Malavika’s Mumbaistan: Leaving On A Jet Plane

We, along with hundreds of anonymous frequent flyers who’d flown on his airline, received an email from Jet Airways outgoing chairman Naresh Goyal yesterday. The

We, along with hundreds of anonymous frequent flyers who’d flown on his airline, received an email from Jet Airways outgoing chairman Naresh Goyal yesterday. The tone was expectedly ‘emotional’. “Jet Airways, as you all know, has truly been a labour of love. And looking back, I would not want to change a thing,” he said. In a week, it will be the 27th anniversary of the airline, and given the turbulence it has been facing, Goyal, a man who’d risen from humble beginnings to become, at one time, the virtual Lord of Clouds, could be allowed his sentimentality. We’d first heard of him way back in the late 1980s when he ran a successful travel agency with an office in Churchgate. He was known as the man who threw a lot of parties – almost one every week, it was said – mostly involving Bollywood personalities and the diplomatic corps. We finally met up with him a few years later, in the company of his close friend Javed Akhtar, at the then chairman of Air India Rajan Jaitley’s apartment at Peddar Road. To us, he came across as someone inherently gregarious or as what Anil Ambani, in an interview, had once described his BFF Amar Singh to be: ‘Always in relationship mode’. The importance Goyal and later, his wife Anita – credited with ably partnering with him in all his endeavours – lay on personal relationships is said to be one of the pillars of the couple’s unprecedented success. The friendship with Akhtar and wife Shabana, for instance, has endured over the years and only gotten stronger. The next we’d heard of Goyal was in the early 1990s after he’d launched Jet Airways and we’d accompanied a planeload of hacks, including friends like Behram (Busybee) Contractor and Mario Miranda, to fly with him to Malaysia to bring back an aircraft he’d leased. Once again, we had the opportunity to observe his people skills. Flying with a plane full of journos, Goyal always made it a point to sit at the back of the bus with us, never playing the ‘owner of the airline’ card even once. The other thing that struck us was how, for a man whose career was in aviation, Goyal appeared to be distinctly petrified of flying, and his body language and behaviour would get decidedly more agitated each time we were airborne! Be that as it may, it had been a wonderful trip, and after we were received by no less than Dilip Kumar on the tarmac, when we returned on the newly-leased aircraft, our paths had hardly crossed, even though we often flew on his airline which had established itself as a superior product during its early years. Which is why, when, along with the hundreds of anonymous frequent flyers who’d flown on his airline, we received an email from Goyal yesterday, of course, we felt a twinge of sadness for his predicament. But then, like every other frequent flyer on his airline, we have to admit that our overarching thought had been: What’s going to happen to our Frequent Flyer Miles now?!

Naresh Goyal, outgoing chairman of Jet Airways (HT File)

First Ever Benefit Gala And Fundraiser

Bittu Sahgal

It’s been at the forefront of wildlife conservation campaigns and a leading platform for concerned individuals, wildlife groups and NGOs in the country. So, later this week, when Bittu Sahgal’s Sanctuary Asia magazine hosts its first ever fundraiser ‘The Sanctuary Nature Foundation Benefit Gala’, its legion of friends, supporters, artists, and captains of industry are all expected to gather for the elegant evening, driven by purpose. “It will open with the inimitable Vir Das followed by an auction and sit-down dinner,” says a spokesperson of the NGO. “The centrepiece of the fundraiser will be a live art auction of 33 works, carefully curated to offer a heady mix of well-known artists, affordability and value-buying, with the idea that it will give everyone in the audience an opportunity to participate. There are a few large-format works by artists like Ram Kumar and KH Ara that will be very attractive for the serious buyer. A 1973 Ram Kumar oil on canvas is likely to be a highlight. And an array of wonderful, yet affordable works of masters and favourites like MF Husain, FN Souza, Jogen Chowdhury.” A unique aspect of the auction, we are informed, is a selection of extraordinary travel experiences curated by Sanctuary, which will also go under the hammer. Each of the winning bidders will be joined by a different surprise co-traveller, who will make the experience truly memorable. Sahgal had conceived of a foundation to engage the common man in understanding the rationale for wildlife conservation almost 40 years ago, late one night, while in the jungle, inspired by Fateh Singh Rathore, the then field director of the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve. Since then, it has grown into a large banyan tree with many offshoots such as Kids for Tigers, an environmental education school programme, the Sanctuary’s Mud on Boots initiative that financially supports grassroots conservationists in India and Earth Heroes, its recognition of extraordinary heroes working at the front lines of India’s battle to protect wildlife and the environment. But today, with the planet’s bio-diversity and ecology facing its gravest threat, the role Sanctuary can play is even more significant. Hence, the fundraiser.

City City Bang Bang

Milind Deora

“Added to my responsibility is the fact that the Congress was launched in Mumbai. So in that respect, its presence and strength in Mumbai is all the more significant,” said Milind Deora – who was appointed the Congress’s Mumbai unit chief on Monday – when we spoke yesterday. It is a title that was held by his late father Murli Deora who served as President of the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee for 22 years – from 1981 to 2003! Other stalwarts who’d made a mark in the same position were urbane, power brokers like barrister Rajni Patel and stalwart SK Patil, who had embodied the zeitgeist of their times. With his youthful, progressive outlook and his synergies with various key constituents of the city like the professional, business, Bollywood and youth communities, Deora’s appointment could well herald in a much-needed new chapter in the age-old party’s fortunes.