An Itinerary to Mumbai - Part 3

by chance or by choice

Tired of walking and waiting, i came to the Consulate just to face two seemingly rude folks, one a CR guy and the other an Indian Lady. We had a very short and formal talk which involved questions ranging from the purpose of visit to weather i am married and nothing in between. A gist of the questions that were asked are as follows.

Me: Hi, myy ....
They: Whats your name?
Me: VijayaBhaskar sir.
They: Okay Mr.Vijay. Whats the purpose of your visit?
Me: We in perot handle some of the applications of our client DHL who is in Prague. There are new requirements coming up and this needs us to collect ant understand their requirements. So to attend seminars i have to go to Prague for 2 to 3 weeks. (bull**** :P)
They: You need 2 weeks for this is it? (i guess he didn't believe me)
Me: Yes sir. We are starting from scratch and have to understand the business logic. This requires more than 2 weeks actually.(bull**** again)
They:OK. Tell me exactly how long do you want to stay three?
Me: 2 to 3 weeks,Sir.
They:Is it 2 or 3 weeks?
Me: Okay.. i will require 3 weeks.
They: Okay. Are u married?
Me: No, Not yet. (i still don't know why he asked it :D)
They: When are you planning to fly?
Me: 5th of this month,sir.
They:Okay you can go now and we will stamp it tomorrow.
Me: Thank you and have a good day ( well i didn't mean it)

And finally the important part of the travel was over. Just for a 5 minute interview, I had to spend a whole day and the company had to spend lots of money. I still didn't understand the logic behind the interview. He asked useless questions and i gave useless answers. Sometimes I keep asking myself if i am really going to Prague. And one of these days i will ask this question to my pm and i hope he does not give me useless answer :P

With lots of doubts in my mind, i came out the building and walked towards HaziAli shrine. The strong wind shoved the doubts from my mind and as i walked towards the shrine some kind of fresh blood started flowing in me. Apart from human visitors there were some other living organisms that were attracted to this place, they are our good old crows. And immediately i could see a resemblance between myself and the crow.

Physically the crow and myself were different of course. The resemblance i am talking about is the way we lead the life. The crows there kept attempting to fly against the wind to only find themselves in the place they started and so was I. What they actually were doing was use the force in the wind to take them in different directions without putting any effort, so for that they had to first position themselves in the right direction, that is against the wind. Hence they could go places by choice and not by chance. And had control over what was happening. And this were i could see the resemblance fading. Such thoughts keep flowing in my mind and I unconsciously went into deep sleep in the shrine.

The breeze and noise of people around broke my sleep and the time when i woke up was around 4:30, time for me to say good bye to the shrine and proceed towards the airport. I had a tough time searching for a cab that can drop me at the airport and give a bill. On reaching the airport had my favorite snack, the Bingo mad angles, and patiently waited for flight. And the big old Airbus A320 brought me back to good old Bangalore. And so came my short junket to Mumbai to an end.

Even though the trip is over, some thoughts keep lingering in my mind. The beautiful stars of the sky :P . The unknown force in shrine, The struggling black birds , The concept of chance and choice. Some of these cannot be understood and some need not be. Well isn't that life, where one will not know how things unfold and why they get unfolded in that fashion.

______ The Short End Of a Short Trip ______