I would have almost ended up in a jail if the authorities in
Bangalore were not kind enough. I had to travel to different places during my
stint in South India because my office had assigned me the duty to attend a few
conferences in different cities. I, along with my team, would hire car hire in Bangalore and travel to
different locations for the trainings. However, we preferred taking flights
whenever we had to travel for a long distance.
So here we were at the Bangalore airport, sitting on a
chair, reading a book, and waiting for the boarding time to begin. Eventually,
my colleagues had got seats quite far away from me because of our stupidities
while booking the tickets. When we boarded the airplane, we grabbed our seats.
Kunal, my friend, looked at me with concern and asked, “Where is your carry-on
luggage?”
I immediately fell numb, and realized that I had left it
near my chair while waiting to board. I pushed aside a few people, said sorry’s
and excuse me’s quickly, and ran outside the plane to grab my luggage. I had
left the luggage there for just five minutes, but someone from the security
staff was already about to check it.
I told him that it was my bag, and that I had accidentally
left it there. A grave look came on his face and he said, “Ma’am, it is illegal
to leave any luggage unattended in an airport. You cannot have it now. We will
have to get it checked.”
I froze as he said that because getting the luggage checked
again meant that I would miss my flight, as well as, training. My manager would
kill me over this stupidity and she was sitting right inside the plane. I
apologized to the guard a zillion times and pleaded him to hand over the bag to
me. He finally agreed to do it if I told him the contents of my bag correctly.
That was the exam I had to pass in two minutes, and I finally did.
I ran into my airplane as quickly as I could, but the amount
of misery I would bear was yet to end. An air hostess stopped at the gate of
the plane, and asked me to show the ticket. I, obviously, did not had it with
me; it was there in my bag. I told her the entire story, and tried to make her
understand. The words she said blew out my mind, “Ma’am, it is illegal to exit
the plane once you have boarded it.
She might not have noticed it when I was going out, but was
there at the gate when I returned. Again a series of sorry’s followed through
and she finally allowed me in.
All of my colleagues stared at me, and Kunal was laughing
out loud without caring for other passengers. I thanked God that I had a
separate seat for that journey!
