26 August, 2011
Going home is always fun. Even though it almost always means rushing up last minute work at office, last minute packing at home and general panic of forgetting to take something etc. After all that unavoidable excitement, the hubby and I made our way to the airport.
Then an awesome surprise took place! I had written here about how one of my very close friends is leaving for UK and we threw her a farewell party etc. Given her schedule as well as mine, the farewell party was to be a real farewell, in the sense we were not expecting to see each other before she leaves for UK and I leave for Kerala. However, that was not meant to be!
She actually dropped by the airport just before we were about to board and we had a very nice 15 minute farewell-catch-up over good old Starbucks Chai Latte! It was super sweet of her to travel all the way to the airport just for such a short catch up! It was really incredible... because I would not have thought it possible to see her for a while now, so this felt really, really nice!
After another round of goodbyes with her, we ran to the gates. We were pretty much the last ones to arrive at the gate and board the flight but after that, things passed on pretty eventlessly through the journey.
When we reached the Cochin Airport, I was pleased that the immigration process took hardly anyway time at all. So I remarked how efficient everything is in Kerala, after all it's my land, just to annoy the hubby who obviously doesn't share that opinion. I might as well have just kept my remark to myself because from there on, things went tumbling downhill.
Firstly our luggage, which was on priority list, were the last ones to reach. Like literally the last ones to reach. This gave very good fodder for the hubby to make several comebacks on the "efficiency" of God's own country. But the bigger woe was that out of the luggage that did come in at the end, mine was missing. A whole bag had simply disappeared!
As the luggage belt ground to a halt, we were already throwing the required amount of fuss about our missing bag. We had airport officials run around, making us fill up one form after the other, talking on their walkie talkies, other non related officials asking us why are we hanging around, giving not very helpful opinions about bags etc.
That was when I noticed another bag which has been left behind at the belt. Nobody had picked it up so far. Even though this particular bag looked nothing like our missing bag, I suggested that maybe it's worthwhile tracing its owner and checking whether he has picked up ours by mistake. Then the airport officials ran around doing just this investigation, and within 5 minutes informed me that indeed, the dude has picked up my bag by mistake and now will be making his way back to the airport to make an exchange of bags.
Ah! What relief!
As we waited for the bag to return, my parents joined us and we had a cup of excellent steaming coffee each. Soon the dude returned - a young, educated looking guy whom you would expect to know the difference between these bags because one was clearly green and the other was clearly brown and his bag is like half the size of mine, so he can't even blame the mistake on colour blindness. My family and I gave him a dirty look first, then smiled and accepted the apology because after all, we are in God's own country!
So yes, that was the second surprise of the evening - a missing bag, which definitely was not a good surprise but given that I did get it back pretty much immediately, am pretty OK with the whole deal!
This was followed by a surprise which was actually pretty good! My parents revealed the brand new air-conditioner fitted in the bedroom!! Now this is indeed quite a surprise because we have not had air conditioning in my house ever and now my parents have gone and got one, more for the comfort of their son-in-law who is about to make his first week-long stay in the house! There was quite a show of "inaugurating" the air-con which was installed just this morning! A super cute surprise that was!
So an evening full of surprises... most of which was rather enjoyable!
355 more to go.
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