Flight Delayed

Philly to Dallas - Phew!!!

Last Thursday of July 2005, Yeah!! I am so excited that I am going to visit my sister after a long wait for almost 4 yrs, with an addition of one small soul called Vaishnavi into her life where she performs motherly activities on the same fresh soul; day in and day out.

Its 5:30 PM, waiting for the operators at Gate 26 to call me into “Continental Flight” but still no call for boarding has been made for the flight to depart in the next 15 mins. I decided to take out my laptop and browse some pages on the net to only find out that they have a secured network and need a hefty fee of $9.99 to browse for an hour. Chucked the options of going world wide for such high price and did some browsing on my own personal folders for some junk deletion.

It is almost 6:15 PM, now the one and only nerve which always go off starts flickin..If by any chance I don’t reach Houston by 9PM; I am missing the flight to Dallas from Houston. For the worst of my dreams to come true, we take off from Philly only at 7 PM against the scheduled time at 5:45PM.

“Welcome to Houston’s Bush International Airport” says the Airhostess, a sigh of relief for me with a lot of adrenalin flowing inside as the big stick in my watch closes in on 45th minute and the small almost reaching 9. Cabin bag backpacked, Laptop shouldered – all ready to become P.T.Usha (I can’t remember any other athlete’s name at that point, Of course, I am an Indian).

Flight attendant says, “To Passengers whose last stop is Houston, there are customers who have tight flight connections, please give way to them”. I expected the co-travelers to move out of my way as I am in the US of the A, to my weirdest imagination; everyone has tight flight connections. I said to myself, “Run for your flights”. Out of the Gate, I was watching for Terminal B, Gate 63 to find out that I am at Terminal F, which is the furthest point from Terminal B. I ran to the descending order of alphabets prefixed by the word “Terminal” and it was going down one by one with just 5 mins left in my watch for the Flight to take-off. I could already imagine that the attendants at Gate B63 would be screaming for my name to take off in time. I can’t help it, but still continued running my heart out into airport aisles and terminal connectivity trains as I wanted to meet my beloved sibling. I couldn’t ask for a better reason to run for. I said, “Run Mate, try to hold on to at least the wings for a 40 minute journey to Dallas from Houston”. How crazy could a mind think? Try being in a situation like the “To be Hero” in this lil story.Forgot to breathe, when I saw the lady at the Gate B63 waiting and receiving me with lengthened hand for my so called boarding pass to squeeze me inside the small express jet.She said, “You should be the guy from Philadelphia (Hoo Hoo, I have become Tom Hanks already for this act of mine), we are waiting for you to board. Don’t worry!! You are doing fine”. I dint even have the mind to look at that gracious lady’s face, but realized at a later stage that I did have a heart for her but forgot to give her a smiley.All that’s left for the Airhostess to do is to close the entry door to the Aircraft after she sees me inside the flight.

My mind rests to find out that my heart hasn’t slowed down to catch up on the missed beats from the 10 minute adventure. My hands made me feel comfortable by freeing the fast-breathing “Hero, Who made it to the flying object” off his baggage. In no time, Airhostess says “Welcome to Dallas Love Airport”. My mind read it as “Welcome to Dallas and your beloved sister is in the Airport”. Out of airport to baggage claim to find the above heard sentence come true, with her better half and her truly gracious fresh soul “Vaishnavi”, who is asleep with her closed fingers, expressing “My dear uncle, you made it … Good on you mate”. Baggage collected, ready to go home. Tam Hanks happy, sister overwhelmed, her better-half delighted to head towards a Happy Dallas Love Home for the last weekend of July 2005 to make it everlasting……