Two weeks of Roller Coaster Ride…

Disclaimer: If you are someone with a weak heart, this is not for you

This is an attempt to share a series of events I had to go through in the past 14 days of my life. I attended my cousin’s wedding in Bangalore and landed back in Dubai on Wednesday : 13th Feb morning. I had an official trip to Riyadh on Thursday, 14th. During the day , while I was in Riyadh, I missed couple of calls from the lady of my house and I thought it was for wishing me on Valentine’s day. When I called her back after my meetings, she told me about her visit to the Doctor during the day. It seemed, there was some medical complication and our Doctor had suggested to do an immediate procedure in India. I didn’t really panic , but was anxious as this wasn’t planned . Asked her to relax and flew back to Dubai in few hours. In the meanwhile, spoke to my parents, in laws and arrived at a plan to do the procedure with a Doctor they already know in her hometown. I got the flights booked for all of us (including the kids) and landed in Calicut on Friday, 15th just before midnight. The flight experience was terrible to an extend that I had to take a mental decision not to fly that airline again due to various reasons that I don’t want to elaborate here. We went from the airport straight to the hospital and got admitted the same night. As the first sign of what was in store, my sandals broke the moment I reached the hospital. Within 3 hours , my wife’s sandals had the same fate. Considering the quality of the brand we were using and the way it broke (as if someone had a blade placed on the sole), it came as total surprise. Was that some sort of bad omen? My intuitions said so.

Didn’t have enough energy to do further analysis on that as we were super tired. The kids were taken care by their grandparents and we spend that night in the hospital – my wife on the bed taking medicines as a preparation for the next day’s procedure and me running around paying the bills, buying stuff from pharmacy etc till 4 AM. We did the procedure the next day morning – All went as expected and the Doctor suggested to have 2 weeks bed rest. Doctor approved to fly after a week . That forced a “change in plan” as I had my flights to the US booked for Thursday to attend the Sales Kick Off. Apparently, I had to move my US flights to Sunday Morning (Had planned to go few days earlier) so that I can leave from India with family on Saturday, 23rd. There were not much of surprises in the next few days and in fact on a positive note, my parents visited and stayed with us. Also, we had our best friends visit us (they live in Sydney and haven’t met them for a long time) . the only other worth mention during those days is as follows – I received a text message of a transaction on my credit card that was suspicious in nature. Reported to the bank and they immediately blocked the card (impact of which was known later)

On Saturday , started to the airport around 7 in the morning- midway on the road to the airport , I realized that I have misplaced passports along with my laptop bag at home. For someone who boards a plane about 100 times in a year (without any bit of exaggeration) , that was a first for me. I got my brother in law to bring that to the airport at 120 kms per hour on his bullet on a busy morning. The young chap did his part brilliantly without realizing that he had more extensive role to play in the next few hours. At the counter , realized that my tickets were booked for 23rd March instead of 23rd February (No wonder I wasn’t able to do any online check-in). Again, none to blame here as it was all me. Didn’t have much time to think, managed to find seats in the plane, modified the booking by paying some ridiculous amount of money – in fact paid twice due to some bank error (hopefully that will get credited back ) and managed to get on the plane to Dubai. We were the last to enter the plane as we were waiting for our passports to arrive. Once we were seated as the last passengers, I wanted to call the family to bid adieu. Realized that my phone was missing. Called the number from my wife’s phone and some stranger picked the call and spoke to me in Hindi that he is the security guard at the airport customs, and I had left it there. I requested the hostess to see whether I can get it , she denied the request as the doors were about to close. As I was flying to the states the next day morning, I couldn’t imagine flying without my phone that had everything I need to even login go my work machine. We managed to find out someone who was flying on another plane that was landing in Dubai at 330 am on Saturday and my flight to the US was at 830 -so had ample time. Again thanks to my brother in law who had to go through the hassle of recovering the phone from the airport authorities after filling all kinds of forms and identity proofs. The phone was handed over to the stranger who was an elderly gentleman. As I was flying to the US straight after that, the only way I could track the person was by holding a placard with his name and stand in the receiving area. Slept around 12 after the packing, woke up by 230 accidentally and realized that the flight is arriving earlier than expected. Took a shower and rushed to the airport. Stood with the placard from 3:30 till 5:15 (before the early signs of panic was on my mind, the man turned up). Collected the phone, thanked him and got to my check-in desk.

