October | 2010 | Driftwood Life

My mother told me whenever I got into trouble I should pray to Lokenath baba and he will save the day. Except it was middle of a freezing night in June for heaven’s sake at the deserted main street in Drass, apparently the 2nd coldest inhabited town in the world, well inside the range of Pakistani artillery systems that stood barely 10 kms on the other side of the imposing Himalayan peaks. On my lap at the back seat of a Toyota Innova, the most horrible 4-wheel drive car in the world, laid the utterly dehydrated motionless corpse of a girl whom I was almost convinced I have to bring her dead rotting self to her mother. Oh wait, now how would I actually be able to bring a dead body from Kashmir to Kolkata? I was almost broke. Nearest hospital? 5 hours away. The only medicine that works for her in such a scenario? 8 hours ride through one of the highest motorable mountain passes in the world.

In such a fine situation I did what any man can do. I prayed. Like I have never prayed before. And I blamed myself for going ahead with an audacious travel plan pillared on uncertain linkages and what Bruce Willis would call ,a Kansas City Shuffle; a plan which went wrong all wrong from Day 1.

One of the most challenging things I have ever done is to find a laptop power port in Newark airport. Seriously, how hard is it for the authorities to install power ports in an international airport as busy as Newark? That way someone doesn’t have to (possibly) illegally unplug luggage weighing machines to hook in one’s laptop. For without a laptop the iPhone won’t charge itself by magic, would it? Would new tickets on AI 102 from JFK get booked by itself? No siree! How about giving the bad news to the Girl who’s about to board the Rajdhani in about 30 hours with me from Kolkata to New Delhi, her first trip far out of Kolkata since like, when VP Singh was the prime minister? It’s amazing she didn’t panic, okay she did for a while. That’s what I love about her. She will bend but not break. On hindsight I should’ve spent an extra $370 and boarded the earlier flight from CHO to EWR via CLT considering the 2.40 PM flight is a freaking codeshare which on half the days in a week comes on average an hour late. I pacified myself saying it would’ve left me with a 3 hour buffer. God knows $370 is a lot for a piss poor grad student with questionable spending habits.

Midnights are lonely in airports. All one can encounter are security and the occasional cleaning guys who invariably turn out to be middle aged Indians. Heck, the old Indian airport personnel who hooked me up with the freelancing cab driver looked exactly like the Indian cleaning dude in The Terminal.

Lesson learnt in booking non-refundable international flights. Never trust an online flight booking service when they are suggesting multiple codesharing carriers and none of the airlines will take responsibility for putting you on the next flight for free when the connecting flight is arriving 5 hours late. Why? There wasn’t a towing truck available for 40 minutes to pushback the plane to the tarmac in CLT. So much so that the goddamned air traffic controllers in EWR gave up, delaying departure of the flight by 2 hours, that too in a re-routed extended flight plan circling half of NC and VA. Unbelievable! Even now, after 5 months, thinking about the whole botch-up makes me mad. Surely, United, Kingfisher, Continental nor US Airways, all the culprits involved, won’t pay me back my hard earned dollars gone up in smoke.

I admit I panicked for a few hours when I arrived in front of the empty Continental check-in counters at EWR Terminal 3. I even thought of calling the parents. I prepared for that exact moment looking at the westering sun flying over Maryland. Guess I did’t do enough homework. She saved the day for me. It wasn’t till 2 AM after extended Skype-ing with her, going through the what nows and what ifs and re-booking a new ticket from a different airport that some sort of calmness returned to me. That it isn’t over. The trip is still on. I can’t let her down. I can’t let myself down. Not at the last hour. Not when everything has been set in motion.

I did what any quarterback would do when he senses the corner blitz coming through the offensive line. Call an audible. Change of plans. Goodbye Kolkata, hello New Delhi. Goodbye stopover at Aquilus’ place, hello backpacker transit hotel in Pahargunj.