Excess baggage cost Calcutta a chance to experience neo-circus — all because the airline allegedly waited till the last moment to inform the French fun fleet that the boxes carrying the show gear were too big for its craft.

The Company Méli Mélo was to bring aerial circus to Kala Mandir on Tuesday. Touted as “poetry in the ring”, this borrows elements from theatre, contemporary dance and traditional circus, and shows where the art is headed, now that animals are out (poster left).

“We are having to cancel the show at the last moment due to the unprofessional attitude of the airline,” fumes Nicolas Blasquez, director of The French Association. An official at Jet Airways’s Delhi office refused comment.

Blasquez’s counterpart at Alliance Francaise de Chandigarh, Bruno Plasse, is also “upset”. The Chandigarh office was handling the logistics of the six-city India tour. “There were seven boxes, weighing 780 kg. We gave the local Jet Airways office all the dimensions. For over a month, they kept assuring us there would be no problem. It was only while checking-in at Chennai airport that the problem surfaced.”

Priyamvada Majumdar of Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, from where the circus would have flown to Calcutta, takes up the tale: “We were lucky there was an Indian (airlines) cargo flight around the same time. The journeys from Mumbai to Pune and from there to Bangalore were somehow arranged by road. Again, at Bangalore, the airline initially agreed but then said the door was not big enough and that the boxes would be too heavy even if tilted.”

It was too late to arrange for road transport to Calcutta and so Company Méli Mélo headed straight to Chandigarh.

“If only they had told us in the beginning, we would have arranged the schedule to suit luggage transportation by road. Bringing a circus party over costs a lot of money. And what happened is embarrassing for us,” says Myriam Rasiwala of the French Embassy in Delhi, which will seek an explanation from the airline.

Little consolation for circus-starved Calcuttans denied a glimpse of aerial acrobatics, Méli Mélo style.