Me, Myself & Lufthansa

Date – 12^th Mar’08
Place – Chennai, India
Characters involved – Me, Sonu (My roommate), LTA - Lufthansa ticketing agent, LFM - Lufthansa flight manager, Mohan – from my company's travel desk

Me – Sonu, its already 8:30 man, lets go and have dinner, otherwise I will get late.
Sonu – Bhaiyya!! Your flight is at 1:45 AM, so relax. It won’t leave without you.
Me – Yes man, I know that, but still I always prefer being at the airport at least 2 hours in advance, in case something goes wrong.
Sonu – OK, we’ll just go and have dinner & then you can leave

As we started for dinner, I got the call from the cab driver asking me the exact location of the place. I somehow explained him the way, since he didn’t know English & I had intense problems in speaking Tamil. As we started walking towards the restaurant, it started raining. By the time we finished our dinner, it was pouring down heavily. We somehow managed to reach back home in time and get into the taxi. Since it was late at night and once I go inside the checking area I can’t meet anyone, I told Sonu to stay back and wished him goodbye.

I reached the airport around 10:30 PM. Got my luggage checked and stood in the queue for checking in. Since I was early, in hardly 5 minutes, I found myself facing the guy on the counter.

LTA – Sir, can I have your passport and booking reference please?
Me – Yeah sure (Handed over both the things with a smile)
LTA – Please keep your luggage on the platform for weighing

(At this point I was a bit apprehensive as I expected my luggage to be a few kilos heavier than allowed. But having prior flying experience through the same airline, I expected it to go smooth. Suddenly, my thought process was broken by the LTA’s voice)

LTA – Sir, your luggage is above the permissible weight, you have to pay taxes if you want to carry all of this.
Me – Ok, by how much is it exceeding the limit? How much do I have to pay?

(Expecting a figure of some 4-5 kilos, I thought I will talk it over. But I was totally rattled by his reply)

LTA – Sir, it is 30 Kgs above the limit and you have to pay a sum of Rs 75,000 INR.

(At first I couldn’t believe what I heard, but then I thought he has made some mistake and I should explain)

Me – The weight limit for the check-in luggage is 23 Kgs per piece right? And I am allowed two pieces.
LTA – No Sir, for all flights going to North America via Europe, the total weight of the luggage allowed per passenger is 20 Kgs
Me – Boss !! This is the third time I am having this trip & I this is my 5^th check-in at your counter. When did the baggage rules change?
LTA – Sir, the baggage rules are the same for the past 3 years. There is certainly some confusion here. You can see on your e-ticket, it is clearly mentioned - 20Kgs per passenger

(To my horror, it was indeed mentioned below the flight details. “Have I been ignoring this all the time I was going to Mexico? Ok, even if I ignored, how did these people allow me?” Seeing my blank white face & the long queue formed behind me, he spoke again -)

LTA – Sir, people are waiting. If you have any problems with this, I will suggest that you talk to our flight manager.

(I nodded my head in consent & he called for someone from the back-office. I unloaded my luggage from the platform, put it back on the trolley and started walking away from there, with an embarrassed face. People standing in the queue were staring at me, as if I just broke some international-flying-law. The flight manager appeared in a moment with a big walkie-talkie in her hand. By seeing her face itself I knew she would be a tough nut)

LFM – How can I help you Sir?
Me – Maam, this is my third trip from India to Mexico & suddenly your people are telling me that I can carry only half the amount of what I have carried on all my trips.
LFM – Sorry Sir, but our rules are the same for the past 3 years. I am sure some confusion has happened on your side. As you can see, the same thing is clearly mentioned on your ticket.

(I knew that I have already lost the battle, but I still tried to convince that lady giving all sort of arguments. But as I estimated from the first glance, she was totally “un-negotiable”. I called up the travel desk at my company who told they will try to help but it may take some time. As there was hardly an hour left for the last check-in, I decided to do the inevitable. I called my room mate and told him to come to the airport)

Me – Sonu, I am stuck in thick soup, please take the bike and come here ASAP. I don’t have time.
Sonu – Why? What happened suddenly?
Me – No time for reciting the whole Ramayana right now, I have to return half my things, you come here quickly.
Sonu – Ok, don’t worry. I will be there in 30 minutes.

