India Charm Offensive: An Expat Pilot Flies the South Asia Jungle

In "India Charm Offensive" the author offers a lighthearted recount of time spent adventuring through exotic India, flying helicopters for a company contracted to its paramilitary forces.

Having no success avoiding disease, toxic moonshine and lava spiced curry, he also had to survive homicidal drivers, jungle dwelling rebels and, at times, rifle fire. Despite routine encounters with mayhem and death, he also found something approaching charm. Not in the culture of chaos, but in the dark eyes of a mahila, who called India home.

Beauty and Bedlam Collide in East India.

"Sir! Go up, go up, go up!" shouted Babeesh, my crew chief, with big saucer eyes and betel nut juice down his chin. "You need to go up!"

Lurching forward in the seat next to me, he thrust his filthy pointy-finger at the ground. His words quickly smothered by what sounded like we’d hit a sudden pelting hailstorm, though we flew through cloudless sky.

The rifle-toting troopers in back were shouting too. Although shouting in Hindi, it was clear they also wished for me to go up. Adding my vote made the count unanimous. But an Apollo rocket we were not; as the rotor blades clawed at the loose, humid air, we only gained altitude at a rate just better than a tethered balloon.

"Those buggers are shooting at us," I said. "We’re being shot at." Not that anyone onboard needed this illuminating observation.

There seemed to be no shooting from the south, so, banking the helicopter nearly on its side, I angled away in that direction, and the helicopter slowly—too slowly—climbed.