Time is not important because it keeps running. I second the thought that It should learn to wait for someone. But timing is damn important is what I realized.
08:09:2016:17:18 “Ranjit! The TC 23 7D Wi-Fi setup’s web authentication is not working”, Rohit the business team guy called.
Ranjit questioned the senses for a second, is it important to answer? And the answer is to answer. “I will go with other team members right now to 7D and check it?”
Ranjit thinks, “When 2nd floor setup is reaching Hyderabad, why not 7th Floor!”
“It’s Ok Rohit. You will get an update after 15 minutes”
Ranjit along with Sachin and Abhishek starts to Building 23 from 22. Numerologically going up is always good, no? But Ranjit was not aware as what’s in store.
It should take 7 minutes for any person to walk at a normal speed. But the Satavahana express as called by his engineering friend Anil, took only 4 minutes. I should try my luck by participating in walkathons.
Testing on Web2B_HY SSID which reaches from Navi Mumbai to Hyderabad was working the best. The same limited plan is tested on Abhishek’s and Sachin’s phones too and all observations and results are only positive.
17:34 “Rohit! The setup is fine. Testing can continue and to change the limited plan to unlimited, only change required is at Portal”.
17:34 “Ranjit… Ranjit!!!!, Ranjit…..”
Ranjit looks straight to see the face of his first ever good Samaritan friend in life, Nageswar Rao. Ranjit goes back in memory lane to Naidupeta, Satyanarayana talkies and the bellam jilebi.
“Nageswar Rao! I have a flight to Bengaluru and I have to leave right now. Shall meet you later, my friend! Allow me to take leave immediately and do not mind”.
“It’s Ok friend. Have a nice flight”.
17:36 Ranjit waits for the lift at 7th floor.
17:47 Ranjit is at the parking lot and talking to his first love.
17:48 “chal mere lad. Aaj kuch toofani karte hain… show your might my red horse. Let’s begin the race. You have 8 minutes to drop me at Kailash Plaza”.
Red horse starts with a small push to the back, the usual Bajaj vehicles feel of a tigress getting ready to hunt. Due to the speed limitations it keeps itself calm till Gate F within the campus.
It roars loud and louder and the odometer touches 70kmph in 3 seconds.
In no time, it reaches under the Mahape flyover. /* the usage of the preposition ’under’ is apt… Charvi comments for sure as she is learning the grammar basics */
The gear wire breaks……oomph!!!!
What happened?????? Ranjit???
The giant red riding hood says, “I am old enough to run fast. Sorry master!. What will you do now? I should have warned you before. I was getting a feel of tightened wires/nerves. I admit that I should have not broken now.”
Ranjit remembers that his Alto car used to move in first gear, operating with just the clutch. His experiment of the same, results in a movie stunt, the bike groans like a Horse. Ranjit calms himself and thinks to leave the bike on the roadside, move in an auto and ask Shirisha to pick up later.
“You cannot leave me here. It stinks and see how untidy it is. Why isn’t swachh bharat adopted here. It will be tough for mam to take me”.
“Offf! Time is ticking bro… It’s 17:53 now. Let’s move on then.”
Ranjit without thinking of a second choice, pushes the bike forward. For 300 meters it is little inclined in the forward direction and moves fast.
Now he accepts the uphill herculean task. Ranjit looks up only to see the ladder like clean plain black top road laid by NMMC right in front of him till the bluish white clouds.
What!!, Did I cover some ‘x’ distance or not. Where did the formula, S=ut+1/2 at^2 went. Ok! Let the acceleration be zero as it is uphill. What happened to “ut”. No pause at all.
“Move on, buck up master”, says the giant red riding hood.
18:08 so close to midway. Might be another 10% of the distance to reach halfway.
Inclination increases. There is an illusion. It looks like a flat road for a few inches, but it’s not true. Ascending continues.
Exactly at the top of the Mahape bridge. The view under the bridge is good to see. The six lane Thane-Belapur road with loads of vehicles. I should come again to visualize this and comment better.
“Get on to me… we can just slide down”, says the red vehicle.
Ranjit finds the peak difficulty in pausing the breath. Lips, tongue and even the konde naluka gets dried up. Never had it happened before, even after three singles badminton matches back to back.
Took exactly 60seconds to cope up and sit on the seat.
Sliding experience is the smoothest and vehicle reaches the parking lot in Kailash plaza. No time for exchanging pleasantries with the giant red riding hood.
18:13 French bath complete.
Books an Uber to Terminal 1B. The app shows your booking is successful, Driver Mahmood will pick you in 9 minutes. Concludes the uber booking is better as Ola says “no cabs”.