My face was red like an apple. I felt as if all the blood has come and collected inside my head. I was not able to understand what to do. How will I do away with half the stuff? How will I reduce the total weight to 20 Kgs? After a couple of minutes, I realized there is no way out & I have to go ahead with this. I took a deep breath and found a small place at the middle of the hall to do the re-packing. I laid down both my luggage & opened them. The only thing to me relief at that time was the fact that I had distributed things evenly between the two pieces of luggage. So I just opened them and put all the stuff I had to return in one luggage.
A pair of formal shoes, a pair of sports shoes, shampoo bottle, cosmetics, books, some casual clothes, and all other things I thought I could manage without. I took out some books and kept them in my cabin baggage. Finally I re-packed everything and started looking for Sonu. In another 10 mins I got a call from him telling that he is waiting at the entrance. I got up, picked my luggage and as I was about to take the first step, all the stuff from my cabin baggage came out and got scattered all around me. Gosh!! I forgot to close it. I could feel the staring eyes around me. I somehow stuffed everything inside only to find an African woman photographing me sitting in the midst of the mess. I ignored her and walked towards Sonu. Handed over the luggage to him and gave sincere thanks. Then I walked back towards the counter and checked in what all was left with me.

My luggage was still around 10 Kgs above the limit, but being a witness to what I went thru during the past 1 hour, the LTA didn’t utter a word and handed me the boarding pass. I proceeded for emigration with the” how-I-am-going-to-manage-with-so-little-stuff” thought lingering in my mind. As I was standing in the emigration queue, the guy from travel desk called up.

Mohan – Pratosh, just now the Lufthansa people told me that you have checked in. So I suppose it’s not a problem now.
Me – Yes Mohan, I sent by half my stuff & I don’t even know what all I have with me. So I too suppose that it really isn’t a problem right now.

He sensed the frustration in my voice and decided to cut the call after a brief wish-u-a-happy-journey conversation. I passed through the emigration and final security just to reach the terminal in time for the boarding call.

Lufthansa – There is no better way to fly

Tere bina

Tere bina zindagi se koyi, shikwa, to nahi, shikwa nahi, shikwa nahi, shikwa nahi
Tere bina zindagi bhi lekin, zindagi, to nahi, zindagi nahi, zindagi nahi, zindagi nahi
Tere bina zindagi se koyi, shikwa, to nahi

Kaash aisa ho tere qadmo se, chun ke manzil chale aur kahi door kahi - 2
Tum gar saath ho, manzilo ki kami to nahi
Tere bina zindagi se koyi, shikwa, to nahi

Jee mein aata hai, tere daaman mein, sar jhuka ke ham rote rahe, rote rahe - 2
Teri bhi aankho mein, aansuo ki nami to nahi

Tere bina zindagi se koyi, shikwa, to nahi,
shikwa nahi, shikwa nahi, shikwa nahi
Tere bina zindagi bhi lekin, zindagi, to nahi,
zindagi nahi, zindagi nahi, zindagi nahi

Tum jo keh do to aaj ki raat, chaand doobega nahi, raat ko rok lo -2
Raat ki baat hai, aur zindagi baaki to nahi

Tere bina zindagi se koyi, shikwa, to nahi,
shikwa nahi, shikwa nahi, shikwa nahi
Tere bina zindagi bhi lekin, zindagi, to nahi,



zindagi nahi, zindagi nahi, zindagi nahi

I dont wanna be a punching bag

Imagine yourself being constantly in the line of fire. Everyone around you seems to just shout at you, for no apparent reason. Each and every move of yours is kept under the microscope and you are criticized at all possible instances. You develop such a feeling of apprehension, that when you are not alone, you feel like being a part of a play, acting on stage, with a big audience watching you closely and you having that feeling of nervousness in your gut which constantly pricks you not to go wrong anytime during your act. Because you know, the moment you falter, the audience is either going to laugh or make some shrewd comment and you are going to be the punching bag.

