Air travel is unromantic, however hard Hollywood might try to make it look that way, especially now that the nose cone of the Concorde is a museum piece. Unlike trains, which allow you to get used to a place, airplanes don't give you the time to do that. It’s <I>bang</I>, and then you are in the middle of nowhere. The only time one feels any form of attachment to an airplane is when one is on the ground waiting for someone to appear out of that airport foyer.

Early in the Delhi morning, near the Indira Gandhi International airport, aircrafts float in the air in all their innocence, their underbellies milk white in the early sun. Their drone wakes up students in the nearby Jawaharlal Nehru University. But aircrafts are as drab as the interior of a Delhi Transport Corporation bus, unless one takes into consideration the airhostesses (and flight stewards).

Passengers waiting for the security check invariably have glimpses of the privileged Captain, and the cabin crew gets through without any hassles. One might even wonder what is inside that seabag of his, but little boys no longer want to fly planes. Who wants to be a pilot? I'll be an engine driver any day.

With airhostess training academies sprouting all over small town India, the job has lost some of its sheen. Bad airhostesses are like schoolteachers. They care for you and still expect discipline. The better ones are like mommas. Coo.

The exception is being the flamboyant Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher. I haven't traveled by the airline, but even a trip on its low-cost cousin, Kingfisher Deccan, is a nice experience. The cabin-crew uniform, the interiors, everything is lifted lock stock and two howling engines from Richard Virgin Branson's planes. There is even a mid-air auction. Stuff comes cheap, too. I filled out one form and made my bid at the bidding of an airhostess. No response so far. Apparently stuff is not so cheap as it seems, in the stratosphere.

A teacher once asked his students, “Who was the first person to join the mile-high club?” Swift came the answers: “Richard Branson,” “James Bond,” “Superman.”

“No,” the teacher said. “It was the gentleman who invented the autopilot.” Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention.