When the media reported French aircraft manufacturer Dassault as the preferred bidder for the multi-billion dollar contract supplying fighter jets to the Indian Air Force (IAF), my mind was on a doctor now managing a large hospital in Cairo.
RAFALE-I
Many years ago, Harish Pillai was a medical student in Mangalore, when he bought a 100cc, two-stroke TVS Supra motorcycle. It cost him Rs 25,000, and came in factory-painted livery of red and white. Before that, the aspiring doctor had wanted to be a fighter pilot. Like many youngsters, he had surrounded his life with the subject that fascinated him — pocket books from the Observer series on fighter planes, Jane's publications, aviation magazines, and hardbound volumes covering planes to tanks and foot soldiers.
One book from his collection that still survives on my shelf is Jane's analysis of armies. It was probably during a visit to Mangalore (or was it later in Thiruvananthapuram?) that I first met his newly-acquired steed. Post-acquisition, it had been repainted all-red and pasted prominently in black were the letters — RAFALE. This was somewhere around the late eighties, early nineties. The bike was purchased in 1989.
Those days, the IAF's flagship fighter aircraft, which nobody spared an opportunity to see, was the Mirage 2000. The IAF began inducting these aircraft in the mid-eighties, which was around the time the first technology demonstrator version of the Rafale made its debut overseas. In an Asterix sort of predicament, I hadn't heard of the French Rafale; the closest I knew was the Raphael of Italian art. The two-wheeler belonging to my fighter aircraft-obsessed medical student of a friend was my first introduction to the aircraft that would, more than two decades later, emerge front-runner to bag India's biggest fighter aircraft deal.
When TV channels flashed the news of Rafale leading the field in the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) acquisition process, I couldn't resist dashing off an e-mail to my friend, asking what had happened to perhaps the only Rafale on two wheels to grace the planet. We hadn't mailed each other in a very long while, and judging by the time difference, he must have been still at work when he got it. With the right bait, I suppose, even the most hard-core professional relapses to the boy in him. Reply was quick.
RAFALE-II
The bike had served its owner faithfully for ten years, from 1989 to 1999, during his progress from medical student to doctor to hospital administrator. In 1999, in Hyderabad, where he had moved to, my friend rode into a showroom and sold off Rafale for Rs 10,000. The price of the red Rafale was adjusted into the cost of the new bike that he acquired from the stables of that manufacturer. It was again a red bike, and my friend, never one to forget his passion for fighter aircraft, called it Rafale-II.
He wrapped up his replies to me, remembering yet another aspect exclusive to two-wheeled Rafales (and which the IAF would never get to do with their flying ones) — memories of negotiating Hyderabad's traffic on monsoon days, with wife and son seated behind. And from Wikipedia information, at that time, in far off France, the real Rafale was close to formal introduction. According to the online encyclopaedia, Rafale was “introduced” in 2000.
Rafale-II was sold off when my friend shifted to Dubai to manage a hospital there.
(The author is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)