JRD Tata
Icare9., As you will see later, I got to know JRD very well and he was always the same. Dynamic, charming and very, very likeable. It was the way of life that I had never encountered before and he was so totally different from any other Chief of an Airline, not only that but the man who had made it possible. As I found out quickly, India was so different. and what would have been furtive and clandestine in the U.K. of the Thirties and Forties , was taken for granted, and even expected, in the India of 1948....Don't forget that we, the British, had been the virtual rulers and lawmakers for time immemorial...Clive of India etc. I am not condoning the practices; I am just telling it as it was to a young man , 26 years old, married, two children and just out of the RAF, who had never been in business of any sort and had never...and still does not...want to. I think that there are many ex-servicemen and still more ex and current Airline Pilots who think exactly the same way, notwithstanding the exceptional exceptions. So I hope that you, and others, who read these threads will try and go back with me to times that were very different from now. I think that we all lost our innocence in those dreadful but stirring days.
I know that my contemporaries, like Cliff, will understand. Reg.