Column

Blunder, author George Bernard Shaw said, like marriage is scary. Only, the former often ends in sweet reformation, but the latter inevitably ends in disaster. Speaking of the former, it’s human to make blunders as no man is infallible. Okay, that isn’t profound. What I would like to emphasise here is that blunders at times lead to the most unexpected of consequences.

Let me elucidate. I was on my way to Bhopal to catch an early morning flight last week. I entered the Mumbai domestic terminal number one which houses the Indian Airlines office. Upon entry, I found that 4.40 am was too late to get into the flight that departs at 5.40. The airport was more crowded than a bus station. The only option to beat the serpentine queue was to call my acquaintance, an official with the Indian Airlines who I met a couple of times during my trips. She was Priya Deokar, a sweet, young mother ever so willing to help passengers in distress.

With no option in sight, I called her up only to be greeted with a sleepy voice. Damn, I thought. It was 4.40 am! I started apologising profoundly for waking her up at such an odd hour. Obviously an outsider like me calling some married women at the wee hours is perhaps the last word in being manner-less.

To my utter surprise, she thanked me for waking me up, saying she had to be in office at 5 am because some other member of her team was on leave. She asked me to wait next to the counter for 15 minutes. Even before the queue moved a few feet, Priya was there as she stays three minutes away from the airport. And then within no time, I was aboard the plane. What I thought was a colossal blunder actually turned out to be an unexpected pleasure.

I will give you another instance. Two days ago, I had an altercation with my travel organiser for booking me on a hopping Indian Airlines flight to Bhopal. It stops at Indore for 40 minutes en route. I thought I had made a blunder. I should have taken another direct flight. Reluctantly seated on the plane, I picked up the in-flight magazine, Swagat and instantly stopped at an article titled Sarson Ka Saga — a story about mustard fields that always find a place in celluloid love stories. I never knew such details about mustard. Many more articles on various topics were a revelation. Good that what I thought would be an unpleasant trip turned out to be pleasant by way of enlightening me.
N Raghuraman is an editor with DNA