Sits close to V-Guard pedal fan, bought in last summer to beat the heat.
Drinks some water, explains a little about how bad the bike was today, to trouble me.
18:27 “सर जी! मैं कैलाश प्लाजा पर हूँ”
The white swift dZire starts the trip.
“Sir! The best possible routes time as suggested by google maps itself is one and a half hour. It is not possible to make it in one hour. And I will try my best to choose alternate routes. But I repeat that reaching airport in an hour’s time is ruled out.
18:39 Vashi Plaza
19:27 Eastern Express Highway
20:22 At Terminal 1B gate the Police accepts the Jio ID card as an ID proof and lets me in.
Suspected that the police may stop me. But good guy. I concluded that this is a mis-flight and didn’t get the senses in right place to think about the plan B. I can only assume as what I would have done, so the assumption window is left wide open to welcome all the fresh ideas as the question of “why katappa killed bahubali” remains.
Waved my hand at a sardar, “Am I seeking help from the right guy and at the right time” J
The sardar came to me. I showed him my print out which made him open his mouth as wide as a rhinoceros.
“Let me check sir. What best I can do now”
A group of 12 Tamil fiends (not because I know them before) rushed towards the queue, bumped in to the GoAir staff and shouted G8 396. I flipped out my printout to see the flight number.
Ohhh! I have a cricket team to support.
Sardar, the savior took all the tickets, went to the lady in the first counter. A cheeky girl in blue uniform with an odd bow covering the complete neck.
Both the Sardars had a discussion for few minutes, might be seconds. As for me time is the most precious and ticking as the minimum unit of time possible is 3600 seconds. Sardar returned asking all of us to form a queue. Grasping the instruction quickly, I stood first. By the time the instruction spread and understood by all 13, my standing position changed to 5th. Those who just cared it as an instruction to stand, they went closer to the lady.
She took all our ticket printouts and requested for the ID proofs. She kept mine aside realizing that I doesn’t belong to the same group. Printed all their tickets first and a big sigh of relief in my whole body. She wanted to handover the tickets to the right guy. Started calling names. There was Rajan, Subramaniam and Chintamani whom I could remember. Still do not understand Is Rajan or Subramaniam so tough to pronounce. The spelling exactly matches to what one speaks and not like words, jeopardize or rendezvous. The lady was twisting and forming her own phonetics. Sometimes these guys purposefully behave, just for craziness I guess. To add to the oxymoron, there were two persons with the same surname, Chintamani and she swapped the tickets. Forgot to say all Tamil friends were speaking good English. One of the Chintamani raised his voice that he got a wrong ticket. It took sixty+ seconds to sort out as 12 people were speaking all at a time. After the 12 ticket distribution, it was my turn. My ticket too came in my hand. I felt great.
Cooled down completely and started towards the security check. I couldn’t trace my Tamil friends at all. At the security checking counters, I requested the person in late 50’s who is standing first in the queue with French beard which looked too ugly due to wrong composition of white and black hair, to allow me to stand ahead of him. He agreed passing a comment to be early to airport from next time. I do not remember replying him. I kept my both the phones inside the Swiss gear laptop bag which my brother bought for me in Guangzhou and dropped it on the moving belt along with the Chivas cabin bag and passed the beep machine without any beep. The excitement to reach the final target of sitting inside the flight increased.
The police sitting in front of the 14” monitor which was displaying the scanned thermal images of the bags passing through the cave box paused the belt and called another officer, “checkout this black bag!” pointing at my cute little Chivas bag.
Offf!! What’s wrong!!!. Had Shirisha packed something which the scanner misread? For sure it cannot be an item which is not allowed but it will take time by the police to sort out.
“Ok! Sir, we are moving ahead to gate A6. You too come fast”, Rajan told me walking briskly along with his team without even looking at me.
Police concluded and showed me the image which was completely black and a sharp edge of the size of a small pen. I too got shocked.
“Kya hai yeh! Check Karo”
Disturbed all my clothes, Chappal and papers here and there. Couldn’t find. Recharged myself. Remembered my giant red riding hood’s words and searched again. But in vain.
“kya hai yeh cheez dikhao”, observed the image once again and understood the location,
but nothing is there at that place in my bag. “An image processing engineer getting
confused. No way!!” I thought. They should have applied the technique of histogram to
isolate this foreign element. Looking at the delay the actual police who traced this
shouted, “चाकू है”. Everybody stared at me.
