It was another midweek trip out of town. I really did not care where I was flying to ? Mumbai, Delhi or Bangalore. The very thought of a few more nights in a hotel room, another unending series of meetings and the boredom of the impending air travel made the immediate future look very bleak.

The only saving grace was my favourite private airline. Once inside the aircraft, I knew the comfort level would be high, the food would be tolerable and the crew behaviour would be unobtrusively pleasant. I patted myself on the back for choosing the right airline and whispered a line from an old ad ?It is the right choice, baby?.

At the airport, I was making my unhurried way to the check-in counter. Two policemen at two entry points satisfied themselves that I was a genuine passenger. These guys are not impressed by jackets and ties. You never know these days, they seemed to be saying. Baggage screening over, I was walking past the row of counters of the national carrier. This is when the poster drew my attention.

It was a simply laid-out advertisement from Indian Airlines. And it said things that made me stop and read the copy very carefully. The ad said: ?What do you do when a nation?s name is in your name? You get busy living up to the nation?s dreams. You stop asking ?Why must I?? You become the only airline to rip out seats to accommodate that frail grandmother on a stretcher. You work 200 hours non-stop to evacuate fellow countrymen because they are stranded in an alien country. You fly in the face of cyclones, earthquakes and floods, in Bhuj or Orissa. You have to. Because if you don?t who will? We have a nation to live up to.?

It was like being in a time machine. I went back many years, when as a kid it was mandatory for me, thanks to my father, to hoist the national flag on the balcony every 15th of August, stand up every time Jana gana mana was played, blow the conch shell on the 23rd of January a little after one o? clock in the afternoon.

Those were distant days when ?I love my India? had not become just a hummable tune. For a moment I forgot my flight, sat in the sofa opposite and read the ad again. I was feeling guilty that I was flying another airline. That I thought could be corrected later but for now let me get hold of a copy of this ad. They must have used these powerful lines in other media too. So I walked up to the gentleman in an unmistakable Indian Airlines uniform and asked him where I could get a copy of this ad. He replied in a bewildered voice: ?Sir, which ad are you talking about?? I took him to the poster. He said ?Oh this one? and sent me to the customer service counter.

At the counter, there were four or five people waiting to be served. Five minutes later, I was told that they did not know the poster existed. When I showed them, I was asked to write to Delhi. I made my way back to the poster, took out pen and paper from the briefcase and wrote down every word in the ad as if they were from a holy book.

One wonders whether our nationalism is today confined to the cricket field. Obviously it is not wholly true. As a friend pointed out, even as consumer bait, it has played a useful role in as recent a campaign as Hamara Bajaj.

The lesson lies elsewhere. Nationalism or any other lure cannot work all alone. The brand in flesh and blood has to stand behind it. Just for the record, I did not make any change in my flight bookings.