Flirting with an air hostess with a baby in hand

If you have been following my escapades with air-hostesses here, here & here…you will like this write-up as well.

Rhea, Rekha and I left Gurgaon on Wednesday morning and reached Madurai in the evening – all for 3-4 days of Diwali celebration with friends & relatives. Since Air Deccan doesn’t ask its patrons to buy tickets for infants we took along our 8 month old baby daughter.

Traveling with an infant is a difficult ball game. When we left home, we had three hand baggages – my laptop, Rhea’s baby bag and Rhea herself. By the time we reached the airport, dressed in our woolens (because were out of the bed at an unearthly hour of 8 a.m.), we had decided to check in my laptop and carry just two hand baggages – baby Rhea and her baby bag.

By the time we had checked in, my daughter had given me enough indications about her career path – she was smiling at every Tom, Beep & Harry – like a true blue air hostess. For a moment, I did accept that as a career option for my 8-month-old daughter but when I realized that she would be exposed to 32-year-old, sex-starved men, shamelessly staring at her even with their wives in tow…I started having second thoughts. Even as I type this, I am thinking of a good career option for my daughter. The good old middle class dream – a District Collector maybe?

Carrying a baby isn’t all that bad, for an Air Deccan ground staff (why do girls look so pretty in red? BTW, if you didn’t know…after Kingfisher tied-up with Air Deccan…both the airlines share the same uniforms, facilities and principles) asked us to wait for a personal shuttle to drop us near the airplane. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as personal as one would have thought for when we boarded the shuttle, there were three women above 60 and one man above 65 waiting for us – and we aren’t talking of their weights in Kgs.

While boarding the plane, I caught one airhostess named ‘Deepti’ eyeing my broad shoulders and perhaps saying to herself: “How good would it be to just place my head on them and feel safe and secure?”

We wouldn’t proceed further on the issue because I caught this air-hostess eyeing another handsome man soon after. Note to self: Check if ‘misleading’ is a synonym for ‘Beauty’.

As we settled down, the two airhostesses and one lonely male cabin crew member gave away the emergency instructions. I wonder if these instructions are really useful…I remember hearing them patiently during my first 2-3 tips…but have given up on them now. I have two concerns on these instructions:

If frequent fliers are like me and don’t listen to instructions…are they most likely to die in an emergency landing?

If 1 in every 1,100 trips has an emergency landing…why can’t these safety instructions be read out for those trips alone?

After sitting through the emergency instructions session which seemed longer than a Liciano Pavarotti opera, a pretty air hostess walked up to me. Even if I had my eyes closed, I would have told you that she was 36-28-36 (whatever that means!) by the micro seconds it took between two heel digs on the floor.

As I closed my eyes in prayer, this girl said: “Sir, is she your daughter?”

“I said yes.” It felt sad to be breaking her bubble, but I didn’t like the thought of she kissing me in front of my wife.

“Would you be carrying her while the flight takes off?”

“I said yes.” I wish, I could have said, “Hey, I am just kidding…she isn’t my daughter…I am just holding my co-passenger’s daughter” – and point towards Rekha.

What I heard next, was a message from heaven. She said: “Sir, to avoid discomfort during flight takeoff and landing I suggest breast feeding.”

I looked at Rekha, and she was busy thumbing through the shopping options in the in-flight magazine.

I turned towards the air hostess, gave her my hundred dollar smile and said: “Great, so where do we meet as soon as the lights are switched off for the take off? Do you really want to do it at the time of landing as well?”

After 13 minutes:

Wonder why…when I asked for cotton for my baby’s ears (when she started crying during the take off) the same air hostess refused to acknowledge my existence!

Other Flighty Reads

# Difference between a train & an aeroplane – a guide for the first time flyer
# The Kingfisher Class – Part 1
# The Kingfisher Class – Part 2
# Traveling by Kingfisher Airlines
# Inside the Jet Airways flight
# Reporting straight from the Bangalore Airport
# Cheap airlines and cheap thrills

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