Silsilay : IA 703

It was in the early 1970's when emergency had struck India. I was returning from Kolkatta back to home in Delhi when I realized, that even Indian Airlines had not been spared. The next morning,it was the wedding of my cousin and I had to be on time. Just when I reached the airport, did I realize that my flight IA 703 had been cancelled. The unions had decided it was about time they stop appeasing the central. This sure was a dampener,coz I had to reach over the same night. Bitterly disappointed and frustrated, all of us, stranded passengers, were lurking over the transit with the hope of some miracle. Just then some officals from IA, asked us to stay back and wait over for some more time. After about an hour, they brought in the good news, that an arrangement for an alternate flight,had been managed and it was about to leave in a shortwhile. I was pretty relieved to hear the same, also quite impressed with efficient management (talk of CRM today in IA!) even at the helm of emergency. Once, we boarded the flight, one of the crew members came and apologized for the lack of food available on the flight owing to the stop gap arrangement. That surely wasn't something we were going to brood over then. I had a lot of food items (read misthi~sweets) since I was returning from Kolkatta, it was a tradition to bribe my Dad with ounces of sweets for entry into house. I asked one of the air hostess' to distribute the same to all the passengers since most of them were famished owing to the delay. After some initial reluctance, she agreed to the same, serving the passengers, to my fulfilment. Sometime later, the pilot came up to me and thanked me profusely, for being understanding to their situation. The pilot somehow struck me, besides being a handsome lad in his mid 30's, as an extremely polite and courteous person, also someone who seemed kinda familiar to me. We landed uneventfully, at Palam,Delhi in the early hours of the next day. Just as we were boarding off the plane, the pilot met me again, this time even more grateful and poised in his talk, speaking about how rare it is to find passengers who co-operate with them in their trying times. I was already bowled over by the humility of this wonderful pilot, who despite having tough times, had helped us reach our destination. Out of sheer curiosity and plain innocence, I asked him, "You strike me as someone, I might have known already in my life, what is your name, Pilot?" . To which he replied politely "Dear Sir,you might have known me. My name is Rajiv Gandhi, and I work as a pilot with Indian Airlines."