This is a story that connects two rivers, not via geography, but by pure circumstance. It is neither an official account of ‘Operation Ganga’, nor an attempt to comfort your unsung-self about glories not bestowed and commemoration medals not pinned on your shoulders. Then, you may be asking; What is it about?… Well, let’s start at the beginning (which is generally a good place to start anything).

This is the story of a Hangry pilot flying to Hungary to rescue the Hapless and the Helpless and how Hopeless the story came out on social media. What should make news in this world never does, and, the opposite is also equally true. In reality, ‘Operation Ganga’ was just a regular mission to get back Indian students who had found themselves suddenly trapped in a country where they did not belong; in a war in which they had no sides to take. What they had thought was their gateway to a better life, turned into a trap of their own making. Medical students stuck in the midst of a Geo-political war; it was an out-of-syllabus situation for them.

The fact that you were tasked to fly one of the flights was a matter of quiet personal pride. Afterall, you were an expert at repatriation missions. Having actively participated in planning and executing a similar (unpaid and unrecognized) one for the last two years that rendered you penniless and nearly took your life, ‘Operation Vande Bharat’ had been more dangerous that even fighting the Kargil War. It had broken you on all fronts; empirically, ethically, morally, financially, professionally, socially, physically, medically, historically; basically, on all fronts. You only wished and hoped that ‘Operation Ganga’ would not get you similar rewards, like a 40% salary cut, a life-threatening infection, an empty bank account, fear, anger, hunger.  

So, one late Sunday night, the decree was received that the political skirmish between Russia and Ukraine had fast-tracked into a full-blown war and Indian students had to be rescued immediately (many against their wishes, you would only find out later). Consequently, repatriation flights had to be planned by first-light to Bucharest, and Budapest, and Warsaw, and Kiev and Debrecen and some other unknown and unpronounceable places. That was the simple plan. It made you reach out immediately for Google Maps. European Geography had never been one of your strong subjects in school. Soon, your Roster (Roaster!) proclaimed that you were to operate an evacuation flight from Budapest to Mumbai. Your association with Budapest had a sliver of memory attached to it from the days of yore. This was not the first time you would be in Budapest. Many decades back, a vacation brought you here, when you were still carefree and young and smiling. Now, you would return for a mission, harassed and old and frowning. You were not sure whether as the years rolled on, life had made you any bolder or wiser. One look in the mirror told you that it had definitely made you balder, not bolder and also wider, not wiser.

Budapest was a twin city – with the ‘Buda’ Hills in the West and the ‘Pest’ Plains in the East; like Yin and Yang; like Yak and Yeti back in Doon; like Thompson and Thompson in the comics; like Alpha and Omega; like This and That; in short, like Beginning and End. It was also a city divided geographically, bifurcated by the winding Danube. On your first visit, Budapest had seemed magical to your young impressionable mind. It was not only the capital of Hungary, it was a city made of dreams: the East’s exuberant vision of the West, the West’s uneasy hallucination of the East. It was a dreamed-up city; a city almost completely faked; a city invented out of other cities, out of Paris by way of Vienna – the imitation of an imitation. You remembered leisurely strolling the cobbled streets, along the magnificent chain bridge over the Danube that connected the two sides, breathing in the senses and smells of Geography and History, walking past the Pubs and Museums and road-side musicians and hookers and painters. It was a Buda-full city, split by a brooding river that had been witness to much bloodshed and violence and carnage and sacrifice and wars and revolutions and uprisings through the ages; and was still called the Blue Danube. But on this present visit, there was no time for a leisure stroll. This time it wasn’t about the Danube, your revisit was the calling of the Ganga, that had been witness to a civilization that preceded time; mightier and most revered river of all history. You were the thread that would connect the two. Also, this time, you were on a mission, in uniform; not on foot but in an aircraft; not as a tourist on a leisure holiday, but on a tight mission that would push the aircraft to the limits of its endurance and you to the limits of fatigue. There would be no Bars to visit this time, no time to inhale the years gone by since your last visit, but replaced by the heady smell of Aviation Turbine Fuel and burning rubber on a freezing tarmac.

The aim of the mission was to just Keep-it-Simple-Stupid. Normally, big words like Patriotism and Nationalism are the last things on your mind in such times. Same-Tame Kargil Déjà vu! The mission did not even take you into Ukraine, and the adrenaline junkie hiding inside you thoroughly missed putting the Boeing-737 through some ‘Beyond-the-FCTM*-Anti-Aircraft-Missile-Maneuvers’. No such luck. It was just routine, like any other day, except for the route that took you across strange lands an intrepid traveler would love to explore. From India, across the Arabian Sea, into the Persian Gulf, to Kuwait (Refueling Halt) and then through Iran, into Armenia and Turkey, along the Southern coast of the Black Sea, and then to Bulgaria, Romania and finally into Hungary. What would have taken about 12 months a few hundred years back on a barge to get to Kuwait and then on horseback to Budapest, took you about 12 hours of flying at three-fourths of the Speed of Sound.