Dalip Singh Majithia, now 91, was a young war-time air force pilot, when compelling family commitments made him resign from the air force soon after India gained independence in 1947. He relocated to Gorakhpur, and later to Muzaffarpur in northern Bihar to look after the family business, together with his young Australian wife Joan, whom he had met on a posting to Melbourne. She was with the Australian Navy at the time.

At the time Dalip Singh Majithia moved to Muzaffarpur, his uncle Surjit Singh Majithia, older by just eight years, was India’s Ambassador to Nepal. Surjit Singh, also a former air force pilot, had resigned after the end of World War II. Now, as the Ambassador he had received a query from the then Prime Minister of Nepal who wanted his help in introducing some form of air transportation to carry perishables from remote valleys of Nepal to the capital city Kathmandu. The only problem was – there was no civil aviation in Nepal – not even an airstrip.

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