PIA was already flying to New York. It had added Canton and Shanghai to its network. Now it turned its attention to Moscow. It was, as if, the airline was setting its own example of peaceful co-existence. Pakistan’s relations with the Soviet Union had been decidedly on the cool side. Pakistan had thrown its weight behind the Free World, as the anti-Soviet allies chose to call themselves.
Gary Powers had taken off on his U-2 from Peshawar and Khrushchev had pencilled in Peshawar as a city doomed to damnation. India, on the other hand, had remained non-aligned with a tilt towards the Soviet Union. But after the Sino-Indian war, India’s nonalignment that had been called “immoral” by John Foster Dulles, acquired a certain respectability. India was the enemy of one of the enemies and was, therefore, a friend of sorts. Pakistan’s growing friendship with the People’s Republic of China had put a further strain on relations with the Soviet Union. It was against this background that PIA had been able to acquire rights to not only fly to Moscow, but beyond. Other airlines terminated their flights in Moscow. PIA would fly on to Frankfurt and London with full traffic rights. It was another PIA first.
‘Jimmy’ Mirza was PIA’s Commercial Director and he was close to Nur Khan. He was, by nature, a quiet man, low-profile and soft-spoken but very able. He was unflappable, I do not remember him ever raising his voice. He seemed an unlikely man to be heading such an aggressive marketing team. Yet, he was a through professional. I got on with him swimmingly, both respect and affection, and often turned to him for guidance. I valued his advice and his friendship. He was a calming influence. His lovely wife, Iris, was a fine lady and she and ‘Jimmy’ made a good team. After ‘Jimmy’ tragically died in the Cairo crash, Iris came to work with PIA, and I was honoured that she had chosen to work in my department. There was the driving leadership of Nur Khan, but behind PIA’s commercial success was the hand of ‘Jimmy’ Mirza. The Moscow service was one example.
Once again, we had another inaugural flight on our hands. It was too soon after China, and I decided to give it a miss. Nur Khan, too, would not be going and Air Commodore Balwant Dass would lead the delegation. If I remember right, he was DGCA then, a wonderful man and a family friend, particularly close to my brother, Sattoo. When I think of people like him, I bemoan how much poorer we all are without them.
About a couple of days before the inaugural flight to Moscow, Nur Khan sent for me. A red light on my intercom would flash, a signal that the boss was calling and one almost leapt to attention, and hurried to his office, turning to his personal assistant, Abid, to inquire if the boss was in a good mood. It was a sort of ritual. Nur Khan never explicitly asked you to sit down. You could remain standing or sit down. It was your choice. He told me that I should go to Moscow. It may have been his own decision or Balwant Dass could have asked for me. He told me that he wasn’t sure, but he might join us in Moscow. Shamim D. Ahmed had been appointed manager and he was already in Moscow. Shamim had been manager in Rome when I had joined PIA and was a good friend of mine. We had gone to Rimini together and had spent many convivial evenings at Jerry’s on Via Veneto in Rome. Shamim was an extrovert and had the gift of making friends. It remained to be seen how he would fare with the more dour Muscovites.
Strangely, I was not thrilled about going to Moscow. I should have been and it would have allowed me to compare it with Beijing, even if superficially. Perhaps, my curiosity had been dulled. Perhaps, if I had been working journalist, I would have been more excited. I was not particularly enamoured by Russia’s political system. I did not have too high an opinion of capitalism, but even by the rigid standards of McCarthyism, I was no communist-sympathizer. I liked to think of myself as a free spirit, not a prisoner of any doctrine. There was, I admit, a contradiction in my thinking. I found nothing stifling in the regimentation of the Chinese system, but the Russian model seemed oppressive. It made no sense, but that was the advantage of being a free spirit!
But I was not unaware that Russia had produced great writers such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gorki, Turgenev, and at one time or another, I had read them; great musicians such as Tchaikovsky, Rachminoff, Shostakovich and I had listened to their music. There were great traditions of ballet, Paviova and Njininsky, of cinema, art, chess-masters, athletes. A society rich in achievement, Moscow would not be a cultural wasteland. If I kept my head down and my mind open, I could enjoy myself.
Because our relations with the USSR were correct and formal, rather than warm and fraternal, negotiations for the Moscow connection were tough. There was, however, no objection, none from those who had been cautious and wary in our government about the China service, none from the US government and none from Beijing! Thus, Pakistan, a card-carrying member of SEATO and CENTO, at the height of the Cold War, had air links to the People’s Republic of China, the USA and now the USSR. PIA’s route-map should have been displayed at the United Nations. PIA also flew to Bombay and New Delhi. Some other Picasso should have painted a PIA aircraft as a peace dove.
The air link to Moscow was not international news and even our own public did not seem particularly enthused. Yet, it was a commercial breakthrough and should have softened political relations. It didn’t. Politics is made of sterner stuff.
The inaugural flight left without any fanfare, a routine departure and no one, except the concerned passengers, took any notice when it was announced over the public address system that PIA’s flight to London via Moscow and Frankfurt was ready for boarding. Unlike the China inaugural, there were no ceremonies at Moscow’s airport, just the lonely figure of Shamim Ahmed. We went through normal channels, passport and customs. There was certainly no red carpet, no flag-waving schoolchildren. Strictly speaking, we were not guests of the USSR government but of PIA, and In-Tourist coaches and guides had been hired by PIA. There were, in a manner of speaking, no smiles at the airport.
We would be staying at the Ukrania Hotel, described locally as a skyscraper but it was no Empire State Building. It was, all the same, a large building in the style of architecture favoured by Stalin. He may have had other virtues, but architecture style was not one of them. It was a rather ugly building. The PIA office was also located in this hotel. As far as I could make out, there was only one lift in the hotel. The PIA office was on one of the upper floors, as was my room. And to get from my room to the office amounted to commuting. It could take half-an-hour, if one was lucky. There was also no room service. Big, burly women were posted on each floor as hotel staff, but one couldn’t help feeling that they were “eyes” watching the coming and going of guests. It provided me the opportunity to give full rein to paranoia.
On our first evening in Moscow, the PIA hosted a reception at the Metropole Hotel that was at some distance from our own hotel. An In-Tourist coach was waiting and we were supposed to depart at 6pm. At the appointed hour, there could not have been more than four of five of us in the bus. The others, it seemed, were more cavalier about time-keeping. The young lady who was in charge looked at her watch and promptly told the driver of the coach to get going. I protested to her that a substantial number of guests had not yet arrived, and she once again looked at her watch, like a reprimand, and we moved on. There was no expression of regret. She seemed almost robotic. I asked her if the bus could go back and pick up the stragglers and she shook her head. She understood English, but was in no mood to make any conversation.
Some of the guests did manage to get to the Metropole Hotel and they cursed not themselves for being late but In-Tourist for being on time. I hoped they had learnt a lesson. How different it had been in China! I missed the pampering. I told some of our guests, good-naturedly of course, that they should consider themselves lucky. The next time they could find themselves in Siberia or worse, trapped in the lift of the Ukrania Hotel.
