I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing away of Purush Baliga who retired as Director of Engineering and later worked for Jet Airways.  I first met Purush sometime in the mid-1970s and was greatly impressed not only by his knowledge, but also by his gentle nature and his ingratiating smile. 

There are two instances which will always remain foremost in my mind whenever his name comes up.  A good friend of mine, Amar Singh wanted to visit Mauritius and Reunion with his family.  Amar’s wife, Sally suffered from Polio and was bound to a wheel chair plus had the need for oxygen at most times.

I called Purush Baliga for assistance and he arranged to have the 707 that operated on both the outbound and inbound flights adequately wired to cater for her oxygen needs.

Purush was also the driving force behind my interest in promoting Indian Tennis and he was instrumental in my election as Vice President of the Maharashtra Lawn Tennis Association.

Many years later after I had left AI, I learnt about the incident of the VVIP flight where Rajiv Gandhi made a major complaint and which resulted in the delay in the appointment of Purush Baliga as Director of Engineering.  The complaint was completely uncalled for and undeserving.  As a former pilot who should have known better and understood why that particular aircraft had a very minor problem, it was unacceptable.  

Bobby Kooka was the creator of the Maharajah symbol.  He was also the author of the booklet “Foolishly Yours”.  In addition, he was the brain behind the ads that appeared on the two Hoardings (billboards) at Nariman Point and Kemps’ Corner.  Mr. Kooka had a great sense of humor and both his booklet and the ads on the hoardings reflected this; he poked fun at both the outside world and at the airline itself.  He often got into trouble with “our friends” in Delhi and I believe that the JRD umbrella helped him out of many scrapes.

When I took over as Commercial Director, the advertising portfolio came with the post.  Initially, I let Jal Cowasji (our Publicity Chief) and his successor, S.S. Dhabolkar, handle the hoardings with our ad agency.  Later, I tried my hand at two hoardings.  The occasion was the national elections and the first ad that I suggested depicted a party atmosphere, balloons, buntings, streamers and all.  The caption was “WHOSE PARTY WILL YOU JOIN - HERS, URS OR MINE?”.

“HERS” referred to Indira Gandhi, “URS” referred to her opponent Dev Raj Urs and “MINE” was Air-India.

The ad was quite well received by the public.  However, the Ministry bureaucrats called the M.D. expressing displeasure which, to my delight, he ignored.  

The next ad coincided the the Janata Party’s victory and depicted a group of folk dancers celebrating Charan Singh’s election as the Prime Minister.  In this case, the caption read “SING, SING CHARAN SING”.  I received accolades but Delhi was not amused and I was instructed to take down the ad overnight.  Mr. Appusamy, who was the then M.D. advised me to lay off political ads and concentrate on earning revenue.

So ended my attempt to enter the world of Madison Avenue.

On one of my visits to New York, Peter Mahta requested that I meet a team from Landor Associates, Inc., based in San Francisco.  This company’s speciality was re-imaging and they had just recently completed a Contract with British Airways where they not only changed the color scheme of the aircrafts but also the livery of the crew, the crockery, cutlery and even stationery.  Landor was interested in offering us a similar proposal.

I met their representatives and they gave me an excellent presentation, but I was personally not happy to move away from our Maharajah and his promise to offer the highest quality of service.  Landor felt that with the change in Government from the Congress to the Janata party, it may be the opportune moment for Air-India to also offer a new image to the traveling public.  I asked and was told that the total cost to AI would be $7 million compared to $35 million that BA had paid them.

I promised to discuss their proposal with my CEO and get back to them.  On my return to Bombay, I spoke with Mr. Appusamy who agreed with my views and I informed Peter to the Landor that we would take a “pass” on their proposal.

I mention this incident as I will make reference to it in one of my future Posts when I speak of another Chief Executive after I had left AI.  

In the mid 1970s, we found ourselves at a disadvantage vis-a-vis BA, the European Airlines like Air France and KLM and the Arab carriers, who were heavily discounting in the North Indian market.  Unlike AI, these airlines had appointed General Sales Agents to do their “dirty work”.

We brought up this issue at meetings with members of the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) and suggested that this body of agents put pressure upon these airlines to do away with their GSAs and let every agent enter this very lucrative market.  The TAAI representatives promised to get us our legitimate share of this market.  We gave them two years to accomplish this, but unfortunately, they could neither compete with the GSAs nor convince the airlines to give up the GSAs and their sub-agents.

