Jet Set Go!!

Sometimes in life, you do some things and you feel really really proud of yourself. Then there are times when you feel extremely disgusted about yourself for something you have done, and you just want the earth to split in to 2 and eat you up!

Sometime back, my husband and me decided to go to Anantapur to visit one of my relatives. Anantapur is around 3 to 4 hours by road from Bangalore.
We can directly go to the bus station and board a bus without any prior reservation for such short travels. But I don't know why I wanted to be extra cautious ( Strictly against my true nature ) and make a reservation well ahead, lest we get the back seats. So I went to this reservation counter, confused the ticketing guy thoroughly asking him for the availability for Friday evening, Saturday morning, Friday afternoon and all other possible routes. Finally I decided on the Friday evening 7 o clock bus to Anantapur and booked 2 tickets. I had cross checked the ticket and clearly saw the date Friday, 7:00.

As is always the case, Murphy's law sprung in to action and I was really busy at office on Friday and I was struggling it out with some issue. It was almost like a nail biting India Pakistan match , here India being me and Pakistan being that irritating issue. 6:00 pm Code change, build, deploy & test --> 6:15 pm doesn't work --> code change build deploy test.... this kept going on and at.. 6:30 pm I just got worked up and finally gave up and told my manager I have a bus to catch at 7 and will look at the issue first thing Monday morning. Poor guy .. I didn't leave him with much option, before he could say anything I was gone.

We had exactly 30 minutes to reach the Bus station which is around 18 kms from our office and it was a Friday evening peak rush hour. Things couldn't have been worse! My Schumacher raced at a speed, zig zagged in the traffic, honked, took all shortcuts possible and finally reached the station JET!!! I could sense the tension and fumes coming out of him, as he suggested me not to make any reservation and second, I didn't drop the travel plan in spite of being stuck at office till the last minute. I knew, I should've cancelled the plan but.. I don't know why!!

So you might have already got the picture by now, I was feeling half guilty for what I did, half ecstatic for we made it in time for the bus!! We got in to the bus and saw that someone else was sitting in our seats. I went to them and said, excuse me, these are our seats, please get up. They didn't ay much and showed us their tickets. Same numbers assigned!! We went and started an argument with the conductor and driver as to how they can allocate the same seats to 2 people and etc etc. Then somewhere in the middle of the heated discussion, the conductor checked our tickets and a very sarcastic smile came thru his idiotic face. He said, Madam, these are today 7 o clock tickets, and I was like yeah so? And then it stuck Naresh, when they say 7 in the ticket they mean 7 in the morning and for evening the timing shudve been 1900!!!!! And here we were, fighting vehemently for our seats which were never ours in the first place!!!!

I can never ever forget the look I got from my husband, for the 20 minute bike chase, 300 rs bus ticket waste and the vehement argument with the driver and conductor for the seats!!!

Peace be with all ... Amen :)