Confessions of a Frequent Flyer Mind

Fastforwardasmuchaspossible: Drive from home to airport, get printouts of tickets, get ALL baggage screened, help scurrying elderly find the right X-ray counter, stand 53^rd in the check-in queue, get boarding pass, switch off mobile, take out laptop, do security check, restore items, call mother, go to seat, remember not having asked for aisle seat (yet again), adjust AC duct in vain, all at 7AM.

As Nury Vittachi once said (don’t worry if you do not know him, I knew him only after I went to Dhaka), life flying a lot is not easy. And I am not even a businessman.

So it was this one ViceJet flight, from home to Delhi. On arrival, after having struggled through the usual “whether luggage first or loo” crisis, I find my bag indeed forsaken on the baggage belt, gaping wide open, some unmentionables trying to get out of it, despite all the plastic-bag packing of those.

Wondering worth how much I have lost if the father-gifted perfume is flicked; I look helter-skelter for the ground-handling manager. And there he was, with a walky-talky, seemingly controlling the operations happening around.

“Please wait for 5 minutes, sir, I shall help you with this” he sprayed at me, when I complained in a look-this-is-the-calmest-I-can-be-now manner. “Why don’t you sit there”, he pointed at a chair in the waiting area.

For a change, my instincts told me something useful, and I took his cell number. After a wait of about 15 minutes and about 2 frenzied calls to him as soon as he used to disappear from the crime scene, he finally came to the rescue.

Upon confirmation that it was only the broken lock, I knew how relieved I must have looked, looking at him.

Now came the crucial part. The c’-word. “The lock cost 100 rupees, right? I shall just send someone and get you a new lock sir.”

And send, he indeed did! Calling the main counter, he explained the situation to them, sent a boy to them to collect the cash and buy a lock for me. I was kind of impressed.

Twenty minutes later, I have lost my patience. Efforts to check in to my next flight over the phone have gone in vain, and I do not want the lock to be the cause for not boarding my next flight.

“Look boss, just pay me the cash, I will manage the lock myself.” This time I was authoritatively instructive. A feeble attempt he made, to call the boy back only with the cash, only to find out that the boy had not collected the cash from the counter at all!

I was in my argument gear, and convinced him that it made perfect sense to pay me the cash from his pocket and keep that the boy returned with.

To my and the by-standers’ extreme despair, the ground manager had nothing but INR 70 in his pocket, and I insisted that he pay me that, and indeed, to my I-do-not-know-what-feeling, I-t-o-o-k-i-t-a-l-l!