Ginger & Cardamom

Things have suddenly been acting against me out of turn. Somehow things which seemed like if not in my favor then at least neutral somehow the whole world is conspiring against me. I know I sound like a cynic but actually I am a bit cynical, and I have always believed that when left to the world it tends to act favoring me the least. However, coming to the present my life is acting weirdly on multiple accounts; an interesting incident is here.

I am generally a person who likes to plan things perfectly and I have a backup plan B & a still backup plan C. Though both B & C are waste enough to be implemented, if they were good enough they would have been plan A. But anyhow, I came to Kanpur for celebrating Diwali. I am supposed to return tomorrow back to Pune. I had asked someone in Mumbai to get a Tatkal ticket for the train which I wanted to take. I still did not get the confirmed ticket, so in the end I had to look for Plan B. The plan B was to take flight, here the story starts I had three options I could take a flight from Lucknow-Mumbai and then take a bus from Mumbai flight costs 12,000+ Second option take Flight from Delhi-Pune costs 8,000+, third option Take flight from Delhi-Mumbai and take a bus thereafter cost 6,000+. Lucknow option was smilingly rejected, given the current situation of market & credit crunch situation hitting IT, they just might start the cost cutting from my job saying “you can afford too much”. What my plan B assumed was totally in contrast to what they teach you during MBA “Never rely on assumptions” which in my case was Kanpur-Delhi has awesome rail connectivity, there are more than 50 trains on the route. However when the world conspires yours truly just perspires. Every train was booked with every class. They didn’t even left Shatabdi first class which generally goes empty. Then to add icing to the cake trains to Delhi & flights to Pune were at such odd timings that I could have never ever caught any of the flight. So I decided to take a train to Delhi in the morning and booked a Mumbai flight in the evening. I was happy that at least something was happening as per the plan. However it would be unfair not to mention my Plan C was try and haggle in the Lucknow Pune train with the waiting ticket and pataofy the TC to give me a place to sleep in the night. The plan was a bad one, because running after the TC with the bag full of Sweets, Mathris, dry fruits and Home made eating stuff eagerly packed by my mom (did I mentioned forcefully) is a bad idea. Confident that my plan B was the best one, I went to meet my old school friends in a get together. There is turned out that one of my school time buddies was back from South Africa just at Diwali time and would be travelling by the same train back to Pune and he had a confirmed ticket. Now it in all probabilities makes the Plan C far more attractive than Plan B just because chasing the TC in the train without luggage is far more easier than the traumatic Day time travel in the gen category compartment from Kanput to Delhi. Now I had already spent 7,000 bucks on a flight, now I went back to the cancel the flight loosing almost 4,500 bucks for nothing. Now there came the best part, I was supposed to receive the ticket through courier and somehow the courier people managed to lost my courier. Now here I was 4,500 bucks down the drain and on the verge of failure of all the Plans A-Z I had, I could just feel irritated. Like I said, the world has definitely something against me.

P.s: I finally managed to get hold of the ticket form the courier head office here and I am hoping for an eventful journey involving a lot of human interaction with the TC from all the zones of railways.