Opinion

Stratospheric Chic

High-fliers know their codes on the Mumbai-Delhi business class

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Stratospheric Chic
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We're talking about the pursuit of power here. Bankers, businessmen, politicians and other supplicants fly from Mumbai to Delhi to contort themselves before the powers that be. You see tension writ all over their faces as they board a flight to the city that holds the keys. And, of course, it's business class. Where else could they forget the grubbiness of their mission and have their egos massaged?

At Rs 138 a minute (the cost of an average one-way business class ticket, divided by flying time), this comes cheap. Flying over Kolhapur with canned juice in his hand, our putative master of the universe can finally feel life's worth it.

Business class was introduced by Indian Airlines, in 1982. After years of having to rub dandruffed shoulders with the hoi polloi, the domestic flyer finally found there was one important way to flex his power muscle. Up front, where the extra 20 inches confirmed what he'd always suspected. Size matters.

Then, in 1994, the private airlines came along and took ego massaging to a whole new level. "Jet Airways' guests travelling in the premiere cabin are high-profile, and as regulars, our ground staff and cabin crew recognise them and address them by their names," says the head of communications at Jet.

Soon there was a natural sifting of wheat from chaff on entering an aircraft. The self-styled big boys had arrived. And how they networked! An ad-man landed one of his biggest accounts with a cola company while tasting the thunder sitting next to a soft drinks manufacturer. India's first private TV channel was conceived here on a cocktail napkin! A businessman who chatted up India's most expensive criminal lawyer in the next seat found a consultancy bill sent to his office the morning after.

Everywhere deals were being struck, contacts made and business tips scooped up. Who can forget the bizarre airborne deafness of one of India's most dynamic, and now late industrialists which made him speak so loudly to the person beside him that the entire cabin was privy to his conversation? Imagine how this (price-sensitive) knowledge would play on the stock exchange.

Undoubtedly, here in the sky, it was open season for the networkers. An 'A' list industrialist, on the rare day that he eschewed his private jet, made the most of his proximity to the attractive wife of a top financial reporter, who herself was a force at an international bank. He broke the ice by offering to place her bag in the overhead locker, and followed it up with a post-landing call to ask her to dinner. The fact that she was considering a major loan to a state in which the suitor had invested may or may not have had anything to do with it. (For the record, the lady declined.)

"There's a distinct code of behaviour on the Mumbai-Delhi business class sector. No one's interested in the food or the air-hostesses," says the head of an international publishing house who makes the weekly schlep to the capital. "Everyone's looking over their shoulders to see who they can network with. The wannabes are the ones who allow an airline flunky to carry their bag on board. The vulgarians are the ones who insist on seat 1A and then spend the rest of the flight bestowing their fellow passengers with that look of entitlement, as if they had found the Holy Grail. The sophisticates do it best: they stake out their quarry and send over their business card through the air-hostess. The pushiest are the ones who request the guy sitting next to you to shove up so that they can bend your ear. The export-import types wolf down everything on their trays. The losers work on Excel sheets for the entire duration. The most irritating are the Bollywood actresses who chatter incessantly and who curiously are much shorter in real life," he smiles.

"But at the bottom of the heap are the most miserable of all god's creatures, the ones whose companies don't pay for an overnight stay at even a 3-star hotel, which means they must catch the early morning and return on the red eye. You can see the resentment in their eyes, as they contemplate yet another day spent begging before a babu."

Of course, there are those like the eccentric newspaper publisher or the media-shy IT tycoon who have put it about that they are a cut above this whole Mumbai-Delhi business class cabin fever by opting to fly cattle class.

But even they don't quite make the grade. After all, everyone knows they'll never belong to the Really Big Boy's Club if they're still flying commercial!

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