High and Dry in Allien land!!

My latest trip to the US was a complete fiasco. For starters, I hate the one week escapades. It means loss of two weekends being “air borne” and in transit. It also means the unsolicited jet lag added to the baggage of tired bones. Also the fact that my kids exams spread through the length and breadth of the same week, did not make the prospect of travel any merrier.

Nevertheless, I went through the lengthy procedure laid down for foreign travel (Semler’s thoughts have not reached our Company yet!!) Our dynamic travel desk moved from a “No” to “Maybe” and finally to “Yes” and churned out the confirmed to and fro air tickets to Newark and back. With my air tickets confirmed in one day, I had a couple of hours to grab a few clothes, organize travel documents and other official documents and head to the airport with Dan Brown’s “Digital Fortress” to keep me company for the twenty two hour journey!

The first leg of the journey was uneventful. Paris was a maze, as usual. With each trip through this airport I discover more and more changes. The three hour stop over was just right to get to the correct terminal on time.

From then on, in true “Air France” style, we were delayed by nearly four hours after boarding the aircraft, which meant that we had to wait on the runway staring at each other and cursing every thing that we could think of. For me, I had Dan Brown for company, so it was not that bad after all!

When I finally landed at Newark International Airport, in New York, nearly five hours beyond the scheduled arrival time, I was totally famished, fatigued with every muscle in my body begging for rest! I passed through immigration, found my baggage in one piece and moved to the exit. Strangely, my adventure began then!

My first stop was at the pay phone, where I intended to call a friend who had volunteered to pick me up from the airport. And as expected, I needed a couple of quarters to accomplish this task. I managed to get a dollar changed and headed back to the payphone, wallet in hand, too tired to put it back into the backpack where it rightfully belonged. I placed the wallet (Read passport, return tickets, dollar currency, Indian currency, credit cards, Company ID card and insurance papers) on the counter and proceeded with the call. Somebody had fruitfully used those few minutes to sneak my wallet out of the counter. I discovered the loss as soon as I turned around after making the call. I was totally dazed and shocked, a minute ago I was a visitor on business, but now, with my passport gone, I literally had no identity!!

A few more moments of extreme anxiety and frantic searching brought me to a trash can in the vicinity, where I found my wallet, of course much lighter now, since it was relieved of all the currency, traveler’s cheques and anything of value to an outsider. The gentleman chose to return my passport and return tickets, and I must thank him for it! I was absolutely elated on discovering my passport and cared less about anything else. Feeling much relieved, I was able to call the cops and report the loss. In approximately seven minutes 3 cops and 5 detectives headed in my direction. Questions shot from all angles, I was almost as nervous as the perpetrator of the crime!! The cops then told me very frankly that they were doing this to report the crime statistics only. All I cared about was their report that I would need to get my TC’s cancelled by Amex!

Suddenly I realized that I was left high and dry in an alien land with as much as 50 shillings in my coat pocket. Still enough money to make one more phone call!!

God realized that I had messed up enough already, and took over from then on. Like magic a colleague from my Company appeared and drove me to his home, calmed my nerves, made me eat a good dinner before driving me back to the hotel!

Luckily the rest of the trip was not that bad. The meetings were a roaring success and I did get to meet a whole bunch of people, made some more good friends and did some shopping too.

It is said that “Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit”. I, for one, truly know those five minutes that gave me a whole new experience of being penniless for one day in a foreign land!!