Capt. Vikas Nautiyal
Deputy Chief Pilot Operations

Change is the secret sauce of life, it is said, and in line with this oft abused quote, your life motto had gradually changed from an idealistic inspirational (Latin) ‘Carpe Diem’ (Seize the Day, your favourite quote in school) to ‘Carpe Noctem’ (Seize the Night, as Crew Scheduling had now transformed you into a creature of the night) to ‘Carpe Vinum’ (Seize the Wine, your new motto, whenever you rarely reached any Duty Free now-a-days). Desperate times called for desperate measures, and when you had reached the desperate point at which you were about to sell one kidney to pay the next month’s EMIs, came a ray of hope from a new dawn. The fact that you witnessed this dawn breaking from 35,000 ft while returning from an all-night Redeye flight not withstanding. Geography had taught you in school, every silver lining had a dark cloud right next to it.

For you, receiving an email that wasn’t an invitation to Flight Safety Dept, or a new Operations Circular or yet another Flight Operational Bulletin was a relief, but getting an inspirational message in these dark times, was the proverbial icing on the cake. The email contained the new Code of Conduct. Two facts. The first fact that you had been instructed to stay away from cake or icing and was a pity and the second fact that you had to sell your laptop to pay the last term school fees and hence couldn’t download the Code of Conduct was an equal, if not bigger shame, (some unmentionables could never be mentioned in public). But despite the unmentionables, and anxious to the level of discomfort, filled with trepidation and a hope like no other in the world, you somehow managed to read through the new Code of Conduct in the money lender’s office. It talked of high ideals, in your rather low world full of everyday realism, high morals in your world of low morale. On the sides of the message, you looked and looked, but there were no grocery vouchers attached. You would have any day preferred Bhindi instead of Integrity, Pioneering reminded you of the astronomical rise of cost of Paneer, and Excellence, that quality you had only a faint memory of, in this age of pestilence. Your colleagues, the Bhindi shoppers of Bombay, the Kurry Patta eaters of God’s Own Kerala and the Dhaniya Baniyas of Dilli were equally confused. Solidarity for grocery united everyone in similar thick soup.

The news in your rumour network was strong. A new dawn indeed was coming. No one was sure of anything any longer. Status quos would be shaken, citadels would be demolished, sleeping dogs wouldn’t be allowed to continue to sleep like dogs anymore and hitherto hierarchies would be destroyed. People whispered about these in hushed tones, like confessing secrets. Speaking of hierarchy, you swore by it, had always worshiped it and were a net product of it from your service days. They say that in any hierarchical organisation, a person reaches his level of incompetence. So, back in the dark ages, when you were unceremoniously appointed to the unpaid post of ‘Deputy Chief Pilot – Operations’, you somehow knew in the back of your head that the longer the designation, the lesser the expectation. Only, you just didn’t know that soon there would come a promotion to ‘Deputy Chief Pilot Operations – Overworked and Underpaid’, proving thereby that the organisation equally believed in you. (And speaking of long titles, Of course, no one knew that you were also secretly moonlighting as the ‘Permanent Chief of Intergalactic Beagle Council of the Universe’) To add insult to injury, your overly glorified position sounded much worse than your colleagues who were struggling with ‘Deputy Chief Pilot Operations – Common Sense and some Nonsense’ Or ‘Deputy Chief Pilot Operations – Responsible for everything going wrong’ (his didn’t even rhyme). In those days, this dazzling diamanté of the designation dignitaries were everywhere around us. It was a malaise. It was rumoured that in one of those buildings, there existed an entire secret Department for sleeping dogs, presided over by a ‘Deputy Regional General Manager– Beagles, Golden Retrievers and Labradogs (Independent Charge)’. What would happen to such a legacy in the new age, you thought rather overdramatically, but as usual, no one paid any attention. Many such designations came with limited responsibilities, while other responsibilities that were thrust upon you by life like those of a grocery shopper, father, a brother, a husband, a son and a holy ghost came with no designations but unlimited responsibilities.

Life is never fair. At some places, more was less and at others, it was the opposite. 100hrs was the new 60hrs where time suddenly contracted when you counted the monthly flying hours for payment purposes. You took this rather educatively, having ultimately understood Quantum Foam, the principle of time contraction from theoretical physics. However, at other places, less was more. So, when you proposed to lose 6 Kgs instead of 10 Kgs during the renewal medical, the doctor didn’t seem pleased at all and advised you not to carry past baggage in the new age. It left you confused. One day you had a nightmare that you were being charged 10 Kgs extra baggage at the check in counter for the bags under your eyes that you had acquired due to the Super Red Eye Flights. The fact that you were desperately trying conceal them under your service issue Aviator Raybans didn’t go unnoticed.

These were also times when not only Geography or Theoretical Physics, but your knowledge of pure arithmetic, (or lack of it), was also challenged. How much percentage close had we come to the Pre-pandemic status in terms of revenue / margins / load factors / yields? 40 percentage pay cut and 33 percentage tax on the remaining, did it make arithmetic sense to add it to get 73 percentage, while your flying had inched dangerously close to 100 percentage of the fatigue limit? Were you actually saving money, because you were paying lesser percentage tax on a lesser percentage salary? What were the percentage chances that your salary would be restored in the new era? What percentage of Covid was behind you? Delta had come and gone, Omicron had come and gone, the percentage pay cut had gone too, but hadn’t come back.

In short, in this twisted and convoluted world, where percentages always seemed to work against you. Where more meant less, less meant more, and nothing was as it seems, life hurtled on and the struggle continued. The struggle with designations with no responsibilities and responsibilities with no designations, dark clouds and silver linings, sleeping dogs and sleeping like dogs, Bhindi shopping, Paneer cravings and Kurry Patta eating, impending transformations in the new age, desperate attempts to cling to the continuum of legacy, the constant of change and the inevitable breaking of a new dawn. The struggle to come up to the level of expectation of the new dawn was a burden one carried, but the struggle to come to the ones one made of oneself was the ultimate millstone around the neck.