Friday Triple Post:-I: Trip No. 8

Out of the seven trips I made this year so far, five were official and two were personal - one to Goa and the second to Tirupati. The rest were related to work. Of the five official trips four were to Delhi and only one was to Tirupati. Last Tuesday I made another official trip, possibly my last trip of the year, and this too was to Delhi. Like the rest of the official trips this too was a very short one. I went in the morning and returned in the night.

I had thought this trip to Delhi would be like all the five trips I had made earlier but it turned out not to be so. There were a couple of minor events that made the trip slightly different. Normally my car arrives well before the time I leave for the airport whatever time it is. While I was getting ready on Tuesday morning I was thinking how wonderful that I have a driver who comes so early in the morning to ferry me. When it was five and the car had not yet arrived I called the driver who told me he had just woken up. I had told him we’d leave at five so I’d be at the airport an hour before the plane departed at 6-40. Naturally I had a short spell of panic before I calmed down and went out. Luckily I found an autorickshaw and went in search of a cab. For a while it looked like I might have to go all the way upto the airport in Shamshabad in the autorickshaw itself but once again luck intervened and I found a cab at Red Hills at half past five. Inside the driver was asleep but after I knocked on the window he woke up, opened the door, put my bags in, started the car and took off without even yawning once. He assured me he would take me to the airport in just thirty minutes. At exactly fifty eight minutes past five I reached the airport. Luckily again, the check in counters were not crowded and I was able to board quickly.

I was carrying with me ‘Nation of Fools’ that I had bought at Abids on Sunday. I planned to read the book during the two hour flight and maybe finish more than half the book by the end of the trip. Getting in I saw books in other people’s hands. Someone in the Executive Class had Gurcharan Das’s ‘Indian Grows at Night’ and I saw another person deeply engrossed in ‘If God Was a Banker’ by Ravi Subramaniam. I settled in my seat, a window one, and began the book even before the plane took off. The person beside me, a person in his midfifties, started doing the word jumble in the airline mag. After breakfast I noticed he was struggling with two words. I knew what the words were but did not want to tell him and kept reading my book. Some people do not like to be told the solutions since they want to do it by themselves so I kept quiet though I was becoming increasingly impatient. I was bursting to tell him the answers. But when I saw that he had not yet completed it even after two hours I couldn’t restrain myself. I leaned over and told him the words that would complete the jumble. He smiled and got talking with me. He turned out to be a senior scientist at IICT.

If there is one thing I cannot tolerate, it is cold weather. My brother had advised me to wear thermals, a sweater and also a jacket on the trip since it was quite cold in Delhi. It was not only cold, it was cloudy with a slight drizzle, exactly the sort of weather I do not like. Luckily, it did not rain until the afternoon. By eleven in the morning I had finished my work at an office conveniently located close to Janpath. I walked around watching the cool Delhi crowd going about until I felt hungry enough to have a second breakfast. I had 'kal dosai' at Saravana Bhavan and a cup of filter coffee before I set out for another spell of Hyderabadi style gawking. Minutes after I got into a cab for CR Park, where my brother lives, it began to drizzle.

After a good lunch at my brother’s home I played caroms with my nephews, talked with my mother and left in the drizzle for the airport. I got there a bit early so I went around T-3, had a cup of expensive airport coffee and finally checked in. The only unusual thing about the ride back to Hyderabad was that a gentleman in the back of the plane began to sing so loudly I am sure the pilots must have heard him. Surprisingly no one seemed to mind it but I sure was distracted. I thought he’d shut up after the dinner was served but he began to sing in a louder voice but mercifully shut up soon after delivering another song. After the chilly weather in Delhi I was glad to be back in warm Hyderabad.