Amitava Kumar relates a simultaneously amusing and sad encounter that took place on a flight to India: 

The India boxer was returning from the London Olympics. He was standing in the aisle of the plane I was on, coming from London to Delhi, and he was going to sit next to me. He had an attractive face, vaguely slanting eyes, and a moustache over pouty lips. The person who was with him was wearing an India blazer with an Olympic logo — I thought he was a wrestler whose picture I had seen in the newspapers. I was wrong, he was only the coach. The boxer had a slightly swollen eye, not dark enough to qualify as a black eye. When he sat down next to me, the boxer asked the flight attendant if he could be moved to business class. On the way to London, he told her, the captain had “adjusted” them. I thought it good to inform the attendant that the man had represented India in the Olympics. She asked, in a good natured way, “Oh yeah! How was London for you?” He shrugged and then said, “Thank you for seating me next to a pretty girl.”

He didn’t mean me, of course. It was a young German woman on the other side, who had a seat next to the window.