I am posting this just because I dont want to stop the one good creative thing that I have been doing for this long. But I am not in a mood to post. But I will.

Thursday16th:

9:30 pm:

As I was about to pack my bags to go to the new company guest house (actually the one was staying at was new.. I was planning to move to the old one), my cell called me. The news I was waiting for some weeks was given to me. I had so many ideas about how I was going to react to the news but when I got it for real I was as clueless as the crows on electricity cables. My mother told me that they are going to hospital and my sister-in-law is going to deliver my first nephew the next day. I dont know what happened but for next few minutes I was in a surprise shock. I dint know what was happening and what I should do. One thing was for sure that I wanted to be there.

I called up Smriti and asked her to help me finding out the ways out of this city into my home city. Prompt as always, she did some googling and came up with all the flight schedules and airline phone numbers. I called up everyone but half of them were not picking up and half of them said no flight is available. I put my bag in the new guest house, packed one small backpack and left for the airport.

10:30pm:
No airlines had flight to Pune till the next morning. Ok. Plan B. Go to Mumbai and then Pune. Only AirIndia had an international flight to Dubai (or NY) which had a halt at Mumbai. Somehow I got inside the airport (they dont allow you to go in without a ticket). I asked the man on the AirIndia counter and he said the flight departs at 2:55am and asked me to come to the same counter at 2am. He said I would surely get a ticket. I confirmed that they accept credit cards as I dint have much cash on me.

Friday 17th:

1:55am:
I was sitting on the same chair for last 2-3 hours and I was pretty confident. At 2am, the same guy confirmed that he had some first class tickets left. I went to the cash counter and asked for a ticket. As he was swiping my card, the machine died... right infront of my eyes! I dint have cash to buy a first class ticket but I had enough to get an economy class one. But fate! They were out of economy tickets. There is not a single ATM in the terminal. I came up with Plan C, Plan D.. Plan Z. Nothing worked. And I was left alone at the counter. I was waiting for some miracle and it came running towards me in the form of one Mr. Madhav. This guy told me that there WAS one economy seat. He called up the control room and asked them to delay the flight for some time. I ran and ran and finally goy myself in the cosy little economy class seat.

4:30am:
After 55 minutes in air I got out at Mumbai airport. As I got out of the terminal, I saw a boy with a pluckard in hand that said "RK Travels to Pune". I asked him and he said they have a Toyota Qualis and would leave in a 15 mins. As I was waiting in the car, some Cab drivers came and started fighting with the travels people. Apparantly, they are not allowed to do business inside the airport. They were planning to take those boys and the driver (who was from Bhor, a place near Pune, and whose name was Subhash. Yes, I talked to him for a couple of mins :P) to the police. One of them asked me to come to police station with them. I was laughing. I told them I just want to go to Pune! So they put me in a prepaid-taxi to dadar. The cab driver (Bhekhlal Yadav from Jharkhand, who thinks that cab-business was in boom in 1994-95 and went bust when he got into it when he was 16-years old by getting a driving license by bribing a cop and he was much better off when he was working in a factory before that. Whew!) dropped me at Dadar.

6:00am:
"Poona, Poona, Poona", "do seats, do seats", "100 Rs, 100 Rs".. this is how the private taxi drivers (mostly unautorized) holler to get the fares. I was sitting in a Tata Sumo and the driver was waiting for 3 more people. They have to take 10 passengers to make some profits in a single Mumbai-Pune trip. I could have taken a bus but bus takes 4 hours and time was running out. In 15 mins the Sumo was full. 4-5 people from Jaipur (i guess) were the first time visitors. The driver was absolutely reckless. I was on the edge of the seat was and was biting into my lip to stop myself from screaming. It was terrible.

7:45am:
We were on the express highway. My cell rang. These reliance guys have a good, no great, network. My father told me, that my nephew had arrived a couple of mins back. Amazing! :)

9am:
I was at the hospital. This was one of the most memorable day of my life! :)