I laughed at myself. Now, was this wrong blame left out… ok … kept on checking…
Then I saw the pouch on the upper side of the Chivas bag. Forcibly inserted the fingers to pull out my sweet home’s keys which are tied to the key chain which I had bought in Barcelona as a souvenir. Handed over to the officer who got a clarification and gave it back to me.
The police now finds that the baggage tags are missing on my both the bags. I too realized only then that for cabin baggage there will be a card to pull out of an elastic string and make the knot similar to the one used when making the fish tale with loom bands.
On request the police arranged two tags. Stamped and attended the next bag.
All were in queue. The French beard guy was staring at me. It felt like he is speaking to me with his eyes.
I ran, ran the fastest 200 meter race in my life to see myself in front of A6. The gates welcomed me for sure but with their back.
A board with simple English text “Closed” is kept. Didn’t know the purpose of such boards till now. Not a single ‘GoAir’ staff was around to plea for. Felt like at least I should see Rajan. Monologue began. “Ranjit!.. move… puck up”… mosaposukunta ran to the left, reached A4. Saw GoAir boarding for Delhi, jumped the queue, showed my ticket and asked him as what to do?
He quickly understood the situation, dialed some numbers on the Motorola walkie talkie and spoke, “Alpha 6. One passenger to Bengaluru”
“Proceed left, you will see smoking zone, beside that there is an escalator going down. Run fast to A15”
Bolt not only won 100m medal, but also 200m medal in the Olympics. Ranjit beating his earlier record, ran even faster and reached A15. Boarding was complete and the bus which carries the passengers to the flight was on the verge of closing doors. Officer observed me and helped me till I stood at the foot board.
Bus travel was lengthy. Many scenes passed in front of me. Got down and sat in the middle seat numbered: 25E, which I actually hate. Beside me is a young lady in early 20’s. Some civic sense is not being taught by the current gen parents. She was wearing a denim with a white top, holding the in-flight magazine and sitting cross legged where the right leg with black moccasins reaches till my seat.
“To fasten the seat belts, pull the strap and ……”
Now the flight went on to the runway after 20mins. Reason is unknown.
I closed my eyes till I smelt nice baked chicken. I opened my eyes. I do not want to buy anything. But still went through their menu card placed in the back pockets of the seat in front of me.
I too felt hungry, but the sleep dominated so much that I only heard the announcement of landing at the Kempegowda International airport from the captain.
I moved fast towards the exit and there I saw the man with the French beard looking at me while walking out from the next exit.
Raghunath called me and told that he is at Yelahanka railway station sitting inside the train which I had booked even for me also. Ideally I should have boarded the same train. It’s late now.
On his suggestion, I had boarded the BMTC bus, paid Rs. 192/- and got down on NH7, near the first toll gate after the bus entered the highway from the airport internal road which is just 4KM away.
I crossed the road and could see many buses towards Hyderabad speeding at a minimum speed of 80kmph. I felt hungry again but the purpose dominated and I waved at many buses, but none stopped. A guy in early 30’s joined me. He spoke in Telugu and introduced as an employee inside the airport and that he decided an hour back to go to Hyderabad.
After 15minutes of dual effort, Jabbar travels guy stopped the brown bus. We both rushed towards the door. The cleaner of the bus told that there is only one seat. A few milliseconds of pause for me to move back. The airport employee thanked me and disappeared along with the bus.
Started walking towards the toll gate in the Hyderabad route waving hand at each and every bus that I saw on the way. None stopped. Sensed something is fishy. But never mind. I walked for 3KM at exact midnight to reach the tollgate.
Spoke to a guy standing like me. He needs to go to Kurnool. No bus was coming with at least one empty seat. Asked each and every vehicle including the trucks, personal cars, jeeps and even the petrol tanker. Nobody let me in.
Finally as SRS travel guy agreed if I am ok to sit on the staircase. By the time I entered the bus, the Kurnool guy sat on the uppermost staircase. I felt people are quicker, reflexive and selfish in need. I remembered many moral stories which tried to prove this common nature of a human being.
I paid Rs.300/- and sat on the second staircase. We are 4 people from the cabin area. Wow!! I felt a lot hungry. Something to feel good about is the multi-axle bus which zoomed on NH7. Reached Anantapur in just 3Hrs.
Got down on the highway, crossed the road, paid twice the fare to an Auto and reached Sapthagiri circle. The known and famous area in Anantapur town.
Checked into the regular Hotel room in SomyaShree, paying Rs.700/- for a double bed and slept till the door was knocked by Raghu.
Again slept till 07:00AM, got up, got ready fast and edited my two papers that I wrote.
