AIR INDIA harassed me on my last flight home from Calcutta to Delhi on July 29, 2022. It wasn’t harassment. It was torture. I have never set foot in that airline again.
My last and final AIR INDIA flight on July 29, 2022. Never again!
On July 29, 2022, just before boarding my last Air India flight, I had been literally kidnapped by Air India check-in staff who detained me, tied in red tape and hit me with dysfunctional infrastructure for 2.5 hours. It has been a sobering experience with Air India that day.
Thank God, I always reach the airport early. First at the check-in counter, a pipsqueak who was missing three front teeth and was wearing a dirty old shirt not a uniform, asked the lady in front of me for her US visa. Nothing surprising, right? Well, this lady was a green card holder. I started laughing. Then the pipsqueak asked the lady how come her green card had a date with a 25th month. Being an airline employee he did not know how to read the US date format. Next, he typed her name with a typo and could not bring up her details on his screen. The US citizen was shouting by this time. So, was I.
This went on for 45 minutes. So, i disgustedly took my luggage to the other side with a lady at that counter. Well, a short fat matron in Air India uniform blocked my way. She asked if I was carrying batteries in my luggage. I adopted a look which said “shoo f**k off” and dismissed her. I walked up to the other counter. After clearing one passenger she glanced to admit my turn. I promptly kept my luggage on the carousel.
I have to mention here that while Air India had in 2022, a common counter for domestic and international passengers, it had a dedicated counter for “staff” – that is a euphemism for government employee. While I ran from pillar to post, a peon from the Ministry of Water Resources strutted about in his VIP queue.
Now, this counter lady looked at my boarding pass and ID then declared my luggage was seven kilos overweight. I had already taken out my visa credit card anticipating this. However, she said I could not pay her but should carry my cabin baggage to a payment counter some distance away. Ridiculous. What is this? a fast food joint? Payment counter separate and delivery counter separate?
Well to add insult to injury, I was handed over a small chit of paper, a ‘purchee’ so to speak, with my flight number and sequence number against the weight of my luggage. When I handed over this brilliant piece of information vehicle at the payment counter, the lady looked blankly at me. I asked her to close this fast. She declared that the chit of paper did not contain my PNR number. So, I had to go back to the check-in counter where that lady added my PNR edgeways on the two inches tall and three inches wide bit of paper. Now I was asked to walk the plank again to the payment counter. Like a pirate’s prisoner, I did so. I was tired and angry by this time. These morons who used to be government employees a few months back ought to be jettisonned at 36,000 feet from the cargo hold of an Air India frieghter.
So, I walked to the payment counter. The EDC machine would not work for all my six credit cards. Each time, it said INVALID CARD, and the girl at the counter would triumphantly yell INBULLET CARD SAH.
That brilliant piece of customer service made me feel so much better. I wanted to kick every AIR INDIA employee in the teeth at that time. I was glaring at her and admitting that I have a erogenously titillating fetish to carry INBULLET CARDS in my wallet.
I impatiently asked her to resolve this as I didn’t have all day. She called two other headless chickens, Shooshmeetadeeee, Brotodeee. All three came together, yakked in hushed tones and came to the brilliant conclusion that the EDC machine was not working. I marvelled at the insight. The teen devian (three divas) looked suitably relieved that they had finally found “accidental mechanical malfunction” to blame the problem on. The helpless paying passenger be damned.
Finally, I was forced to pay cash. I could see that my poor luggage was being held back despite being decorated with their report cards (luggage tags?) as I could not pay the kids’ tuition fees. Every other kid was being allowed to step on to the conveyor belt but not my wards.
Finally, I paid in cash. What if I wasn’t carrying cash? They would have easily let me miss my flight home. I asked the former lower division clerk posing as a busboy for luggage to tip the tray holding my luggage on to the conveyor belt. He froze with an expression that equalled the feeling that I had touched his testicles with a cattle prod. The lady explained his sarkari mentality dilemma – that I had to go back to the check-in counter to get my pre-printed boarding pass.
I marvelled at the super inefficiency. However, the check-in matron would not give me my boarding pass. She pointed to one luggage piece and asked “yeh kya hai?” I told her that it’s popularly known as a box and it had been invented in the 14th century. That it was an ingenious contraption that could hold other items.
She said, “no, what’s inside the box?”
I countered, “yes, madam. Finally, your question makes sense.”
“Books” I said.
I almost expected her to conduct pin hole surgery on the cellotaped packaged carton box.
She looked frightened and irritated that a fully grown man could carry books of all things. Then she reluctantly handed me my boarding pass.
I waited at the gate and sweated from this harrowing experience with AIR INDIA. After waiting for 40 minutes, I walked up to the counter and asked how long boarding is going to take. It was being manned by seven ladies in scruffy uncombed hair and pleated sarees. Her reply in a nasal and condescending tone, “apni boe-soon” (You sit down) This moron must be another government employee graduated to being an employee of Tata Sons. Lucky me.
I told her in no uncertain terms that whether I sit or dance at the airport gate is my prerogative. She would kindly answer the one question that I had posed to her. She did not reply and looked at me wishing that I was dead. How dare the passenger ask questions. I went back to the place I was waiting for boarding and spoke to seven other families. All of them had just one reason to use AIR INDIA – the 25 kilos baggage limit. Weird. For Indians service be damned. It is always the price and the discount. That is why Indians are served shit everywhere and they welcome it wholeheartedly. Indians never demand service. Therefore, they never receive it.
Finally, boarding began. The CISF guard looked and acted very kind and understanding as if he knew what the passengers were going through.
Owing to the harassment at the check-in counter, I did not have time to have a meal at the airport lounge. I was hungry, thirsty, tired, irritated and angry. I wanted at least a nice ride home.
I wasn’t going to get one, thanks to AIR INDIA.
The moment I entered the aircraft, I realised that it was a A320.
I asked the nearest flight attendant, who was incidentally male, “What happened to the Dreamliner? My ticket clearly said that it was a Dreamliner that I was booking a seat on. Why am I in a Sharklet?”
“They may have changed aircraft at the last moment, sir,” was his reply.
“Merde, Merde, Merde, The only reason I wanted an AIR INDIA ticket was that I wanted a ride home to New Delhi in a Dreamliner after working four years in communist Calcutta.
That too was taken away from me. I was being tortured by AIR INDIA. I was in pain.
I was hungry. The moment they started serving, I asked for anything with meat in it. They came back after half an hour serving other passengers and said that all the meat dishes had been served. They could have served me if they knew that I was waiting for my meal. However, they had just assumed that I had finished eating.
I wanted to cry but a fat, 57 year old crying was not the best scene in an Airbus after all.
I landed without food.
I went to the conveyor belt to claim my luggage only to be told after half an hour of waiting that my box full of books would arrive at OOG1 and not on the regular conveyor belt, while my other four bags will arrive on the regular conveyor belt. I never understood this logic that why does a passenger have to run between two conveyor belts to claim his or her luggage. However, trust AIR INDIA to come up with new clauses of harassment.
I thought it was over until a grinning idiot in shabby AIR INDIA uniform crept up behind me and said, “You could have claimed this box right at the aircraft after deboarding.”
I asked him how I was expected to carry a heavy box in the transfer bus that would have taken me to the terminal, without a trolley? Like a typical government clerk, his response was repeating the same stupid statement and pretending not to hear my question.
I just wanted to put every AIR INDIA employee in a gas chamber filled with their own farts. Then I would have slowly drilled screws into them.
