During my walk this morning, I remembered an incident which occurred during my early days with Kuwait Airways and which I would like to share and mention in this Post.

It appeared that rats had been discovered in an aircraft earmarked for a VVIP flight for Indira Gandhi, the then P. M.  The aircraft was being readied for one of her trips and on inspection, some wires appeared to have been chewed through.  Instructions came down from the powers that be in Delhi and Raghu Raj decided to terminate the services of both the Director of Engineering and his Deputy.

I got a call from Mr. Appusamy who was then on deputation with Air Jamaica.  He asked if I could speak with the Chairman of Kuwait Airways and find openings for both these gentlemen.  I managed to get KU to offer the Deputy D.E. a job, but they did not agree to hire the D.E. because of his advanced age.

Getting back to the transition period before leaving Kuwait Airways, I received an unexpected call from a gentleman named Ananda Jaisingh who was calling from India and introduced himself as the new Publisher of Air-India’s Inflight magazine NAMASKAAR.

Ananda said that he got my name from the original publisher of the magazine - KK Uberoi - who had told him the I had been the force behind the origin of the magazine.  The purpose of his call was to request me to get him advertisements from Companies based in the USA.  

Since I was, at that time, still on Kuwait Airways’ payroll, I had to decline his request.  However, he persisted and as a compromise, we agreed that Manju would act as his U.S. representative.  And so, we established Sethi Associates, Inc. with Manju Sethi as its President.

Manju was very enthusiastic and met with a number of Advertising Companies who, while expressing interest, were not quite convinced about the purchasing power of the Indians who represented the majority of Air-India’ traveling public. However, she persisted and spoke directly with the Advertising personnel of many U.S. companies and during this first year of her new assignment, did manage to convince a few companies to advertise.  Her coup was a double page spread from American Express for which, if memory serves me right, AMEX paid $15,000.

Manju’s commission was 10% of all gross revenues, and this ad alone netted her $1,500.  An amusing anecdote to this coup was the request of the AMEX staff member to meet and have lunch with Manju.  She almost panicked but settled with one condition - she would be accompanied by her husband.  Her “excuse” was  that she was unable to drive to Manhattan on her own.  It was an interesting and entertaining lunch and the net result was that AMEX continued to take a double page spread every year.

Manju’s income from this venture was very valuable in reducing our deficit financing and made our sleepless nights a little less sleepless.

Kamal Dandona who was associated with the Overseas Indian National Congress, called me and stated that the Indian Civil Aviation Minister was in town and had expressed an interest in meeting me.  Kamal confessed that he had initiated the matter as he knew that I was at a loose end.

I agreed to meet the Minister who stated that he was aware of my service in Air-India and asked if I would be interested in returning to the airline, as its CEO.  I gave him the reasons why I had resigned and also indicated that our two sons were studying in the USA and that living on an Indian salary would hardly pay the tuition cost, leave alone, board and lodging.

The Minister stated that such expenses could be “taken care of” if I showed an interest in the offer. I asked him point blank if I would have complete authority or would the same interference from Delhi take place.  He could or would not give me such an assurance and hence, I thanked him for the offer and left his hotel room.

I also got a call from Lenny Menezes of the Taj Hotel group who said that the current head of Tata Sons, USA was retiring and I may consider speaking with Mr. JRD Tata who happened to be in town.  I called Mr. Tata and mentioned to him that my tenure with Kuwait Airways was coming to an end and I was looking for suitable employment.  I informed him that Lenny had mentioned to me that an opening at Tata Sons, Inc. may be in the offing and that was the reason for my call.

Mr. Tata said he would call me back which he did upon his return to Bombay.  Mr. Tata asked if I could visit India and meet Rusi Modi, the Head of Tata Steel, who had the task of recruiting a replacement.  I agreed and met Rusi Modi in his apartment in Calcutta.  Mr. Modi explained that Tata Sons had been considering for a long time to downgrade the U.S. office and, at the same time, strengthen to U.K. office.

He asked if I would consider moving to the U.K.  It was a very tempting offer, but the thought of leaving our sons in the USA made me regret my inability to accept.  Interestingly, the job was, in a couple of years filled by C.L. Sharma, whose aspireations for the MDs post in Air-India had been upset firstly by Capt. Druba Bose, whose Bengali connections with Pranab Mukherjee paid dividends, and later by the political appointment of Rajan Jetley.

Here, I must confess that CL’s loss did not give me much dissatisfaction, as he had for quite some time, been surreptitiously under-cutting me during my tenure at the airline.

So, we were back to square one and by then, it was the end of May 1986 and it was fast nearing time for me to leave Kuwait Airways and move to our new home.

We had absolutely no furniture and our first task was to go look at Estate Sales and Wholesale Furniture Stores.  We picked up bed frames which I put together - my initial steps in become adept with my hands.  Some of the attempts of “going cheap” led to acquisition of poorly assembled products which had soon to be replaced, resulting in the final cost being well beyond our budgeted amounts.  A great lesson for the future.

I had returned the Kuwait Airways Buick and we were left with Manju’s Honda Civic.  We had decided that we would not go for a second car until we had steady income from other sources.