it gives such a joy to me to write something after so long... it was not that i was very busy... I am never so busy... but yes, a bit lazy.All these days, many topics crossed my mind on which i thought i could write something... but.. it was just not to be.
But why this incident alone ?
Coz,
"The Magnitude of importance of an event depends upon the number of people it affects" (e.g. world war II,soccer world cup,Kumbh Mela,Wednesday Market etc....)
So, how it happened -
Friday, The 13th - a combination most people consider to be the most ominous.
I always laughed at it.You see, Numerology wise i consider it to be lucky as my birth date is 4 (1+3 = 4) , its really funny how stupid people can get behind these things.Fools! On top of that, Friday being a weekend, spirits(I mean, energy level) were already high!
After having an extended break-cum-discussion-cum-brainstorming-session in the office cafetaria, I asked rahul to come along with me to KPN Travel's office to book tkts for our friend Vishal & his brother who were coming to Chennai for some exam.
rahul dismissed the idea saying that it can be very well done 'Online' from office itself... feeling very relaxed at the suggestion we headed downstairs to our desks, unaware of what lay ahead of us.
So, we found a suitable website and booked the ticket on my credit card (yes, icici still allows me to do transactions on it). After booking the ticket we punched in the air and I asked Rahul "Is it So Simple???" I have been always going to these travel offices fearing that something will go wrong in online transactions(Typical Indian mentality,we are yet to get used to this 'online' thing) "Hmm...let's see" he said and refreshed the page to cross-verify whether it reflected in their database. Yes, It did, now the next level of validation,Print-preview... Wolla! what do we have here! in place of 15th, we had actually booked for that night itself!!!!
we hurriedly went to the cancellation page, but it could not be canceled within the 24 hours of the time of journey and we had only 4 hrs. in hand... and if we could not find any bakra before that, it meant i had lost thousand bucks straight away , in this time of cost-cutting it meant.... it meant something very serious.(more serious than cutting down to only 3 tea's a day!)
Still managing to hold the nerve we started making calls to... almost every possible resource to come out of the situation.To the website office which redirected to the Travel agent's office (that guy spoke as if my father had taken a huge loan from him) then redirected to another branch... nobody paid any heed to our request(probably something wrong with our communications skills).Now, this was serious... I started contacting people who could possibly be traveling to bangalore on weekend and not yet got tickets (sounds funny but being a last-minute person myself, I had some hope) , meanwhile Rahul tried to use his contacts to take us out of this situation.
Slowly, all the hopes started diminishing and we knew that Friday the 13th had started showing its charm.After some deep thinking we resolved upon getting our money back (what a joke,it was more of need than resolution) took the printout and were just about to leave for the Central Station when Vivek came back from his Toastmater's meeting and showed willingness to join...unaware of what he was jumping into...
6 p.m. At the gate of Satyam Office :
khikhikharrrr(electric start hona yaaron!)... the two bikes started and headed towards Central Station.
How we falsely think,how easy things are...this was just a trailer The movie was about to begin...The tentative plan was to cancel the tkts,re-book for 15th , shop in the 'mor market' for some leather stuff, have famous Biryani,faluda and Irani Chaai at the National Darbaar hotel and come back happy,victorious.At least...this was the picture painted in Vivek's mind (He had no idea,what happened and what was about to happen..) In this effort, we canceled Friday -special food also (puri-chole-pulav-kheer) , U must be really either over confident or become nuts to do something like that.
So v reached Central at 6.25 and rahul went in to negotiate with the travel agent...and as expected Our Commn Skills failed again and that meant we were left with three choices,
- wait till the boarding time and try to find a bakra
- Go to the main office i.e. Koyambedu Bus Depot (now consideing central station and traffics in peak hrs that was out of question for me)
- Travel ourselves on those tickets to make up for the lost money(how weird!)
finally we decided to follow this matter to the core and headed to koyambedu, Asia's Biggest bus terminal and road towards it...? probably Asia's sickest road to drive in evening.It took me an hour or so,a lot of back-ache and frustration to reach koyambedu when i realised this is Not the place where we wanted to go, but thankfully our destination was not very far. After a short essel-world ride i reached Omni bus stand where rahul had already reached and had cracked the deal.So, we finally got our tickets for 15th,Sunday and were relieved.
Now came the time of realization,the golden picture painted in our minds was washed off and we were in midst of million particles of dust and equal number ppl waiting for their buses.This was the point of No Rollback,as the food was already canceled, we quickly(after some argument between me & Vivek) decided the eating spot and got out of that sick place, I following rahul in order to not miss the route like before.
Our suffering didn't seem to end as ,while coming back at one small junction we were stopped by the traffic Police who revealed that it was one-way and we had been driving in the wrong direction...I don't have words to explain that situation.I fear traffic police more than Yamaraj...the rason is obvious,The latter does not humiliate.But this chap was nice ,after knowing that we were really innocent he left us for a nominal chaai-pani charge.
the time was getting better,as we had delicious set dosai and appam with coconut milk at balaji bhavan.After the food got over I bid bye to rahul and started back home via office for Vivek to collect his bike from there.
Finally after 4 hours of drama,we reached home.As I prepared myself for heading for a quick bath, Vivek stopped me and asked... how it actually happened ?
It was a mystery even for us...as we remember selecting the date properly,may Friday,13th was the reson(thankfully we didn't inform Vishal about this)... who knows, all I could reply was, "Sod, paise wachle!"
Posted well su! Gave a good picture of the excitement that we faced that day. Great blog ( except for places where u exposed our so called inefficient communication and silly mistakes :)) that made me laugh out!!!
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