Fundamentally, one can react in two different ways when presented with such a situation. The first one, which is widely preached and often the least practiced, is to be calm and let the dogs bark. You are told to ignore these filthy creatures around you and keep yourself calm and composed. Concentrate inwards rather than falling into the trap of this hostility around you. As Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi once told, if the enemy slaps you on one cheek you present the other one in front of him. But at the same time, as Munnabhai told, you really don’t understand what to do when the enemy slaps on the other one too. According to me, there is a limit until which you can exhibit such a behavior. No one can keep on being calm when posed with such a situation without suppressing his self respect. Somewhere he will curse himself for being quiet when others were poking him unprovoked.

The other way, one which is widely practiced, is to hit back. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth doesn’t matter if you leave half the world blind. Because it’s important to make the other person realize how exactly you feel when the same is inflicted upon you. He needs to taste his own medicine. He needs to realize that he just can’t keep on trampling you, as if you were some weak little puppy, at whom any bullish dog can just keep on barking. And supposedly, this boosts your confidence and induces a feeling of superior self respect.

However one may react to such a situation, what goes beyond my understanding is why do people behave this way? What pleasure do they get in unnecessarily condemning and keep on poking other people, who rarely do the same to them? Is it a result of weak self confidence in them which is making them to become aggressive for the sake of their own defense? Or is it because they themselves feel inferior in some way & to overcome that feeling they want to suppress their so called opponent in any possible way?

Apart from the occasional anger and disgust, mostly I feel pity for such people. They just can’t realize how much they are loosing by being like this. Maybe they are happy and contended in their own small world, but on the whole they are just living inside a box. They can’t see the happiness and pleasure one gets by being in harmony with people around him.

Deep within me

The controversy of Amir Khan naming his dog as “Shahrukh” was splashed all over the internet, which incidentally led me to Amir’s (Amir Khan) blog. While I was going thru the blog, many things struck my mind. I’ll list down some prominent ones

• The blog was real nicely presented, obviously the work of some well paid web designer :)
• It was constantly updated and had links to some previous blogs of the author, which showed his interest in penning down his thoughts publicly.
• If you go to the comments section of the posts, for example the latest post on his blog, you can see a flood of comments posted by the users (6500+ in the last one). Though it is quite obvious that a popular actor like him will definitely attract such an attention, but what is noticeable here is, he is quite regular in replying to the comments. The content and the tone of the comments don’t seem to affect Amir’s responses at all. He replies to all of them in a pretty cool way. Given his tight schedule, I really wonder how he manages to regularly reply to all the comments.

Now coming to the real point, what the blog really sparked inside me was, if Amir Khan who has such a tight working schedule, can take out time to cater to his blogging needs, why a person like me, who is having a much less busy life than his, manages to post only 3-4 posts a month, keeping my writing and blogging passion in the background. Another very strange thing, which I think after seeing every successful person, I thought, was – will I be able to command so much popularity ever in my life?

Keeping Amir Khan aside, giving him the additional benefit of being in showbiz, there are thousands of other people I see and hear about, whose success story triggers a train of thoughts in my mind. I really wonder when I would be able to start one of my own. I remember one incident during my Hexaware corporate training in Pollachi, which I would like to mention here.
It was a soft skill session of “Goal setting”. The lady conducting the session put a question in front of everyone – “What is your goal in life?” Most of the people sitting in the class were quiet, not knowing what to say. A couple of them stood up and presented their dreams of owning a company one day or being a successful entrepreneur. I decided to declare mine. I stood up and told “I want to do something which will make people remember me for a lifetime & long after I am gone”. It sounded very bookish and sort of inspired from a politician’s speech, but believe me, I meant each and every word of it. She was quiet for a moment and then asked me to come to the front near the white board. She told me to write what I said on the board. The next question she asked me was, “How do you think you are going to achieve it?” That was the question I had no answer to. Then she explained how to achieve your goals by breaking them down into smaller ones, achieving whom will eventually lead to the ultimate aim of yours.

The problem in hand right now is, my goals and my course of action are diverging in two opposite directions. Appearing for Civil services and becoming an IAS will probably set me on a path towards what I really want. But abandoning my present job and loosing out on the big buck I am getting doesn’t seem to be a wise decision either. I know I need the money, but at the same time I know that there is much more than just money that I need.

