When Amitabh and Shah Rukh reached for the sky

M D Riti in Bangalore

Give Amitabh Bachchan a heavy lunch and he drops into a light doze.

Or so Colonel Jayant Pooviah noticed, when he flew his celebrity passenger back to Bangalore in a helicopter from North Karnataka, where he had gone to participate at the inauguration of a dam.

Big B opted to sit next to Pooviah in the cockpit on both trips to and fro. In the back were Jaya Bachchan, Anil and Tina Ambani.

Tina simply climbed into the helicopter with a cheery wave. However, Jaya Bachchan came across as the perfect woman-next-door, say the staff of Deccan Aviation, the Bangalore-based helicopter charter company, which does a lot of flying for the Indian film industry.

Sometimes, one or two of their fleet of eight helicopters and two aeroplanes are hired to do aerial photography. At other times, the aircraft feature in action sequences or otherwise appear on screen.

Often, film stars simply hire them to reach certain destinations quickly.

Like Shah Rukh Khan did when he wanted to make a quick flying visit to a Dalai Lama who lives in a large Tibetan settlement in Bylukuppe, Karnataka. Khan had just completed Asoka, and wanted the Lama's blessings.

He flew down from Mumbai to Bangalore with good friend Jay Mehta [Juhi Chawla's husband. Chawla and Khan are business partners and producers of Asoka]. The helicopter picked him up from Bangalore airport and flew him directly to the Tibetan settlement where he spent an hour with the Dalai Lama.

Mehta and a preoccupied Khan sat side by side in the back of the helicopter on both journeys. The reason for Khan's preoccupation became quite apparent. His son Aryan was undergoing some minor hospital procedure in Mumbai.

So Khan spent most of his time at the Deccan Aviation office at the picturesque Jakkur airport speaking to his wife Gauri and son Aryan on his cell phone. Mehta chatted quite amiably with the company's founder and managing director Captain G R Gopinath and executive director K J Samuel.

Amitabh, on the other hand, hopped willingly into the cockpit with Pooviah, who doubles as vice president and pilot in this company. He also showed great interest in the business of chartering helicopters and how viable it was.

Until he discovered that Pooviah and both his co-founders Gopinath and Samuel, were ex-armymen. Amitabh promptly began chatting very animatedly about army life. Films, especially the ones in which he had played army officers, also featured in the conversation.

"Amitabhji comes across, in real life, exactly as he does in Kaun Banega Crorepati," recalls Pooviah with a smile -- "very gracious and charming." Amitabh obviously liked the firm too: He chartered one of their helicopters for a pilgrimage to Badrinath soon after.

Deccan's helicopters have worked for several Hindi films like Indian, Soldier, Farz and even the yet-to-be-released Yeh Dil Aashiqana and Bharata Bhagya Vidhaatha. They have also worked for one Hollywood film, Crocodile 2: Death Roll.

The Kannada film industry regularly uses their services, too -- High Command, Chamundi and several Shivaraj Kumar starrers, for example. The film Deccan pilots remember best is Upendra's yet-to-be-released film Superstar, featuring Upendra and Keerthi Reddy, who makes her debut in Kannada cinema with this film.

Popular Tamil actress Simran, whom Pooviah flew on another occasion, left no mark on his memory. She did not speak to the crew at all; she was silent throughout her flight. Her co-star in that particular Tamil film, Madhavan, was quite the opposite. He went out of his way to talk to Pooviah and the two struck up quite a friendship, which made them seek each other out in-between shots.

"He told me he was the best NCC cadet at school and had even participated in a parade in Delhi," recalls Pooviah. "He even confided that he had wanted to join the army but his parents had objected. I found him genuinely friendly and asked him about the films he worked in. He is very down-to-earth."

Pooviah even had the privilege of flying for Mani Ratnam, for his new film: "He was organised, quiet and efficient. He had hired the helicopter for two hours per day but was so specific about what he wanted, in terms of aerial photography or my flying the aircraft on screen, that we finished in half an hour every time."

Most of the film industry work that comes Deccan's way is from Mumbai and Hyderabad. Many Telugu films have also used Deccan's services. They have flown most of the major Telugu stars on their aircraft.

An hour of flying time on a chartered helicopter costs anything between Rs 45,000 and Rs 62,000, depending on the kind of helicopter and the place from which you are flying. The firm now has seven helicopters and two aeroplanes, spread across eight bases all over India.