would be in charge of my initial training.

I met Dolly Guzder who introduced me to two other new recruits who had started their training the same day.  They were Jerry Hundal, the new Sales Manager, Los Angeles and R. P. Bhat who would end up in the Administrative Division.  We spent one week studying the ABC World Guide and the Air-India Tariff, and practiced issuing dummy tickets and Exchange Orders.

After the initial week with Dolly Guzder, I moved to the ticket counter and worked there for a month under the supervision of Mrs. Chobi Mazumdar (later Mrs. Chellaram) and Mobedjina.  My colleagues were T.K.P. Pillai, B.K.Mangoakar, T.K. Rao, Sham Rao, Sharad Patel, Deidre Dunne, Capt. Netto and Ashok Gupte. It was a very pleasant group of persons who guided me in answering enquiries and issuing travel documents.

During this period, I also received my first “Blue Note”, which represented a written reprimand.  It so happened that Mr. A.F. Dubash, Planning Manager had returned from an overseas trip and as per protocol, a telex message was sent by the originating station to Bombay office requesting that we advise his residence of his arrival details.  Unfortunately, no one who was on duty that afternoon saw this message and accordingly, everyone of us attending shift duty that afternoon, received a Blue Note. 

It subsequently transpired that for some inexplicable reason, this telex had never been received but the damage had already been done and the Blue Note was not withdrawn.  However, it was never placed in my Personnel File and as such, no real damage took place.

After my stint at the Bombay office, I received orders of my permanent assignment to the Tariffs Division and accordingly, I reported to Mr. J. C. Malani, Tariffs Manager in the Bank of India Building, 4th Floor under whom I worked until 1965, when I took over this Division.  I had two Section Heads - A.B. Fernandez, Superintendent Passenger Tariffs and B. O. Gardiner, Superintendent Publications.  

Most of my first month was spent with B.O. Gardiner who was preparing the Source Document for Air-India’s Prorate Manual.  This Manual was designed to assist the Accounts Department to allocate the actual revenue to each Flight Coupon of a ticket involving one or more stops.  One day I answered “yes, Sir” to a question and was promptly instructed by Mr. Gardiner not to ever use that expression.  He told me that I should address senior executives as “Mr.  …..”  and not “Sir”.   I have religiously followed these instructions ever since.  

Before going any further in my narrative, let me state that I received the best grounding that anyone could expect during my term in the Tariffs Division.  I was a member of various IATA Groups and sub-committees, including:

1. Traffic Handling Group which was responsible for designing travel documents, such as the Passenger Ticket, Exchange Orders, Miscellaneous Charges Orders and the Cargo Air Waybill
2. IATA Prorate Group which indicated each participating airline’s share of revenue in a multi-stop journey.
3. The IATA/UPU Group which coordinated the airlines work with the Universal Postal Union.

Moving on to the 1970s, shortly before Nani Mital moved to Nairobi as Regional Head, he invited me to a lunch where he introduced me to members of an informal “Club” called The HUB.  The other members of this gathering (in addition to Nani himself) were Jimmy Guzder of IndTravels/Air Freight, Sam Gubbay of The Taj, Vinoo Ubhaykar of Trade Wings, Aldo Frei of Swissair and Rusty Palankote who was the Airports Authority Director at Bombay airport.

I learnt that the Club was the brainchild of Sam Gubbay who wanted a small but informal group of persons in the Travel Industry to exchange ideas and keep abreast with trends in hospitality and travel.  I was invited to join this group and must state that I have benefitted from my participation in this group.

Interestingly, the group met at The Oberoi for lunch on the very day that I had submitted my resignation and Jimmy Guzder who sat next to me asked - Inder, what is new?  When I told him that I had given in my papers, he almost fell off his chair.  The group was saddened by my decision and the entire meeting was devoted to this subject with some members requesting me to reconsider my decision.

I enjoyed the camaraderie and as I stated above, benefitted from my participation in this group of which I was a member for almost 8 years.

In an earlier Blog, I mentioned a young man whom I had assisted in setting himself up as a GSA for Kuwait Airways.  I also introduced him to Gulf Air where Adli Dajani was the G.M. - Commercial.  Adli was Air-India’s Sales Manager in Damascus before he left to join Kuwait Airways and then onto Gulf Air.  This young man lost no time in getting on the “right side” of Adli and soon added the Gulf Air GSA to his stable.  

Incidentally, while he was an employee as a clerk in his uncle’s Air France GSA, he had somehow managed to get himself appointed as Manager - India for ALIA, Jordanian Airlines.  This enabled him to apply for interline travel and in those days, most airlines were quite happy in giving him tickets.  This is how one day, I suddenly found him sitting next to me on a SABENA flight to Manila where I was headed to attend a meeting of the PATA Executive Committee.

On enquiring what took him to Manila, he stated that he had recently become the GSA for Philippine Airlines and his travel was in that connection.  He came back to Bombay on the same flight that I traveled on.  What surprised me was that I soon found out that quite often, he was as my companion on foreign trips.  It became obvious that he wanted to get close to me and very often asked for my advice on various matters concerning his business.

I was not averse to offering him such advice so long as it did not conflict with Air-India’s interests and I must confess that this must have encouraged him as he started to drop in at our apartment on the pretext of asking for advice.  There was one occasion where he was in serious trouble with Enforcement Department of the RBI and I got a frantic call from him asking to be “bailed” out of a predicament that he had landed himself in.  My memory is a little fuzzy right now, but I am almost certain that he had spent the previous night in a holding cell.

I called a attorney and introduced him to the young man and I believe he helped considerably and,in the process, became his attorney of record for future dealings.

He was very secretive about his dealings and would not disclose what events caused the Enforcement Directorate to go after him.  He did introduce me to his financial backers who happened to be Diamond Jewelers from Gujarat who had offices in Antwerp, Belgium and the USA.  More on this issue when I discuss my tenure in Kuwait Airways.

When this young man learnt that I had joined Kuwait Airways, he was ecstatic as he thought that he would now take advantage of this new relationship being the airline’s GSA for India.  He even came to Kuwait and called to request if he could stay with us during his visit which I agreed to.  His joy in this new relationship was, however, short lived when he realized that my stay in Kuwait would be short as my ultimate destination was the USA.  He tried very hard, and offered many “reasons” to convince me to stay on in Kuwait but I refused to agree.

Eventually, he visited me in the USA whenever he had an opportunity and needed my advice.

By the time, I left India, this young man had collected a fair number of GSAs including TWA and he became very close to a senior executive of that airline who was in charge of Cargo Marketing & Sales and therein lies another story.  He also became close to a senior executive of Flying Tigers and here again, lies another story which shall be the subject of another Blog.