When we reached the airport, the security guard at the entrance expected us to produce our tickets, so that we can enter the airport. This we promptly did. But then the guy put a twist in our plans and said that we were one ticket short.
After repeated counting of heads in our party and the number of tickets in hand, we were unable to reconcile the difference. It was only after a few minutes of confusion, that the guard enlightened us.
Apparently, you are expected to buy tickets even for babies. We had a 1 year old and hoped that we wont need one, but we were informed otherwise. The guy instructed us to proceed to the Indian office and buy the ticket. He also told us to then collect the boarding passes and show it to him! Talk of Government high-handedness.
So the parents of the baby paid up the 10% ticket cost (applicable for babies who don't occupy a seat of their own) and we checked in our luggage. We requested for 2 window seats and the guy issuing the boarding passes was actually kind enough to allocate an entire row for us.
However the flight was delayed by nearly 45 minutes. And after a wait that seemed longer than the actual 45 minutes, we finally saw the plane land at the airport. I was happy for one reason. Basically this was the first time I was travelling by Indian and luckily for me, the plane that we were gonna be on, was the one with the new logo.
Once the flight took off, the soon-to-retire air wardens (they didn't look like hostesses, more like wardens) gave us candies. We were then served lunch. One chappathi. A little dhal, cup of basmati rice and some gravy. There was a sweet piece, some juice in a tetra pack and water.
I just gobbled up the grub in no time, considering that I hadn't really eaten anything after the breakfast at that posh Udupi Hotel. The interesting part of the food served on the flight was the sweet. By the looks of it, I assumed that it was a milk halwa/burfi. It was quite big in size.
But one bite and I realised that I was very wrong. The sweet was in fact mysore pa. I cant say it tasted well, but it wasn't unpalatable at any rate. Just that it was a really odd sized for a mysore pa.
The rest of the flight was uneventful and we landed at Chennai after 45 minutes. If you look at our plane trip from Madurai to Chennai, we can look at it in terms of Project Management Metrics like this: The effort variance was 0% but the schedule variance was around 40%.
At the airport, while we were waiting to collect our baggage, we saw the Sri Lankan cricket team also come down the stairs and wait near one of the baggage carousels. I saw most of the team - Jayasuriya, Atapattu, Malinga, Zoysa, Tom Moody and a whole lot of other names that I don't remember. But 2 people I missed out were Sangakara and Jayavardane.
So, to finally end what has been a really long travel chronicle, I reached home safely.
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