Amritsar Calling: Come, take a flight from the Holy City

Well, it’s not just the mosquitos who had to take the train to town. During the eighties when there was militancy in Punjab, flights to the city had all but stopped. Though the situation improved through the nineties, airlines were sceptical as the Shatabdi was a popular mode of travel to the capital, and thus discounted upon the need for air connectivity. As a diehard advocate for Amritsar, one was traumatised by this logistic imbroglio. It was on 25th Aug 2003 that Captain Gopinath launched the low-cost carrier Air Deccan in South India. I chased my contacts for access to him as he started expanding his footprint across the country. Armed with data on tourism prospects for the city, I just was not willing to take no for an answer. It was young executive Vipul Seth who got us connected to Captain Gopinath, the Deccan airline startup pioneer. One was able to convince him to start a service. We got the first flight in December 2004. A revival of airline services to the Holy City thus began.

Unfortunately, there were only a handful of takers. In seven days, his small aircraft flew only a few. People were satisfied with the morning/evening train connection. I got a call again from this young man saying … do something or the flight would not continue next week. I took the next Deccan to Delhi, met the captain at the tarmac, and asked him why he expected an afternoon connection to succeed, whereas pilgrims were keen to come mornings and return evenings. Bandey di pith sundee hai. Instead of knocking off Amritsar he doubled down to a dawn and a dusk service, sold the first seat at Rs.25, the next at 250, the third at 750 etc. There was no looking back as aviation took flight once again from the Holy City. From a low of 6,249 passengers in 2003-4 to 1,25,081 in 2007-8, the growth leapfrogged in the years to come.

In the following years Amritsar aided and assisted by the Confederation of Indian Industry chapter that I chaired, saw a hospitality surge and air connectivity blossom, and so did tourism inflows. But international access was still a far cry from the required levels considering that 29 percent of the flyers from Delhi were from this region.

Singapore calling

Yet again, armed with data, I dropped into Singapore intent on getting their airline to fly in. The then Amritsar airport director was the dashing Sunil Dutt. I called in from there for him to travel up since I had managed to schedule a meeting at Changi Airport with the Singapore airline through good Punjabi friends associated with the airline. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, and being unable to travel, he asked me to make the presentation myself. I was refused Singapore Airlines since business and First-Class passengers were hard to come by. We considered their low-frills airline Silk Air, but eventually, the possibility lay at the door of Fly Scoot, their latest avatar. The person with whom this luncheon was happening was, hold your breath, Campbell Wilson, who is today the capable CEO & MD of Air India group. The plan ultimately fructified, and we got an excellent air connection, a Boeing 777, to the Orient, Down Under and the West coast.

What a treat it was witnessing the rain shower welcome given to Fly Scoot by two fire engines when it landed from Singapore. And you all still recall the Balle Balle Birmingham campaign of Air India when they connected us to United Kingdom as well. Each new connection is like elixir in Punjabi veins. In fact, post Covid, the airport handled 8,54,352 passengers between April 2020 and March 2021. We are doing well.

Down memory lane, as kids, we would walk up to the tarmac to receive our guests, our family’s business partner at Kabul, Lala Ram Nath Suri, or Sardar Harnam Singh, our manager at the Afzal market establishment. They would always come bearing gifts. It was a couple of the famous Afghani melons, Sardah or Garmahdepending on the season, dhingri, the ultimate mushroom of Indian cuisine and glorious Kandhari mewas. Those were different days and a look-see in the cockpit of the Ariana Afghan aircraft was our gambit to popularity. Starry-eyed we would return from the airport smelling like a spice market.

Later through the ages, I became an avid flier touching base with the textile markets of India, from Calcutta, Gauhati and Imphal in the East, to Madras, Bangalore and Hyderabad in the South, also Bombay in the West to the heartland airports and Srinagar to the North. On one such flight that I boarded at Delhi a familiar Amritsari local was by my side. As we belted up, I happened to strike up an amiable conversation asking him if he flew regularly to Bangalore. He seemed surprised since he had never been there. So, it’s your first trip I asked. Perplexed he said he was not going there. In which case I cautioned him that he was on the wrong plane, as this one was heading there. I saw the man change many colours in a minute from red to ashen and broke into a sweat as I called the hostess to assist my fellow passenger who by now had all but wet his pants. It was then that my boarding card was checked. I was on the flight to Amritsar instead. An overconfident traveller I told them that my docket had been checked at 3 places and that if at all the airline wanted to remedy the situation, I needed to be transferred onto the Southbound flight which was also ready for take-off with my baggage. Engines were stalled, stairwells brought back, and a tarmac transfer effected. Imagine this happening in this day and age.

Fly anywhere

Well, getting a ride into town now is really easy since Amritsar has excellent logistic connectivity. Expressways and superb radial roads, electrified double-lined rail tracks, and frequent flights swooping in to ferry passengers. Pretty decent provisions for yatayaat. Consider this, just for the nation’s capital Delhi, we have nine daily flights from domestic airlines. Let’s not forget weekly direct connections to Ahmedabad, Kochi and Goa, as also the non-stops to Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Srinagar and more.

This is a far cry from the days of rail travel only as the chief option. The overnight Frontier Mail to which you carried your safri Khana, some even brought along aam ka achaar to smoke out their co-passengers. There was this ultimate romance to travel those days. Get off at the crack of dawn and queue up to get a ramshackle yellow and black Ambassador cab to your destination. And then the Deluxe Express chair car days, graduating later to the Shatabdi and the Swaran Shatabdi boon. This was when flights were non-existent. Fortunately, those days seem forgotten down the annals of history.

Now as they say, “All roads lead to….”, and The Akal Takht is regarded as the Vatican of the Sikhs. But here is the thing. Amritsar is visited by all faiths who have free access to the sanctum sanctorum of the Harimandir and the hallowed confines of the Akal Takht. Now that is sublime. So, flights today come in, full to the brim, international or domestic, trains steam in with seats on a long waitlist, and road connectivity could not be better, and ever-improving. After all the hundred thousand visitors daily have to find their way to and from the city.

So, if the ubiquitous mosquito did find its way in as well, it’s no surprise. But let’s not let the cat out of the bag. It is definitely not Chicken-gunya. Typical Punjabi trait. There is no rooster content and No Kuddad here fellas. It’s Chikungunya, the pain that has come with the convenience of travel. Who cares really. It is a global village, and we all need to travel.

The writer is an Amritsar-based environmentalist, philanthropist and historian who likes all things Ambarsari