Is it only me or do we all have this dilemma in our mind? Has anyone of you ever felt the same way? Had an urge to do something so big that the whole world knows you? To break away from the shackles of this silly “Groundhog Day” like life and do something to rock the whole world? At the same time not able to understand what exactly to do and from where to start with?

Sometimes I feel that maybe deep within me, I have the answers to these questions, but I just don’t have the courage to go ahead and do it. Anyone remembers those words from Chris Gardener in the movie Pursuit of HappYness?

Don't ever let somebody tell you.. You can't do something. Not even me. All right?
You got a dream... You gotta protect it. People can't do something' themselves, they wanna tell you, you can't do it. If you want somethin', go get it.

Maybe, I AM careless

Though I’ve been tagged of being careless for a long time now, but only recently I have started realizing that it might actually be true. The reason for this, I suppose, is that my luck has stopped favoring me now.

My luck was so much attached to me that I had started taking it for granted. A few examples for this would be:

• Many times I left the key plugged into my bike for the whole night while my bike was standing outside my house only to find it again safe at it’s place in the morning.
• Many times I have left the registration and ownership documents of my bike at places where no one can expect to find them again, only to retrieve them safely.
• I have left my watch & wallet and all imaginable places but never did I lose them till date.

But now I have started realizing that maybe I need to be more careful with myself and with the things I do. A few things which made me think around this point are

• I cut my thumb deeply a couple of days back, while chopping onions.
• The other day, I spilled the glass of juice all over the dining table to the discomfort of me and others seated around.
• I dropped a big meat chopping knife almost on my foot and was lucky to get away with it.
• I spilled a pan filled with oil on the kitchen slab, cauz I though that the pan is empty and just swung it in the air while picking it up.
• At the greatest of all, I lost my camera a couple of days back.

I hate it when people call me careless. I find it too much insulting to bear & accept. Also, I hate it when people see me with accusing and blaming eyes when I do something careless. Most of the times when I’m accused of it, I become highly defensive and give all types of arguments in my favor. But after the loss of my camera, I really have started thinking that something is wrong with me. I certainly need to be more careful with how I am handling things and be a bit more vigilant with things happening around me. But this thought has started creating a sense of nervousness now. Each time I leave my seat or de-board a bus I get a chill down my spine, as if I left something behind. I start checking if everything is there, my wallet, cell-phone, watch. It is as if I have lost all confidence in myself, the confidence of keeping things safe.

It sounds stupid and silly, but it really is happening. In an effort to get rid of my carelessness, I am inducing a hint of freakish behavior inside me. I hope I get over this soon.

I lost it

Last Saturday, I lost my camera. Many would think why it deserves a blog post, but I really need to pen this down as it a BIG loss to me.

As people who are close to me would know, my camera was very important for me and it was something I can’t imagine living without. I used to carry it everywhere, during outings, while going for a walk, while going for shopping to the local supermarket. Now I miss it. I miss it more than I have missed any other thing I ever lost. I curse myself for my carelessness but there is little I can do now.

It happened last weekend when I went for a party. We were waiting on the roadside for some friends to arrive when I kept my camera next to me on the pavement where we were sitting. Later when we got up and started walking towards the place, I realized I don’t have the camera with me. I ran back towards the place where we were sitting, but it was too late. In an interval of 1 minute, someone had taken it. Being a busy sidewalk, I lost all hopes of running and finding the person who took it.

I was totally lost, not able to think what exactly has happened. I didn’t want to spoil the evening of others so I just walked towards the disco with a blank mind. I couldn’t believe what has happened and the feeling of the loss was still to sink in. I couldn’t enjoy even a bit at the disco and somehow managed to do away with the night.

Now that it has been 3 days since it happened, the thing has finally got into my mind. I know my camera is no longer with me. I know I can get a new one, but I can never get the same one back. I’ve had such a nice time with it, taking photos of every imaginable thing. It has been the life of my image blog & now that it is gone, I don’t know how I will manage without it.

My Sony DSC H2 – 17^th Oct’07 to 17^th May’08