Nerve Endings Firing Away

I can virtually claim to know Hartsfield-Jackson airport like the back of my hand since I spend a major part of my weekend traversing the vast spaces of its chaotic North and South terminals. It all started off innocently with a now-regular request to drop someone at the airport. Matter of couple of hours, no khich-khich and I will be done or so I thought. Bin Laden decides to wreck the American morale and ends up bureaucratizing the entire airline industry. It seems that the over-cautious European Union demands a transit visa even to transfer from one gate to another, enroute to India. This rule has been scrapped and reinstated more number of times than Salman Khan has bared his torso.

My poor friend, totally unaware of this fluctuating developments lands up at the ticket counter only to be given the rudest shock one can get before boarding a long-awaited flight to Hindustan, that he cannot fly. Of course, he can’t fly but nor can he board an uppity rigid Air France plane that does fly.

After slogging his ass for a whole semester, rescheduling his exams ahead by a whole week, burning the night oil for seven days in a row in that awful week, shopping for the whole extended joint family and to be told on his birthday that he cannot do the only thing that inspired him to undergo all the torture not only takes the proverbial cake but the entire bakery.

After trying all possible and legal ways of circumventing the stupid transit visa issue over the next six hours, he finally decided to make fresh reservations for the next day albeit at an astronomical rate. But I guess for an H1B visa turned F1 that also counted as an option and to top it, he was rushing home to attend his only brother’s wedding on Tuesday. I could only sympathize and offer perfunctory help in running around to make sporadic inquiries.

But all the head banging against a non-existing wall resulted in no good as we had to head home finally after spending a solid non-productive six hours with nothing to show except a hopeful promise of a ticket for an 8am flight over the Pacific. It was a long time since I had seen the sunrise, let alone 5am on the clock. But here I was driving on a freezing Sunday morning on my second trip to the airport in as many days.

But ill-luck wasn’t entirely done with him yet as the agent that promised him the over-the-Pacific ticket had failed to deliver the electronic version of the ticket to the counter. I was almost compelled to pull a Mohd.Atta on the poor unsuspecting United folks. But since money was no object to this dude in a tearing hurry, he bought an over-the-counter one-way ticket to Varanasi, flying via San Francisco, Beijing and Delhi for a mind-boggling $3000 or a billion-odd liras, as Mahesh would put it.

After he hugged and kissed his wife farewell, he took a step towards me. Afraid that I would get the same mushy treatment, I took a step back but he was genuinely thankful and simply hugged me. Although a bit tired, I was finally relieved to see him go as I drove his wife back home.