So, at the end of the 2 year period, we appointed a GSA and started to see our traffic grow.

I was a member of a Panel at the 1980 TAAI Convention when an agent asked me if Air-India would agree to cancel its GSA agreement.  My answer was “We all know that AI was the last airline to appoint a GSA in North India.  We are also aware that we gave TAAI adequate time to correct the situation, but they failed.  AI will be happy to cancel its GSA after TAAI has the guts to go after other airlines.  Until you develop such courage, you have no right to ask us to give up our share of this market.” 

For a split second, there was pin drop silence after which the entire Air-India delegation stood up and applauded.

I was a guest speaker at a few TAAI Conventions and on each occasion, I tried to speak about a timely and yet controversial topic.  I still remember when, at one Convention, I made the announcement that Air-India would be recommending to the Indian Government to abolish the “P” Form which many airlines (with justification) felt gave Air-India an undue advantage.  My announcement was met with joyous shouts and whistles.

The 1980 TAAI Convention was my last and I took the opportunity to question the statistics of tourist arrivals that the Government of India Tourist Office put out annually.  I felt that these figures were grossly inflated and included persons of India origin who visited India to meet and stay with their families and did not benefit the Tourist Infrastructure.  The next speaker was none other than Som Nath Chib, whom I consider as the father of Indian tourism.  His first words were “I have a bone to pick with Inder Sethi - he stole my thunder”.  He went on to question the same statistics that the Tourist Department rolled out each year to justify its impotence, as he called it.

Many years later, I attended a meeting convened by the Government of India Tourist office in New York to honor and present trophies to 10 Tour Operators who had produced the highest number of tourists to India.  The guest of honor was the then Indian Tourism Secretary and I was representing Pan American Airways where I was a Consultant.  I brought up the subject once again and asked this bureaucrat to explain why the total number of tourists produced by the top 10 Tour Operators did not even equal 25% of the numbers that his office showed as tourist arrivals from the USA.

I asked him to advise the gathering who were these 75%plus “tourists”, but he avoided the question and moved on to another topic.

I did have an opportunity to meet this bureaucrat on a visit to India and will touch upon this subject in a later Post. 

In the last two years of my tenure with Air-India, I gathered the impression that some of our Regional Heads and Managers were not very happy with our tie-up with the Indian Tourist Office.  They felt that the benefits no longer justified the cooperation that we extended to the Tourist Department.  I mentioned this to our M.D. who did not feel that we should upset the applecart and to let sleeping dogs lie.

During this same period, I also felt that we needed to step out and produce our own in-house tours.  It was time we stopped depending upon established foreign Tour Operators.  I spoke with some members of the Hotel Federation who indicated that they would be happy to cooperate with such an in-house agency. 

I then discussed the subject with Malcolm Barretto who was at that time, Managing Director of our Hotel subsidiary (HCI).  Malcolm offered to set up a Ground Handling unit to cater for incoming tours and agreed to place this item on the Agenda of the next HCI Board meeting.  This meeting coincided with my last week in the airline and the issue was discussed but did not find favor with some members of the Board.  

The primary opponent was the representative of the Tourist department who was unfortunately supported by our Chairman and MD (Mr. Raghu Raj).  RR felt that given his brief, AI could not afford to spend funds on an “unknown venture”.  I must have spoken quite vehemently on this issue because C.L. Sharma raised it with me a few days after I had put in my papers.  He asked me why I was spoke so strongly in favor of this idea when I knew that within a few days, I would no longer be with the airline.

I told C.L. that this was not a unique idea for AI.  There were other airlines who had in-house agencies producing tours and that too, quite successfully.  We must look at all avenues to produce traffic and improve our bottom line.  I don’t believe he was convinced and the matter died. 

Just got back from a trip up north to spend some time with the children and grandchildren.  It was wonderful to be with the family and we really appreciate these moments as we grow older.

Many of us have had one or more embarrassing moment  and I would like to relate one such occasion.  It so happened that Air-India was sponsoring a cricket match at Brabourne Stadium and Chtrappal Singh asked me to inaugurate the event by umpiring the first over.

We had a very important person who had agreed to honor this event - he was none other than the top Indian cricketer at that time - Sunil Gavaskar.  I was introduced to him by Chtrappal before the start of the match.

