top of page

By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

AI’s Maharaja smiles joyfully

All 30 grounded aircrafts now fly Mumbai : Air India’s Maharaja is all pleased as punch at 80. After years of huge costs and efforts, the last of the grounded 30 aircraft – inherited by the Tata Group during the privatization in Jan. 2022 – is now resurrected fully and took to the skies gracefully on Monday.   The aircraft is the gleaming VT-ALL, a Boeing 777-300ER, that was gathering grime since February 2020, and becomes the final among the two-and-half dozen aircraft that have been revved...

AI’s Maharaja smiles joyfully

All 30 grounded aircrafts now fly Mumbai : Air India’s Maharaja is all pleased as punch at 80. After years of huge costs and efforts, the last of the grounded 30 aircraft – inherited by the Tata Group during the privatization in Jan. 2022 – is now resurrected fully and took to the skies gracefully on Monday.   The aircraft is the gleaming VT-ALL, a Boeing 777-300ER, that was gathering grime since February 2020, and becomes the final among the two-and-half dozen aircraft that have been revved up and revived in the past few years, AI official sources said.   It marked a symbolic milestone for Air India itself - founded in 1932 by the legendary Bharat Ratna J. R. R. Tata - which once ruled the roost and was India’s pride in the global skies.   Once renowned for its royal service with the iconic Maharaja welcoming fliers on board, in 1953 it was taken over by the government of India. After years of piling losses, ageing aircraft, decline in operations and standards – almost like a Maharaja turning a pauper - it returned to the Tata Group four years ago.   This time it was not just the aircraft, the brand and the deflated Maharaja coming into the large-hearted Tata Group stables, but a formidable challenge to ensure that the airline could regain its old glory and glitter. Of the total around 190 aircraft in its fleet were 30 – or 15 pc – that had been grounded and neglected for years.   At that time, the late Ratan N. Tata had directed that all these valuable aircraft must be revived as far as possible and join the fleet. Accordingly, the VT-ALL, languishing at Nagpur for nearly five years, was ‘hospitalized’ at the Air India Engineering Service Ltd., its MRO facility in May 2025.   New Avatar Then started a thorough, painstaking nose-to-tail restoration of an unprecedented scale, in which over 3000 critical components were replaced, over 4,000 maintenance tasks executed, besides key structural upgrades like the longeron modification, engines, auxiliary power units, avionics, hydraulics, landing gears and almost every vital system was rebuilt or replaced.   After the repairs, the old aircraft was reborn, under the gaze of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and technical assistance from Boeing, and the new ‘avatar’ jetliner emerged with the highest global safety standards.   The aircraft cleared all the rigorous checks, a successful test flight, earned the mandatory Airworthiness Review Certificate and then made its maiden commercial flight from Monday, March 16 – after a wait of six years.   Sturdy Fliers Created in 1946 to become an instant global icon, the Air India’s mascot Maharaja now sports a youthful and chic look, a welcome with folded hands, closed eyes, featuring a bejewelled turban, stylish jootis, and a textured kurta in Air India’s new colours. He is prominently visible at various touch-points in a flyer’s journey, such as First Class, exclusive lounges, and luxury products.   Today, he commands a mix fleet of around 190 narrow and wide-body Airbus and Boeing aircraft like : A319, A320, A320neo, A321, A321neo, A350-900 and B787-8, B787-9, B7770200LR, B-777-300ER. With the merger of Vistara and agreements signed for 10 A350 and 90 A320 aircraft, the Maharaja’s fleet is slated to soar to some 570 in the near future.

Marathi content to struggle for OTT

Having analysed all the possible reasons why several Marathi movies which were critically acclaimed and appreciated by one and all couldn’t pass the OTT test, more or less, it was gathered that everything boils down to money.


OTT is a cost incurred business that requires money for maintenance and hence the platform is open to any content that attracts the audience. Once the audience gives a tremendous response in the form of numbers, all OTT gates automatically open up.


Having spoken to experts, The Perfect voice also tried to engage in conversations with Marathi and non-Marathi viewers. There were mixed thoughts. While close to 100 viewers who gave mixed responses cannot be enough to draw a conclusion, the exercise definitely shed some light on what could possibly be the inclination of the audience.


While some non-Marathi speaking viewers expressed passionately about Marathi cinema and the depth it involved, some even had watched offbeat realistic films like Kaasav, Tingya, and the likes which many haven’t even heard of. While many others highlighted the difference between Classical and popular genres. Some films have quality and can appeal to just a small section of the society, while many others who tune in to OTT for entertainment may find such films too heavy to digest. A few pointed out that Marathi content lacks the masala magic which is a mixture of sex, violence and abusive language that is important to attract the audience and this factor reduces the probability of the Marathi content attracting an audience unlike other regional content or Bollywood content. Then a question arises, what about a film like Sairat? Sairat is a difficult love story that draws a very harsh realistic picture of the repercussions of a marriage that’s not acceptable to the society for various complex reasons.


The film has masala, but the presentation is subtle. Just the way Amaltaash serenely portrays complexities of relationships, romance, tragedy, with brilliant music being the cherry on the top. What was the secret behind Sairat’s success? The answer lies in aggressive marketing. Zee left no stone unturned in promoting the film on all platforms. “Aggressive marketing is what worked for Sairat. Aggressive promotion is the only key to success in this industry,” said popular actor Uday Tikekar. To some extent this logic is believable as history has an example of late director Shyam Benegal who made films like Hari Bhari a film that talks about importance of birth control as early as in 1070’s, is not even heard of and Zubeida that has come to be known as the finest piece made by Shyam Benegal who dealt with much more brilliant ideas and topics in a series of films right from the 1970’s like Ankur, Manthan, Nishant, Hari Bhari, Sooraj Ka Satwa Ghoda, Mammo and Sardari Beghum. What changed during Zubeida? Glamour stepped in along with Karishma Kapoor, A R Rahman and the financially strong promoters. Till Zubeida, Vanraj Bhatia did music for all Benegal movies. How many of us have heard of him? Benegal made a commercially right decision and hit a masterstroke after parting ways with the realistic and classical world in 1996, when he worked on Sardari Beghum.


Another important point was highlighted by Prakash Kunte, the director of popular Marathi movies like Coffee Aani Barach Kahi and Cycle who said, “Dialectic diversity which changes after every few hundred kilometers, makes our (Marathi content creators) case more difficult. Besides, Marathi as a language makes it unfit for web or OTT purely because of thin audience size. Secondly, in Hindi there's a separate set of actors working in the Web shows and films. While Marathi actors work in all media including theatre. This is also a factor.”


Sources in the industry also highlighted that caste is another aspect. A lot of content that is created by the upper caste (Brahmins) revolves around their own purist lifestyle which doesn’t resonate with the entire Maharashtra which is not merely confined to Brahmans.


While the future of Marathi content is not so grim as it sounds to be, the difference between classical and popular genres will always be there. Those who cater to the right target audience, make content that people popularly like and spend the right amount of money in making people aware of their creativity will make it through OTT platforms. While those who follow the route of the French neo-realist concept of filmmaking that was adopted by Satyajit Ray, will make it to film festivals, awards, donations and Cinema academics but probably will fail the OTT test.

Comments

bottom of page