As I always say, life, can be one hell of a movie. Sometimes, it’s one movie after another. Right now, I’m still recovering from an overdose of life and movies, the ‘real’ ones!
May 5: Nearly missing the flight
Had this crazy urge to colour my hair yet again, with my flight less than four hours away! I reach Bounce to find out that it is shut. Salon Nayana was full. Finally went to Studio Profile at Food Court place and found that they had shifted to college road. After all that colouring I reached home exactly one hour twenty minutes before my flight to Delhi! Mom just didn’t want to ruin my mood on the verge of a trip, so I was on my way racing to the airport on a call taxi. And the driver screeched to a halt twenty five minutes before the flight! That’s when I took the ticket out and read that gates close half an hour before the flight. I rushed in, apologised profusely and ran all the way in to the plane, after checking in the monstrous sized suitcase I borrowed from Arch.
May 6: Hyundai’s Nineteen!
Sitting at the Delhi airport waiting for the connecting flight to Seoul, I watched the team assemble. It was like Oceans Twelve or that scene in the beginning of Reservoir Dogs. Everyone had a distinctly different personality as they walked in to the waiting room, introduced each other and exchanged cards. Some of them seemed to know each other very well. I know I can be quite a snob sometimes. But I just didn’t see how I would remember 18 names of total strangers and hence refrained from introducing myself after I packed my pea-brain with three new names, which I kept repeating every five minutes lest I forget.
My colleague from Business Line R was a very senior journalist, I stayed around him and watched him talk to the others. There was K, a short, enthusiastic well-informed corporate reporter who walked up and introduced himself. There was Y, a smart-talking executive editor of an auto mag who spent half the time on the phone negotiating a sponsorship deal for a rally.
And there I was, the odd man out. I was neither a business journalist or an auto correspondent and I was on my way to cover the Seoul Motor Show for my paper. “I do lifestyle and entertainment,” I replied when they ask me what I do at The Hindu.
1.30 a.m: Our flight took off from Delhi and Hyundai flew us Business Class. The luxury of business class has to be seen to be believed! Seven and a half hours later, the plane touched down.
Noon, Incheon airport: Our tour guide Michelle has brought a blue-Hyundai bus to pick us all up. A wonderful, beautiful drizzle on a foggy day and all of 15 degrees!
Added on May 16:
The chill of Seoul is now, of course just a distant memory!
MADRAS INK. 