CHANDIGARH, Sept. 27 -- Group Captain Suresh Ratnaparkhi struggled to hold back tears as he sat in his wheelchair and stretched his hand out to touch a MiG-21 Bison that had just landed after its last operational sortie at the Chandigarh airbase where the Indian Air Force (IAF) on Friday decommissioned the last of its iconic Soviet-era fighter jets in a rousing send-off that evoked the aircraft's heady decades in service and how it shaped the country's air power. "She was my beloved and I touched her for the last time," the 87-year-old former MiG-21 pilot said as India's longest-serving fighter jet retired after flying the Indian flag for 62 years. Just moments earlier, Ratnaparkhi listened with rapt attention as defence minister Rajnath Si...