Himachal Diaries -- Lost and Found

Himachal Diaries is a series of some short and some long blogs from my recent 10-day trip to Himachal with four of my other friends. The multiple blogs will cover places we saw, people we met, funny experiences and some instances like the one below which amuse us at a personal level. This is part two of the Himachal Diaries series, Hope you enjoy, feedback welcome!

It is a nice rainy morning, perfect drive from Chembur to the Mumbai airport, no traffic, no delays, no queue at the check in counter and no great delay at the security check too. We walk happily towards the boarding gate and then we realize Indira’s boarding pass is missing.

With this starts our first walk of the journey from gate A-7 of the Mumbai airport to the security check area, this would safely be  the fastest we would have ever walked. Boarding was to start in the next ten minutes. As we walk we scan the airport floor for one piece of paper- the boarding pass, but nowhere to be found.  And then, Indira spots a kid playing with a boarding pass. Before we can react, the kid has walked past us.

We rush to the security check-in counter and a lady police official is busy screaming “Sardarji ki checking kisne ki?’ The poor Sardarji to my eyes looked quite law abiding, wonder what caught the woman’s attention. Amid the significant question of who ‘checked him out’ we pop our humble question “ Koi boarding pass mila kya” As we brace to hear a earful from the police officials, to our surprise they help us search for it. Within in sixty seconds it is concluded, there is no boarding pass to be found, so we make a new one at the boarding gate.

Now starts our walk to the boarding gate again, this time at a faster pace. The smiling young lady at the boarding gate then directs us to the check-in counter again, which now seemed to be the other end of the world. She adds a word of caution, we start boarding soon, if you do not get your check-in done in time, I am sorry you may miss the flight. We thank her for the kind information.

“Anyways what is your name? “The lady at the boarding gate asks, so she can make a note before we head to the check-in counter.

“Indira Thakur” the friend answers.

“Oh take this,” the lady says.

 That was quite quick to make a new boarding pass, I wonder.

“No, we found it,” the lady says.

 “Did you find it with a kid,” Indira asks.

 “No, our airline porter found it,” she says.

“Not a kid, oh how boring,” we both think.

 And then, that is how we fly.