Opinion Sour Cream

Terminal 1D at Delhi airport is superb as far as they make them. You check-in and are not required to screen your baggage which is taken care by somebody later. When you enter there is just elegance,beautiful shops,lovely coffee shops and a tasteful ambience. But then there you find in the morning that there are no real newspapers. Now in the old terminal you could get newspapers which give news apart from those which specialize in pictures of scantly clad ladies which certainly gets boring after some time. I hope I am not showing my age now for I still feel seventy years young. Then I got into the plane and there was on the public address system this rollicking slightly prosperous looking chairman of the airline wearing a goatee and I was told he cavorts with young ladies in bikini decorated calendars He said,I know you have a choice of airlines so I introduce you to the worlds best cuisine and the staff who look after you have been personally selected by me. The gentleman sitting next to me uncomfortable with the small leg space in the plane snorted that he,the Chairman of the airline that is,was lying. I politely asked him why he was using strong words. The gentleman who seemed to be a veteran on this sector of the plane said that you don’t have a choice of airlines,you get a samosa dipped in channas which is not exactly global cuisine and the staff in the plane were selected by an earlier airline Chairman ,who believed in ‘Simplify’.

I remember on another occasion in a business class flight on the same airline slightly cheesed off by tandoori salmon served for breakfast and got an option of eleven kinds of tea but a strong ready made masala chai was not available,but those are personal idiosyncracies I felt and I suppose,there were people who ate tandoori salmon before drinking their bed-tea. Any way,on that business class flight I was happy because a young lady cleaned my spectacles which I thought was a bonus. Now the samosas came with the chana. I dutifully ate them. For us who come from the North-west of India,believe in partaking of what we get and if we don’t get it, we used to snatch it from the other guy and the Brits who the PM thanked for good governance called us criminal tribes. But after having had mine I did make a mental note that back in Ahmedabad,I must tell Subhash bhai who runs a very successful and a good Lari around the corner,selling a superb ragda pattice,that he better get a patent on his international cuisine.

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More seriously as the downturn begins why are we losing our elan. We complain so that we can do better but the fact is we are doing better than most. However the quality of a system gets known only when it is under pressure. The President of India,has asked us to innovate. This is the time to do it. I have always felt that we would be a developed country when we can open a packet of creamer without spilling it and do all those small things which make life pleasurable. When life gets tough as he said when inviting martyrdom in the snowy peaks serving his country and you and me,dil mange more.