Air Hostess

Chapter 1: A Good Offer

If the offer is too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

That’s my mama. I tell her that my salary will double, that I will travel the world, and we will finally be able to shed our lower middle-class existence.

“Think about it,” she said again. “You will be away from home, in a different culture. No one to support you. What will you do alone? You don’t need the offer: you are earning well enough in India.”

“You know that’s not enough mama. You know well that brother is going to need money to go to college, this house needs repairs badly. How are going to make do with your meagre income and my salary?”

“We are doing OK,” she said. “God will help us.”

“Don’t listen to her, sister, it’s a great opportunity. You deserve a good break. You have got one now,” my brother chimed in.

To tell you the truth, I did have my doubts. I had never heard about the company that offered me the job, though their brochures showed a number of planes and smart crew. I had to sign a three-year contract, and had to return my salary if I left before that time. I would get a free air ticket after three years to come home. But the question remained – why should anyone pay me double of what I was getting? I mean a raise of ten or twenty percent would have been fine. But then I reasoned that they were compensating me for staying away from home for three years.

“Actually,” said my brother. “You work hard. The airline you work for is good. But how long can you keep working at this salary? I think you’ve got a well-deserved break.”

That’s how it began. That’s how my life changed. But let me tell you how I got there.

*

I had realised that I was beautiful while I was in school. The boys looked at me furtively and occasionally wanted to talk to me, only to make a fool of themselves. Street Romeos and middle-aged men eyed me shamelessly and sometimes even commented on my looks.

My skin had turned fair and flawless. I had large and deep eyes which melted boys. People told me I looked innocent and sweet, and I knew I had to preserve those qualities. I had a natural pout and a smiling face. When I smiled, I would get a dimple on my cheek. I was taller than my friends, which gave me an impression of confidence, but to tell you the truth, I was not confident at all.

My hands were soft and smooth. I kept the nails small, clean and well-rounded. My hands were so delicate that my mom said that they were almost transparent. I had a good pair of breasts, soft but firm, large and round, with small round nipples that stood on white mounds. I wondered whether my tits were brown or pink; and I could never make up my mind. Sometimes my nipples looked pink, and sometimes they looked somewhat brown. I would hold them in my hands, look on them and wonder, who will kiss them?

My pussy was very delicate. My friends had persuaded me to shave my pussy some years back, and I had done it with my papa’s razor. It was all irritable and bruisy for days, and I decided I would never shave it again! I used to trim the hair down there after that, so if you looked at it, you would see some hair, sometimes short, sometimes curly. I was not a hairy girl, and my arms and pussy looked butter smooth even without shaving.

I never wore any make-up when I went out, simply because we couldn’t afford it. But I would try different lip colours which my friends used to smuggle from their homes.

This awareness of my beauty came at a price – I lost interest in studies. My brother, on the other hand, showed promise. He was five years younger than me.

In my final year of school, a boy started following me around. He was not like my other school mates, and was confident enough to approach me. Raju had a motor cycle and looked quite dashing. One day he cornered me while I was coming back from school.

“Listen, I like you. I want to be with you. When I set my eyes upon you, I couldn’t believe one could be so beautiful and innocent as you are.”

“I don’t want a boyfriend. You boys are only trouble. Find someone else,” I told him.

“All right, I will not be your boyfriend,” he said. “Just let me be with you. We will just talk.”

He persisted, and after much pleading and begging, I agreed. At first, he would walk with me after school, then he would pick me on his motor cycle and we would go for a drive or ice cream before he dropped me home. My grades in school dropped further.

My mother could not help notice what was going on.

“It’s OK that you don’t want to study,” my mom would tell me. “However, I don’t know what you want to do in life. You don’t want to work like me, and you can’t get a job without a degree. I am not against you going around with that boy, but can you marry and settle down with him? Can he look after you? He can’t. What am I to do with you?”

The trouble was that I didn’t know either. I would just walk to school with my brother and come back with my boyfriend. That’s all I knew. Now school was going to end, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

Then one of the uncles who used to eye me whenever he came, told me that I could be an air hostess. “You will travel the world, you will be envy of so many people. And your personality suits one of an air hostess.”

That’s how I got enrolled at an institute that trained people for cabin crew. In the classes I learnt to dress well, apply makeup, tie my hair tightly into a small bun and strut about in heels. I also learnt to speak well and deal with mock customers. Our teachers encouraged us to look good. This helped me and I slowly gained confidence.

Mama was happy that I had found my calling. But my boyfriend was getting restless.

“We meet every day but never do anything. I want you so badly. The way you lick ice cream, I want to be the ice cream in your hand!”

“We will do everything after marriage, I promise. Why so restless?”

“That’s a long distance away. All right, let’s compromise. Why don’t you show me these things,” he said pointing to my breasts.

“All right,” I said. “But promise not to touch them.”

“I promise I won’t.”

“But where? You don’t want me to undress here on the road, with so many people?”