AFVOA Newsletter 03 of 2020

Section 5 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 03 / 2020 Page 131 of 167 16 The Chain Snatcher Capt S Krishnamurthy Genre: Reflections ust as I was looking at the tie that was not properly positioned around his collar of the candidate who was sitting in front of me, the door that was on my left opened and the face of the Colonel, my immediate boss, appeared. “Krish, there was a call from Delhi and I am leaving for the airport. Please could you take over my two leftover candidates?” Before I could answer him in positive, he vanished just as he had appeared. The Colonel and I were in the process of selecting security officers for a vibrant airline and there were far too many aspirants. With the ‘nine-eleven’ barely behind us by four odd months, the airline’s bigwigs in Delhi wanted us to select and set up an aviation security squad in line with an airline in the ‘middle-east’. So we asked for graduates, we wanted NCC ‘C’ certificate holders, we preferred senior division NCC cadets who had done the Republic Day parade, both boys and girls. Despite these strict QR’s, we had several, in thousands, candidates. Painfully we had brought the number to a few hundreds and the final weeding, the personal interviews were on. I looked at the CV that was in front of me and the crooked tie of the candidate. “You have mentioned gliding…”, the boy was so eager to answer that he interrupted me. “Yes, Sir. Air Wing NCC, I did for three years and have several launches to my credit” I looked this time into his eyes. “You are in the wrong place, young man. You should in the Selection Board of the AF, either in Mysore or Dehradun”. This time, he waited for me to finish. “Yes, Sir, Mysore; am waiting for the joining instructions.” Being an ex IAF pilot, my heart soared. I told him to meet me after the session got over but now he could go out and send the next candidate. Here, I was not only happy for the boy but also for the sudden increase in my time in hand that had increased. Two more would not take more than twenty minutes. Driving time from north Mumbai to Santa Cruz would be another forty minutes. I looked at the clock; I too could be in the airport, before four. J