It was the BIG day! My first attempt at driving a car started out disastrously (No, this is indeed me writing, and not my ghost). It took me almost an hour to reach office, and I stopped counting the number of times I stalled. But thankfully no accidents! Of course, it proved the point raised by Venkat yesterday that, perhaps I should not try driving the vehicle home from the showroom.
Our much awaited Hungarian Visa would be arriving. It was like waiting for Godot. Even though I had been advising Pragati every day to be ready for traveling, I personally had given up on the trip, and had planned elaborate jaunts in my car. And yesterday suddenly the call had come, that our visa would be arriving. The whole day was spent preparing and planning for the trip. In between there was the small matter of work (the half-hour presentation I had to give to the team) and some driving lessons from Namratha. By the time I had made my third trip of the day to the campus, I had got better – provided I decide not to park my car.
Campus…now that was something nice. For a change, I went there and did not get into a fight with anyone. After collecting our tickets and the money, the travel desk informed us that the passport would take another 20 minutes. “Why don’t you guys go back and return after 20 minutes?” they quipped. Being wiser by experience, we decided to stay put. I decided to use the time to drop a cheque at the basement, and had to wait for five minutes for that lift to make its appearance. And to my surprise I found that the drop-box had now been shifted to the cafeteria. All that trouble for nothing!
It was seven by the time I reached home. I was driving the bike like I was in the car – not bothering to ground my feet whenever I stopped. It sure is a good day, since for the umpteenth time, I didn’t have any accidents. I had to finish my packing, but I ended up watching Nikolai Davydenko matching Federer shot by shot. By the time I actually finished packing, my cab was almost at the doorstep. At the last possible moment, the driver had called me up to inform that my cab booking had been advanced from 9:30 to 8:30 due to some (later found to be non-existent) politician holding up traffic on Airport Road. As is usual with every cab driver, it took him quite some time to figure out where exactly I lived in that small village. I took the opportunity to call up my friends and say goodbye (as if I were not going to return, but then you never know).
The airport was a buzz of activity. And of course, as I had anticipated, it was way too early for me. I sat down in front of the Departure Terminal, to observe the crowd. There stood a long queue, stretching to the horizon. To circumvent the trouble, some intelligent persons decided to remove the barriers kept at the entrance to control the queue and make way for themselves. Contrary to “popular” belief, it was a group of foreigners who were indulging in such “niceties”. There were some feeble protests from some Indians standing in queue. They fell on deaf ears until some foreigner decided to raise a ruckus about it. Soon enough there was a horde of policemen heckling with those “nice guys”. Yeah, I know you will never find a queue to enter Frankfurt or Los Angeles airports, but wait till we have that International Airport of ours up and running.
As I sit in the airport and write this, I notice that the place has indeed changed for the better.
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