The TimePass of India

My father worked for erstwhile Indian Airlines, which later got absorbed into Air India. Now that we have that out of the way, let me tell you about my love affair with the airline. 

In the 90s, when air travel was reserved for mostly businessmen & politicians, we would fly as a family. It gave a certain sparkle to our arrival to any family event. There was certain amount of jealousy, some awe, and some general amazement at the fact that we reach anywhere in the country within 3 hours. 

I was a shy, generally under-confident kid who might have had a slight inferiority complex every 90s kid had in India, especially around English speaking cousins. I know, some of you now know the amazing me and wonder how is that possible, but let me tell you that is how 90s India was. So for that kid, ability to fly to places, and the resulting adulation gave an immense boost to self confidence. 

Indian Airlines was beautiful - everything from the logo to the seating, to the air hostesses, the flights, everything was very unlike an Indian Govt company. I would go on to say that it was probably the best Indian company at that time. And I saw it weaken overtime, I saw the quality of food go down, the quality of the crew, the general disdain amongst employees that is so characteristic of any Indian govt company slowly made its presence felt.

Then among much fanfare, it got inducted into Air India and overnight the quality went further down. Dont get me wrong, it was still better than the joke Air India has recently become. Indian taxpayers love to highlight that their hard earned money is being mismanaged - and when the say this, they are thinking Air India employees are at fault. They are like always, wrong -

When the skies opened up, so did the opportunity for the politicians to make money, India was flooded with low cost airlines, which is great for so many of us who now could reduce their travel time by 20 hours or so and at a cost that didnt burn a hole in the pocket. But what this did is, take away the class from flying. It is similar to the degradation that Indian TV programming has seen. The slums have TVs, and they like to watch Sasural Simar ka - so you are left with no programming - you have to watch whatever crap the masses are watching. Same with flying, suddenly the only aim of flying became to reach to point B at the cheapest price. 

Welcome Indigo. A Marwari bus in the sky. Now I have nothing against Indigo, I have flown Indigo so many times. And it never lets you down, it gives you exactly what you ask for, nothing more, nothing less - like a McDonalds of flights. 

I have flown numerous International Airlines from Emirates, to Lufthansa to British Airways and even at its worst, Air India is still amongst the best in my book (I might be biased). For guys who never got a chance to fly Indian Airlines (or the real Air India), let me elaborate what the difference is - 

Leg room - For a guy my height, this is important, very important - which is why for me Air India (like IA) comes so high up the ranks. They dont try to fit in a few extra seats (the local train equivalent of a 4th seat) 

Food - People dont like airline food, but trust me once upon a time AI food was amazing. Sure, we mostly travelled Business class, so there were menus exchanged and certain bells and whistles but even in economy, food was the highlight

Cabin crew: Those girls were great - ever smiling, girls who probably dreamed of becoming this when they were kids. As a guy who understands class, those girls were classy. Even their sarees were classy - what the hell happened to sarees on flights? 

Moving on...

Like I was saying, Air India was slowly but surely became a joke. I loved it, but like loving Mithun Chakravaty, you keep it to yourself. When have you ever heard anyone say their favourite actor was Mithun? I have had discussions with a close few highlighting why it was not the mistake of the employees and AI but the politicians who were making decisions that didnt favour the airline. Like all crappy companies that you might have worked at, they were crappy coz the owners, in this case - the politicians were crappy! None of my firang friends ever had anything good to say about the airline - I specifically flew firang airlines to see what the fuss was about, except the timeliness (something that was the main source of corruption AI) nothing else ever matched to the level of AI. 

When Tata won, I was glad for 2 reasons - one, it is not going to be made into another bus in the sky airline (which would have been the case had ambani or adani won), and two, it was finally out of the hands of the politicians. 

Now it seems I will be redeemed. I have in the past tried to book AI more, but always worried about delays (reason listed above) but now, I can confidently book AI.  I cant wait for India to have an airline that will (easily, if I may add) become the top 5 air lines in the world. I cant wait to ask my firang friends to take the airline and see what Indian hospitality really is! I cant wait to be a kid again. 

Air India, welcome back, my friend!

Air India, welcome back!

But this post is not about who topped the exam,you will find thousands of posts on tht topic.This post is an analysis of the exam….its actually an analysis of the performance of Mumbai students.

All my life I have heard stories about how my cousins studing in ICSE or CBSE had access to better education.I have read umpteen articles on why the state HSC is no good.

I have heard aunties discuss how brilliant their CBSE and ICSE educated children were and how much better were these boards than the Maharashtra State board.Maybe ICSE and CBSE are better or maybe they are not.The world will always remain divided on these issues.But I found it weird tht the argument tht they put forward to support their statement was tht students from Maharashtra dont make it to the IITs and this is because of the lousy education std of Maharashtra.This was partly true!
During my time(makes me sound old. But I am just 21) only 150 students from Maharashtra made it to the IITs. Out of these 50 were from Mumbai.Too less for a city like mumbai. We had all the riches, all the facilities, still we couldnt make it. The media projected us as spoilt brats who didnt have the perseverence tht is required to get into the IITs. All this inspite of the fact tht the IIMs have a large number of Mumbai students. A high score in CAT requires a lot of hard-work too,doesnt it?.

But the media dishes out what people wanna see/read.There were many readers who seemed to agree with the media.Many of these readers were Mumbaikars(who had completed their education from outside the state). These were the people who made it to mumbai from small towns. They considered it cool to bash the Maharashtra education system.They opined tht the students in Mumbai were spineless. They didnt have the guts to take on the best in the country….

I always predicted tht we will kick ass the day CET type entrance exams take place in Maharashtra. A sense of frustation gripped me nobody understood this simple logic.

You see, we have been bred on subjective exams.In fact we used to get admissions into engg after scoring a high percentage in PCM.(Your blogger had a score of 95%.)
It becomes very difficult to study for both Objective(JEE) and subjective exams(XII).The result-fewer qualifiers.But now things have changed…..

Since now we have CET based entrance,students find it easier to devote attention to Objective type studies. Out of the 45000 who appeared for the exam from Mumbai division, a whopping 2600 have qualified. Kicked some serious butt,didnt we?

Mumbai topper-Harsh Pareek has AIR 8. Also, All India girl topper is from Mumbai.

Thanks Harsh & co. You guys made us proud. Now I wanna hear what the media has to say!

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Btw, it rained tonight. We had a power cut for 2 hrs. I dont understand, why does it happen always? Hasnt MSEB heard about the thing called rain? If the power cut is inevitable why dont we have a power cut everytime it rains?

Its raining cats and dogs as I write this post. Infact there are so many cats and dogs fallen on my car tht I had to remove them using a shovel…er…bad joke!

IIT JEE - Mumbai tops!