Impressions from India: August 2007

( Lotus Temple in New Delhi. Family excursion.)

So I took off to Bangalore today for a four-day stay, which is technically a work trip, but they let me come for the weekend before so I could be a proper tourist and see the city and the surrounding area.

However, when I was at the New Delhi airport early this morning, I realized there was a story to share. As we all know, India’s economy continues to grow and with it India’s middle class. Now a large portion of this middle class are young recent college graduates who now have many job opportunities available to them that their parents didn’t have. The boom of the IT sector has been well documented. Well, one of the other emerging sectors is the airline industry. Over the last few years, the number of domestic airlines has doubled and with this increase in competition, airplane tickets have become affordable for many. Combine that with millions of more people with rupees to spend and you have the current airline boom.

(August 15, 2007 was India's 60th Independence Anniversary. We celebrated along with throngs of people at India Gate.)

New Delhi’s airport is being expanded rapidly and flights are often delayed because there are simply so many flights arriving and departing. This morning, as our plane rolled out on the tarmac, our pilot, Captain Billy Russell (that seriously was his name – it’s worth noting that our American pilot was flying an Indian low-cost domestic airline) informed the cabin that our take-off would be slightly delayed because we had 5-6 planes ahead of us to take off and 5-6 to land before it was our turn!

(This is Sukla, our housekeeper. She is one of those people who has a smile that truly "lights up a room." She's wonderful and even likes to give Jose and I some crap. She comes to our apartment four days a week and does an amazing job cooking, cleaning and ironing. (She also likes to rearrange our bedrooms when she doesn't like the current set-up :) We're spoiled and incredibly fortunate that we were able to hire Sukla. Great housekeepers are not easy to find in Delhi.)

So to tell you of some of the characteristics of this boom:

*Post graduate flight attendant schools are seen in Delhi and Gurgaon, lead most notably by none other than the Frank Finn Institute for Air Hostessing. I always think that's such a funny name.

*Most of the flight attendants, or “air hostesses”, and the people who check you in for your flight are young 25-30 year old women, who wear bright lipstick, speak perfect British English, and wear skirts that fall above their knees. Remember that this is still socially conservative India we are talking about, especially when it comes to how women are seen in public. So women are getting better job opportunities, being given more responsibility, plus the influence of western culture is loud and clear in their dress and customer service. No sarees here.

*Many of the passengers are first time flyers. Thus, you have the air hostesses pointing out such things as where to find your seat number. You also have people at the airport who have never been on an escalator before and can be quite apprehensive before their first "ride". Further, people seem to be equally fascinated simply with airplanes themselves. Going home from Gurgaon each day in our carpool, cars and motorcycles park themselves on the side of the freeway near the airport to watch the planes take off and land. One would imagine that if you have recently moved to the city from a village (I was told in a meeting last week that 700,000 people are moving to Delhi every year right now – that’s roughly 2,000 per day) that seeing an airplane is pretty cool.

This is one of Delhi's many yoga - laughing clubs. They meet at 6 a.m. every morning in a park, do about 45 min of yoga and then 30 min of laughing exercies.

They even invited us to their 10th anniversary celebration! All the women seriously wore their laughing club hats sideways. I would hate to not fit in :)