Due to bad weather – Dubai to Istanbul flight was delayed. I asked the counter about the connection status (had 2.5 hours at transit) and he confirmed that wouldn’t be a problem. Landed in Turkey way later than expected, and hence missed the connection to Atlanta (thanks to the most disorganized security check for transit passengers). I reached the gate about 15 minutes before departure when the “Final Call” was still the status. That’s the first time I got the preview of how cold the people of that airline can be in responding. There was zero sympathy shown (forget empathy). As some emotionless robot, the lady redirected me to the transit desk. They informed me that they will have to put me on the next available flight. The same flight the next day was fully booked – so they gave me a connection option via Toronto which was after 26 hours of landing in Istanbul. That flight would land on Monday 2230 at Atlanta and my event was starting at 0830 on Tuesday. I didn’t have an option to say anything other than accepting the offer. The airline offered me a hotel for that night but suggested me to collect my luggage (that was offloaded by them) before I left the airport. Before that I had to apply for an online visa to get into the country. After great pain, using multiple credit cards (they didn’t accept AmEx and my visa card was blocked), managed to get the visa. Went to the “lost and found” and It took them 5 hours to find my luggage and I had no option other than waiting at the office inside the airport. By the time I came out with my luggage, it was 2230 (9 hours after I landed in Istanbul). The bus shuttle dropped me to the hotel, there were about 200 people waiting to check-in. I spent couple of hours there before I got the keys. All this while, I was in constant search of positivity to keep my energy high. Told myself that things can be worse, especially looking at people travelling with infants etc who were in a worse situation than me. I slept like a baby that night. Next morning, although I had time, I didn’t feel like going out as i was determined to get out of that country asap. 

I was talking to my wife and my friend in regular intervals and we kept on discussing the importance of remaining positive. I was not giving every minor detail to her, but we wanted to mutually support each other.

There was an airport drop off shuttle bus and reached the airline check-in counter around 12 on Monday for checking in my next flights ( I had the boarding passes ready , only had to drop the bags ) . When I went to the check-in counter , they “discovered” that I can’t board that plane as I don’t have a Canadian visa . I was at breaking point by then, I couldn’t take it anymore . After an hour of dialogues with the supervisors in the airline, they put me on to another flight to Miami and told me that I can get a connection to Atlanta from there which would land in Atlanta at 0100 on Tuesday. I was okay with that as my event was only at 0830 and moreover, I wanted to get out of that country as soon as possible. For my flight at 15:10 , I received my boarding pass at 14:05. Had to rush to the counter, dropped my bags and they confirmed that my bags will directly go to Atlanta and I can get my next boarding pass from American airline. From 20% of the English they spoke, this is what I captured. Without further surprises, I landed in Miami at 20:00 on Monday. While walking out I accidentally discovered that I need to collect my baggage there and then drop to the next airline check-in counter. I got my bags and dropped it on the way to my gate as suggested by the airline staff. I managed to get my boarding pass on that Atlanta flight and finally landed there after midnight as planned. I was feeling so happy as I thought I have overcome that tough patch. But there was more to come.

After waiting for my baggage for about an hour , they confirmed that my baggage is still in Miami. They promised me that the bags will land in Atlanta in the next flight which was landing around 0845 the next day morning. I didn’t have any extra pair of shirts of trousers or even underwear. I thought I can get something before the event near the hotel. I took an Uber and reached the hotel. The hotel room was cancelled due to a “ No show” as I was supposed to check-in on Sunday evening and by the time I reached it was Tuesday 0200. I explained them my situation and they managed to arrange another hotel a mile away from the Intercontinental. Atlanta has no shops those were open 24 hours for me to buy some clothes. Got up at 0600 , got me registered for the event, grabbed a coffee and managed to go to a shop to buy what I needed for that day and ended up reaching for the event at 8:40 AM (10 minutes late).

When I didn’t receive my baggage till 11, I followed up with the airline to discover that my baggage was in Chile at that point due to a human error (final nails on the coffin) . I had reached an emotionless state by then and all I did was “smile”. I called my wife and just laughed out telling her that the bag has reached the bottom end of south America – what more do you need. Also I told her that this cant get any lower than that as it is the lowest point on the map. Later she told me that by the way I spoke, she suspected that I was getting onto some abnormal state. I informed the airlines about the need to have a formal suit for the awards night part of the Gala dinner on Tuesday and they promised to have this delivered by afternoon. I got a message from the airline on that morning about the expected delivery time and it was 1845 , the awards function was starting at 1900. I waited, made multiple phone calls, text messages, follow ups, and finally got the bag delivered to my room at 1837. Quickly changed to my own black suit and my favorite red tie.

The event began, had dinner and started announcing the awards one by one. And one of the key awards they announced was – “Worldwide SE of the year 2019 ” and before I could hear my name, colleagues on my table started shaking my hands !!

Phewww… What a feeling.