Indigo Saga - Finally it did go
“We sincerely regret to inform you that your IndiGo flight has been affected due to operational reasons”. All this while I had kept my fingers crossed hoping that I would be that lucky one whose flight won’t be affected by the change in airlines policy; this message on my phone dashed all my optimism instantly. I was given an option to fly on an alternate route. But seeing many of my colleagues get flight cancellation notifications, I was doubtful of its going through.
Tolerance for ambiguity is ingrained in soldiers. My military mind immediately got deployed brainstorming for ‘Plan-B’. As expected, the rates of all airlines had sky rocketed and my pocket was curt in conveying that ‘time is money’ wasn’t the case always. Where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. I looked for the next best option, that of train. There too I could see only ‘waiting list’ status in all the trains with no seat available even the ‘Premium Tatkal’.
Traveling by bus was certainly not a good option as the distance from Indore to Chandigarh would take better part of the day. Moreover, at the age I have reached, my body doesn’t cooperate the way did a decade back. Reconciled to fate, I gave my luck another chance; perhaps the ‘alternate route flight’ wouldn’t disappoint me. It was a relief when hours later, I finally got a message that I could web check-in. The revised flight would have a five hour layover at Ahmedabad; this was the best case scenario I could have got then.
One advantage of being in the defence services is that one will find some acquaintance or the other in every nook and corner of the country. Sure enough, as I posted a message about my predicament on my Whatsapp groups, one coursemate posted at Ahmedabad pinged me. ‘Don’t waste your time at the airport; let’s spend some quality time at home”. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Time flew past as we remembered our flying training days where we flew helicopter during the day and explored the twin city of Hyderabad-Secunderabad in the evenings on his ‘Bullet’ motorcycle. It was nostalgic driving the same bike, ‘single kick start’ even now, after a gap of almost three decades.
I landed at Chandigarh after a journey of 12 hours, ten more than what it should’ve been. Next day I got a mail from the airlines asking for feedback. I had half a mind to be nasty, but then I remembered that girl at the check-in counter who took no cognizance of my baggage that weighed beyond the permissible limit, even if it was to acquiesce the haggard travelers. I appreciated that air hostess’s gesture of upgrading my class without my asking. Ironically, I also felt somewhat ‘obliged’ towards the airlines for orchestrating a rendezvous with a friend I’d not met in years.
After all, at the end of the day, I couldn’t but ignore the jokes going around in social media calling ‘IndiGo’ disparagingly as “Itdidn’tGo”; because in my case finally ‘It-did-Go’.