Srivatsa joined us. All three had breakfast at the favourite halt and took an auto to JNTUA.
The story begins now……
I realized that I forgot the RRM form which I had filled at koparkhairane. I also forgot the PhD ID card.
After finding an extra empty form with Raghu, I filled it and went to the professor for signature. Firstly, he didn’t look at us at all and ordered to come after half an hour.
Again after 35minutes, we both went inside his room with permission and sat in front of him. He scolded, rather smoothly spoke that we are wasting money and simply coming for every review meeting and then relaxing completely.
Felt dejected. The message I wrote in our closed family group is that “I do not belong to this place… fighting with time”. Felt relieved to receive replies from Shirisha and Manasa. I imagined what my Ammijaan would have told to these ladies now.
After an hour and a half of stern fighting with the time, we are on the main road in front of JNTUA. Caught a share auto which carries as many as 9 passengers. Seating capacity is more than an XUV 5OO. The plan as what to do after the review meeting was permanent. Irrespective of the result, Raghu prefers to watch a movie. Two of the previous instances were so memorable. I remember a movie called “Varna”. I remembered the scene wherein, actress dies and from the blood stains the frame shifts to a sapling coming out of the ground. Not a movie buff, but of the countable movies I had watched, handpicked per say, this was a bundall. I am sure that I did not understand as what the director exactly wanted a viewer to appreciate.
The other movie is: Urumi which is an equal epic.
To break the jinx, we decided to opt for a different movie. We bought the tickets for “Janata garage” movie which is already a hit and the mass attraction shouldn’t go bad was the thought. Srivatsa was ready for the 2nd time. But the species were anyway turning different from the beginning. Why this can be missed? We got the front row “I” in a flat theatre and the sound system was the most pathetic. Being an image and video processing engineer, my quick observation went towards concluding that the display is screwed with the chroma components. The luminance or ‘Y’ component of YUV420 is proper but the ‘Cb’ and ‘Cr’ are so much wrong that the brownish shade was predominant. None of the colour was visible vividly. I hardly remember hearing any dialogue, even the .aac files were screwed up. No psychoacoustic algorithms applied at the speaker output. Should consult Sanjay Chauhan.
Had the authentic Anantapur coffee and took rest in the hotel thinking that the bad omen is over. Wasn’t sure that there was more to come.
At 23:30 Hrs I and Raghu boarded the Chennai train which was booked so that it stops at KRPuram. We boarded and went in to deep sleep. Should be deep…. though I slept, I can say so as I missed to get down at KRPuram which had reached at 04:00 AM. Raghu called me, Ranjit! Please switch off the fans” I just acknowledged and slept again. Didn’t realize that I was in a train. After 2 hours Raghu only again woke me up saying, “I suspect, that we missed KRPuram stop”.
“Ohhh!!. Is it? It’s 06:10 AM”
I got down to check with a Tamil guy (not a friend). He frightened after listening to our situation that we are almost nearing Chennai.
In ten minutes the train stopped. In a jiffy, we packed our bags and got down only to see the giant poster of Amma with folded hands and green cloth over her, welcoming us. I too wished her, “Amma! Namasthe” and searched to read the board as “Jolarpettai”. Both of us, Jio customers tested the newly launched preview offer of the data to its peak to understand the best possible ways to go back to KRPuram.
Decided to explore the option of going by bus. Went to Thiruppur bus stand which is the nearest place to get a bus to Bengaluru. Auto Anna! ‘The baba’ movie poster guy quickly read our faces and quoted Rs.130/- to reach the bus stand. We walked past the auto stand to reach a state highway, where RTC buses are stopping. He cut a ticket for Rs.5/- each and took to the Bus stand in 6 minutes. But the only good thing is the co-passenger who spoke in good English and clearly explained the road route versus the train route to reach Whitefield from Jolarpettai and left us with the only option of catching a Train. We again took a similar green coloured fancy state transport bus, reached the railway station. Brain may dominate at every organ but not the stomach. Feeling the morning breakfast hunger, we had cheap and the best Idly Sambhar, brought tickets to WFD and sat on the chairs on platform 3. I saw the HigginBothams book stall run by an old man. Bought tantric novel for my daughter and MagicPot for Raghu’s and Naveen’s daughters.
The Sheshadri express train arrives at JTJ Jn.
We entered some sleeper coach and went on to the upper berths and started chitchatting.
Got down at WFD railway station and reached my favourite place on earth, my ARK flat.
“It’s very big”. “Sofa is higher to the rental Mumbai flat sofa”. I should admit to Shirisha.
