Domestic Woes

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At the outset, for people who think that this post is about the tribulations I suffer go through at the hands of my wife, let me clarify that it is not. My wife has expressly forbidden me to use her as a subject for my post, unless I paid her a royalty (?) for doing so. You would have noticed that the frequency of my posts have trickled due to exactly this reason. There is some good news though. I am working my ass off to save some money so that I will be able to do some posts on her. Anyways this is not about that.

Recently my company worried that I might develop seat sores (see I was serious when I said I was working my ass off) asked me to go to New Delhi. A high level delegation from Sri Lanka was visiting India led by their Minister of Health Honorable Maithripala Sirisena and other important health officials. They wanted to meet the representatives from the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry. The Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council, Pharmexcil for short, had arranged for a get together. Since I was handling sales and marketing in Sri Lanka(or it might have been due to seat sores worry) I was nominated by my company to attend the meeting. The venue was ‘The Taj Palace’ The meeting was to start at 11 am which meant that I had to catch the early morning flight from Chennai. Getting ready at that unearthly hour is a pain. Especially when you are going straight to the meeting hall from the airport. You need to be all dressed and decked up.  It has been quite a while since I flew the domestic sector. I am always a little weary of it. The flight was at 6.30 and so I had to leave home at 4.30 at least.  All flights that I take out of the country are around mid-night, which gave me adequate time to have my dinner and get ready to go to ‘land of the nod’. It is another matter, that by the time my co-passengers settle down after having the in-flight meal and you are about to nod, that it is time to land.

Anyways I didn’t have any problems in reaching the airport on time. The Chennai airport is undergoing renovation and as I entered the airport I was taken aback by the crowd in the check-in area. The whole area was teeming with people. There was a flight out of Chennai to every conceivable destination. It makes sense to take the first flight out and be in time for business at the destination, saving on hotel bills. Luckily since I had taken a print-out of the boarding pass and I was carrying only my laptop bag, check in was easy. There was a long serpentine queue for the security check. True to Murphy’s Law, when my chance came the security guy got a call and he left me standing like the vitruvian man. Since they had asked me to remove my belt and shoes for scanning, there was an uneasy feeling that my trousers would fall off. I have to do something about the pot belly.  It is situations like this which brings out the prasava vairgyam.  Luckily for me, before I could take a few more resolutions, the security person came and stamped my boarding pass. Since the traffic was maximum at that time of the day, my flight was not connected to the aerobridge and we had to go by the bus to board the aircraft. All these activities(?) made me hungry. I got a window in the first row. There was enough space to stretch my legs and promptly went off to sleep.  I was awakened by a sweet looking stewardess. She was standing next to the food cart. Ah food at last!

‘Would you like to buy something, sir?’ she asked smiling radiantly.

What was I hearing? Buy? Weren’t they supposed to give me something?

‘Pardon me?’, I asked, very sure that I hadn’t heard her correctly due to the grogginess caused by my sleep.

She closed her eyes and instinctively opened page 119, Chapter 19 of the air hostess training manual ‘How to answer dumb as a dodo passengers’. She opened her eyes, gave me a big smile and said, “Sir, you know that we don’t serve any meals on this flight, but if you are interested you can buy something to eat or drink. I asked her the prices for what they had to offer. There appeared to be a huge gap between the prices and the quantities they were offering. I was still undecided. I looked at the elderly gentleman sitting on my left. He looked like a seasoned traveler. He was wired to his ipod and was looking straight ahead, completely oblivious to what was happening between me and the air hostess. By the looks of it, he was not going to buy anything. So I decided to do the same. I informed the air hostess, that I wouldn’t need anything. True to the last line in the aforementioned chapter of the training manual –Remember never show your irritation on the passenger however dumb they might be- she smiled, said thank you and moved forward.

As soon as the air hostess had moved, the gentleman got up, opened the overhead baggage bin, took out a box from his bag and sat down. He opened the box to reveal steaming upma, setting my salivary glands into overwork. I turned towards the window and sat pretending I was watching the scenes outside, swallowing litres of saliva. It was a good thing that my nose was not working as it should

The saving grace was that the meeting started on time. Obviously the Sri Lankan minister has a lot to learn from his Indian counterparts. After the customary welcome, the speech from the minister and other officials, the question and answer session, the meet came to an end in time for lunch. The stomach was grumbling so much, that couple of times the moderator looked at me to see if I had any questions for the speaker. The lunch was sumptuous and tasty. The minister had some other appointment and he left in a hurry. After some small talk with the other members of the entourage I left to catch my flight back.

The Indira Gandhi International Airport is very impressive and I hope that it remains so. This time around I was not going to take any chances, I bought couple of things to eat, in case they don’t serve anything on the flight. Though I will be home for dinner, you can never know what time you will reach home, given the traffic scenario in Chennai. Another thing is getting a taxi at the Chennai airport, you need to stand in a big queue before you will get your turn, unless you preferred the old Ambassador ones, that too without the A/C.

They did serve a light meal on the flight.