So, after much hassle and headaches, I managed to board my flight to Visakhapatnam (after having missed it the previous day). Like I said in the part1 of this blog, that I was one of the last persons to board the aircraft.
I had to sit right at the front of the plane, the very first seat, staring at the wall with a strange drawing of a puma with two tails (which apparently was the cabin interior manufacturing company’s logo). I was pretty comfy on my seat and was enjoying the final phase of my journey back home. The captain (an American in an Air India flight… the irony.) announced in his usual authoritative yet friendly manner, that we would be landing in about 15minutes. I looked out of the window in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the always-beautiful vizag coast line. Unfortunately, all I could see were thick dense clouds. In face I could not even see the wings of the flight, so dense were the clouds. Usually, this would trigger a panic attack thinking whether the flight will be able to land or not. But since the captain had already announced that the flight will be landing shortly, I sat reassured and home-sweet-home isn’t too far now.
A few seconds later, the flight started experiencing quite a lot of turbulence. It almost felt as if we were riding a bullock-cart on one of our good ol’ muddy-kachcha roads in India. Now, those who have traveled frequently by air know that turbulences are common in airplanes and they die out pretty soon, often within seconds. My co-passenger (sitting beside me) though was surely not a frequent flier as was evident with the look of terror on his face and suffocatingly-tight grip on the arm-rest that had turned his knuckles white. He was ready to pray one last time and even gave me one of those ‘now-would-be-a-good-time-for-you-to-pray-too’ look.
About a minute filled with turbulence and tightly gripped arm-rests plus and my neighbor’s terror-filled expressions --the radio crackled to life and the captain announced with some slight jitter in his voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, due to the unexpectedly rough weather over vizag airport, we will not be able to land there today and we are now enroute to Chennai, where we shall decide the next course of action”. That’s it, I almost felt God smiling up at me and ticking away a point on his list of ‘Smaran’s patience test’. My smile faded away at the bat of an eyelid to match the weather outside (read: dark and gloomy). Agony and anger filled up inside me as other passengers too started their trend of long exhales, shrugs and sighs.
The flight landed 45 minutes later at the Chennai airport. We all waited patiently inside the plane as we were not allowed to disembark and walk into the airport. Although some passengers (including me) did get out in the pretext of feeling ‘suffocated’ inside …I even took a small stroll around our rather small aircraft which ended with the chief-cabin-crew lady glaring at me with her huge bindi on her forehead that made her look like a Hindu-demon-Goddess. The pilot and the passengers were hoping that the storm in Vizag would die down and we would be on our way back without further delay. Sadly, this did not happen. The weather over Vizag airport was only getting worse. We eventually were allowed to switch our cell-phone back on. This was when the plane erupted in a cacophony of calls, with each passenger calling up their near and dear ones to inform them about the situation. I could distinctly figure out the same sentence (plane could not land in vizag…we are in Chennai now) being repeated in 5 different languages. It was actually pretty cool :)
About an hour and another round of refreshments later, we were finally told that we would be accommodated in a hotel (courtesy Air India) in Chennai and that we would be flown out to Vizag on the same flight the next day.
We were taken into the Chennai air terminal and were asked to collect our bags from the claiming area. Another shock/ patience-test waited for me here as I discovered to my mounting sadness, that my main bag (check-in) had not traveled in the flight as it should have. At this point, my patience level had overshot the boiling point. I was at peace with myself…..basically because there was absolutely NOTHING I could do about it. After having lodged an official complaint for missing baggage, I was whisked away to a ‘three star’ hotel which from the outside looked like my school. It was painted in a weird bright yellow, that is pretty reminiscent in the buildings of Chennai. All meals, I was told were courtesy of Air India. This, my friends was the best piece of news I had received in the past three days. I immediately and shamelessly gave a big grin to the front desk guy as soon as he said the food was free. Hehe.
The rooms, thankfully were really nice and had all the basic amenities including those tiny complimentary shampoo bottles that I so love to use. I have this habit of using the shampoo and based on the smell, I would guess from which shampoo bottle was this so called ‘sample’ taken.
Over the next 19 hours, I did not venture out into the city of Chennai (which I would have loved to), I slept and got over my jet lag, gleefully devoured the paid-for-mutton-biryani and chicken chettinad (reminding me of my roommate Vivekananda Reddy’s own recipe) for lunch and dinner and almost finished my novel that I had started reading in Frankfurt Airport.
My co-passengers, who I kept bumping into in the resturaunt, looked somehow thrilled at the fact that they were in a new town and did not have to pay a penny for it. And none of them, had ventured out of the hotel. Ha!
We finally were taken to the airport the next day at around 8am in an old, rickety mini-bus that was noisier than the airplane’s turbines itself.
I finally made it to my destination around noon, minus my main baggage, and almost leapt into mom’s arms with such force that she almost tumbled over.
And so, I came to the end of a missed-flight, Delhi’s-cheap-hotel-staying, turbulence-experiencing, free-food-gorging, noisy-airconditionless-bus-riding journey that led me to my home two whole days behind schedule.
It was an experience of a lifetime and I will pray that none of my friends ever run into such a situation.
Special thanks to:
The New Delhi Air India staff for their utter chaotic handling of their passengers.
The new Terminal 3 at New Delhi airport for their malfunctioning screens
The AirIndia staff (NewDelhi again) Mr.Harpal who made sure I got a ride to the nearest hotel for a ridiculously high taxi tariff.
My NewDelhi-Vizag flight captain, for having ‘tried my best’ to land at Visakhapatnam
And the ever-efficient and alert AirIndia Baggage staff for failing to load all but my suitcase into the flight.
Scores:
God’s patience-testing game: 0
Smaran : 1
HA!
