Rocking in the Free World

The recent firing and re-hiring of the 1900 Jet Airways employees, which makes Naresh Goyal look very much like a certain Mohammed bin-Tughlaq, has brought back memories of an arbit incident that took place slightly over two years ago, involving someone from Jet Airways.

It was sometime in the first week of August 2006, when I was supposed to fly to Oslo for the second time in three months and had landed up at the HAL airport in Bangalore about four hours before my flight took off. Unlike the first time, when some six friends of mine showed up to see me off, there was absolutely zero fanfare this time around.

However, in this trip I had plans of utilizing my weekends better, since I had explored Oslo as thoroughly as one could in a month and a half, and it was time to check out other cities and Bergen and Copenhagen were on my list. My friend, who lives in Copenhagen had asked me to bring him ITC King and Old Monk Rum while coming along.

The recent liquid scare at Heathrow had taken place a few days before my departure, and hence I was unable to carry the rum, but I was going to buy him the cigarettes anyway and I was planning to buy cigarettes at the airport.

I picked up a trolley and placed my heavy bag on it, and proceeded towards the shop just outside the airport building in the parking lot where I could pick up cigarettes from. The shop was at an elevation and I was not able to bring my trolley around to the shop, and had to leave it someplace behind out of my line of sight to go and perform the necessary purchase.

I asked a couple of people who were standing there to help me watch my luggage for a short while, so I could run along, buy the pack and then head into the airport. I suspected that only high-end international brands were available in the duty free section. However, nobody seemed to want to help me with it, and understandably so, considering this was borderline suspicious behaviour. No amount of putting Bambi eyes and pleading seemed to work, until I spotted this cute girl who was standing there, drinking tea.

She was wearing a Jet Airways flight attendant uniform, and I just walked over to her and asked her the same thing, and after a long pause during which I guess she was thinking of what to do, she relented. I was quite happy, and even offered to buy her another cup of tea while she waited.

I remember saying the following to her:

“I’m no terrorist and I WILL come back for the bag, I’m just not strong enough to lug this monster bag till there and back, and risk losing this trolley, since I’m too lazy to go get one more. But I’m not so lazy that I won’t walk till that shop to buy you tea/coffee. Its lighter to carry, you see.”

“So, your name is Blanche. Isn’t that French for white? Are you from Pondicherry?” (I make horrible starting conversation, I know.)

“Are you given Carte Blanche to do what you want wherever your flight halts, so long as you get back to the airport on time?” (Covering up for Pondicherry gaffe with some idiotic wordplay)

I wanted to say this, but I thankfully didn’t – “Yours would be a nice name if you were born in a white-supremacist family.”

I narrated this incident to a friend of mine, who told me that I might’ve put borderline blade on her (meaning I might’ve almost hit on her), although that wasn’t my intention.

In any case, it was due to her help that I wasn’t beaten to pulp by my friend in Copenhagen, and she did say that it would be cool to bump into her if I were to fly Jet Airways, though I didn’t ask which sector she flew in.

I hope she wasn’t one of those 1900 people. Considering she would’ve worked for more than two years by now, it seems unlikely that she’d be on probation. Much good Karma to her, nevertheless for having helped me out.