He (Sunil Gavaskar) helped me into an Umpire’s Coat.  Chtrappal took me aside and said that here were 6 pebbles in the right hand pocket.  After each ball is bowled, I should transfer one pebble to the left hand pocket so that once 6 balls were bowled, I would not have any pebbles left in the right hand pocket and should signal the end of the over.

As fate would have it, I missed transferring one of the pebbles and so the bowler ended up bowling 7 balls.  Once the over was finished, I handed over the Umpire’s Coat to the real Umpire who whispered to me that I had allowed 7 balls to be bowled.  You cannot how embarrassed I felt as I had committed this blunder in the presence of India’s best batsman.

During my career with AI, I had the honor of inaugurating some offices.  The first was the Aeroflot office in Churchgate on February 9, 1978 and the occasion coincided with a hockey match between Indi and Pakistan being played at Brabourne Stadium.  My younger son, Sarat had come to my office after his school and tennis lessons and I took him with me.  After the match, we went across the street to inaugurate the Aeroflot office.  I was given a pair of ceremonial sterling silver scissors (with my name, date and the occasion inscribed) to cut the ribbon after which refreshments were served.

I suddenly heard a young voice saying that the drink he was having was “very nice” and to my horror, I realized that Sarat, at age 9, was drinking Russian Champagne.  I quickly took the glass away from him and whispered that he was not to tell his mother otherwise I was in for a stern talk.

During the course of the next two years, I inaugurated four other offices: three of which were - Air Mauritius in Bombay, Trade Wings in Goa and the new office of Mercury Travels in Bombay and I have in my  possession a total of 4 ceremonial sterling silver scissors which bring back great memories whenever I look at them. 

The fourth office was our own (AI) in Jullundur and I flew to Delhi and then took an overnight train to that city accompanied by Randhir Singh, our Manager, North India and Jimmy Martin, our P.R. Manager.   Apart from the snoring competition between my companions, the trip was uneventful.  What was of great joy to me was the occasion.  Instead of a ceremonial pair of scissors, I lit the traditional brass lamp and we had a good lunch which was preceded by some speeches.  I have in one of my albums, photographs of the lamp lighting and one of all the staff who were there.

This occasion came to my mind more than 3 decades later when Manju and I were traveling from JFK to Delhi.  The Airport Manager met us at check-in and having met him for the first time, asked for his background and was very pleasantly surprised that during the course of his career, he had been Sales Manager in Jullundur.  I mentioned that I had inaugurated this office and was absolutely delighted to hear him respond “the photograph of the occasion still hangs in the office”.  It made me proud and yet, saddened that I was a part of that airline which we built together and which does not exist any longer.  

Every time I think back and write these Blogs, I get very sentimental and have very mixed feelings; some happy but mostly sad and despondent.

Sometime ago, I had written about the airline’s interest in developing sports.  I missed mentioning our contributions to two other sports.  The first was golf.  This sport was only played by a very limited number of Indian athletes and we had very few professional golfers of international stature and fame.  The Indian Golf Union tried very hard to develop interest in this sport and invited the Asian Tour to hold one of its events  in India.  I received a request from the IGU to reschedule one of our KUL-BOM flights to stop in Calcutta which had been selected as the venue of the event.

We rescheduled the flight.  The next year, the event was shifted to Delhi and we once again rescheduled our flight to bring golfers to this event.  I am not aware if we continued to reschedule our flights to assist the IGU in its endeavors, after I left AI.  However, I am happy to note here that the Indian Open is now a regular event in the Asian Tour.

If I may take the liberty of boasting a little, I come from a golfing family and Billoo Sethi, my first cousin was the first amateur to win the Indian Open.  A nephew has won the Indian Junior Championship.  Billoo's photograph hangs on the wall as you enter the Delhi Golf Club.

The other sport was a minor one but of importance to the Indian Navy.  I received a request from the Naval Department to transport its team and equipment to Japan for a tournament and we were very happy to assist.  A short while after the event, I received a call from Vice Admiral Rusi Gandhi, C-in-C of the Western Fleet inviting Manju and me to dinner at Lion Gate.  We were delighted to attend and he made it a point to inform the gathering of Air-India’s assistance in their hour of need. 

Rusi Gandhi became a good friend and invited me to a Fleet Exercise.  He also extended an invitation to Mr. JRD Tata and we had a very interested full day on board the aircraft carrier, the INS Vikrant.