Kishore Singh: En route NYC: Have a sane flight

We had requested an upgrade on Air India's 15-hour haul from New Delhi to New York, but the carrier was flying a full load, so the lady at the check-in counter regretted her inability to move us to the fore of the cabin. "Who's the captain on the flight?" my wife asked - she keeps a list of those who have previously relocated her from economy to business - but the check-in attendant couldn't, or wouldn't, say. Though it was late, my wife began dialling them to say, "Hey, was thinking of you, must meet for a drink, by the way are you on tonight's roster to the Big Apple?"

She might as well have saved herself the trouble, we were fated to fly in cattle class, and Shashi Tharoor couldn't have been more right - there was something bovine about the way passengers had been penned into their seats, made worse by the timing. The flight proceeded entirely in darkness as it navigated earth's circumference on the opposite side of the sun. The in-flight lights, too, remained switched off except for the short duration when the in-flight crew doled out its muddled-in-time-zones fare. Did I want vegetarian or non-vegetarian? "Do I look like a cow?" I retorted? For my troubles, the steward served me cauliflower curry. "I'll have the non-vegetarian," my wife informed him correctly. "Will that be chicken or lamb?" he asked her, fussing solicitously to explain that the former was an Indian curry, the latter Continental. He also served her wine with her meal, unsolicited. When I requested a scotch on the rocks, he said he'd let me know if the bar was open.

Maybe he was unhappy because I had cribbed earlier that "Nothing on this flight works." Even if he took it personally, it's true that my reading light didn't switch on, while my in-flight video remained obstinately off. "You need to reboot," he told me in exasperation, when I complained in the aft pantry for the third time - no, the attendant call button didn't work either. Since I was unaware of how to do this, he reluctantly accompanied me back to my seat and did things that got the touch screen video to work, though not the controls. This meant I had a pair of snapped earphones and no sound. Therefore, I chose a film with subtitles to watch, which was still better than my wife whose screen remained fixed on the fast-forward mode. She watched a half-dozen films, all in fast-forward, but didn't seem to mind at all, maybe because she was dozing through them anyway.

Our co-passenger in the row was a charming Indian-American who was completely, utterly drunk before he boarded the flight and needed frequent use of the washroom. Instead of asking us to let him pass, he opted to lope over our legs. The first time, he dropped my laptop, the next occasion he tipped the contents of my wife's wine on to her blanket, and, finally, my scotch on the rocks - purloined from the pantry when the steward wasn't looking - over my jacket, causing the service crew to wrinkle their noses when they came around with cold croissants and tepid tea. Our explanation that we hadn't had one too many, that it was our co-passenger - sleeping like a lamb - who was responsible, didn't find favour with them. I can only hope that on the flight back, we luck in with a fresh crew instead of one for whom we've notched up a sullied record.