One of the most awaited weekends is about to come. After spending two months of lonliness and missing my friends in Noida, I am going to meet two of my "so far yet so close" mates, Panky (Pankaj Sadavarte) and Sampy (Sampa Das). Both of them are coming to IIT Delhi to attend a conference on atmospheric science.They have to present their research work for which I am quite sure, CV must have tortured them and ragged them to the physically and mentally permissible limit.
They are getting full monetory reimbursment, but initial expenseshave to be beared by them. Now what, again same old story of student life, "No bank balance to book flight tickets". So, as their good friend and earning friend (which is the actual case), it's my duty to help my friends financially. I proposed to book the tickets for them and was so proud that I am helping my friend. With sufficient balance in my bank account, I was trying to multitask, the same mistake which I have done several time in my life. I was having dinner with the focus on removing my childhood enemy dhaniya, gossiping with Panky and Sampy and pulling their legs and vice-versa, facebooking (searching for beautiful babes and dreaming of getting one some day), and ofcourse last but not the least, booking their tickets.
Tickets were booked, and yeah i was happy and proud of myself. The next morning I mailed them the ticket and god knows what made me have a look at the ticket, even though as always I was pretty sure and confident at the perfection of my work. Here is the moment which made my day (being a ticket agent) :P
The moment I open the ticket, my eyes rolled down to the word which my wife would be going to use as her last name in future. "JAIN!!", yes one of the pessengers travelling through that ticket was "Pankaj Jain". There was a sudden sensation which started to boil down in my heart and I was like "Yes Akshay, that's true, you have done the blunder again!". What to do? Ran here and there, talking to people, and asking for suggestions with an agenda "How to get boarding passes using a ticket with wrong last name" and here is what I did to get myself out of this unwanted situation of putting my friends in trouble.
I was left with three options. Trying the first option and after talking, fighting and banging my head with customer care services of Air India and makemytrip, I realized that I have committed a sin. Now I was left with two most undesired options: first one was to take the risk of sending my friends in with wrong name on the ticket and second one was to cancel the ticket and lose1500 bucks as penalty. But then as people say, "Life is all about taking risks". I talked to my friends and convince them that they can travel using this ticket. I edited the ticket in pdf editer and changed the name to "Pankaj Sadavarte" which would help them pass through the security check. Then Sampa could do the rest by collecting the boarding passes for both of them by showing her id proof. Everything was going fine till now, but there was still a risk involved and an even bigger risk of not getting the money refunded if the identity mismatch would be find out. So, we decided not to take that risk, cancel the tickets and book the new ones.
But my day was not ended yet. Since there was no seats available in the same flight, one single ticket cant be cancelled, for both of them wanted to travel together. I cancelled both the tickets and did a slightly good job of getting the cancellation penalty of makemytrip waved off. Now all I had to do was to find the cheap flights and book tickets for them. In the searching process I suddenly found the tickets availability in the same flight (which was cheapest). As soon as I started the booking, price of one ticket was same as earlier Rs 5000 while for other ticket it shoots up to 22000. Then the second best option was available in "Go Air", airline. After searching in three different sites, I found the cheapest tickets in cleartrip.com for same flight. I started to book the tickets ensuring that all the names were correctly entered. What next? As soon as I reached the payment option, ticket prices shooted up. Then again I searched at different sites for the same flight and still the one in cleartrip.com was cheapest one. I decided to book this one before the prices shoot again. Then when I had reached the payment portal, my cell recieved the security password for internet banking. As soon as I opened the sms to look for the security code, my phone's battery drained. Somehow finally because of Prasanna's (Prasanna is my colleague at HMEL) help, I could book the ticket which became a bit more expensive till that time. That's the end of my day being ticket agent.
Through this instance, I got to know that there are three type of people around us. Those who play safe, those who take risks and those who tend to take risk but ends up playing safe.What I learned is "I am definitely not very good at multi tasking, no matter how stud I think I am :P". But still next time no such error in life will take place, kyunki jo hota hai acche ke liye hota hai!!
Cheers
Akshay
