Air India might be on the block, but the rich history it carries will be the focus of Maharaja of the Skies — An Indian Heritage, a pictorial exhibition on the journey of India’s national carrier.
Organised by the Society for Culture and Environment, the three-day exhibition will be held at the Nehru Centre in Worli between February 13 and 16. The event will be inaugurated by Air India Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani.
Meera Das, secretary of the Society for Culture and Environment, who has curated the exhibition, said there would be 2,200 photographs and eight posters on display. These include the Air India calendar being created.
The exhibition will have 10 sections, namely The Beginning, JRD, Art Collection, Fleet and Engineering, Service Mission, Maharajah, Booking Offices, Advertising and Promotion, Inflight Services, and Cargo. There will be 125 panels displaying Air India archived photographs.
Among the photographs on display will be those from a wedding that took place on an aircraft.
In-flight wedding
“Visuals from an in-flight wedding arranged by jeweller Laxman Popley in 1994 as a gift to his son and daughter-in-law will be on display. The aircraft was beautifully decorated and the guests were given specially-designed tickets and boarding passes. All this will be there for visitors to see,” said Uttara Parikh, a former management trainee who went on to retire as deputy commercial director of advertising and promotions and product development, Air India.
Ms. Parikh is helping in bringing out the national carrier’s history through this exhibition.
Post the wedding, the airline presented free tickets to the newly-weds to Switzerland. Also on display will be photographs of dresses designed by the late Roshan Kalapesi, who designed crew outfits with a pink theme to represent Jaipur. For her work, Kalapesi was gifted a ticket to London and back.
Ms. Parikh said artist B. Prabha had done a series of paintings on Indian Women as a theme in 1956. The airline purchased these paintings for just ₹87.50 with an idea to promote them on the menu cards.
