Am sitting at T3, when I should have been airborne…. But am still smiling, all because of JAM, especially AM. I was booked on the 8.05 am Indigo flight to Hyderabad as I am part of the panel at ISB’s ILS – ISB Leadership Summit. We started by 6.10 am from home (Gurgaon) as I had no luggage. Just have a handbag and the iPad. We reached IFFCO chowk easily enough and saw the traffic all backed up all the way till we could see. So we decided to turn and try getting onto NH8 through Shankar Chowk and well, that road was choked too, so we thought we will try the Vasant Kunj route and just reached the Gurgaon border on MG Road and realised that was choked too. So we quickly turned, got onto the new flyover that dropped us off just behind Cyber Park. Then we just joined the “Jam”.
I sent the following picture to the ILS gang at 7 knowing fully well that I cannot get onto the 8.05 flight.
I also scanned all the airlines to see who had a later flight that could still get me into Hyderabad before 1. The only one available was the 9.50 Air India flight. We had anyway decided to try and reach T3 rather than T1 because Indigo had no options that worked. Rajiv swung into action and managed to book me on the Air India flight and we managed to break out of the jam and reached T3 by 8.05. Phew !
Just for a minute think if we could have managed this without mobile phones and some “Aadhar”… Our PM spoke of JAM – Jan Dhan, Aadhar and Mobile power yesterday and today morning we experienced it !!
Also a great life lesson, when in a “jam”, keep trying alternatives, ask for help and look for openings to get out of the jam. Things do happen … Like Rajiv said, “keep the faith” and just keep trying.
P.s – Well, the flight is delayed by 15 minutes but guess what, I got an upgrade to the business class, free !! Having faith that things will work out, maybe not how you planned, but just how it’s meant to be… Indeed.
If you want to overcome JAM fear, you should stay in Bangalore where millions of Jam citizens waste 20% of their daily life on roads, even though we have one of the best brains in the country with IT power , IISc, ISRO , DRDO but who can beat the brains of our road makers and Public works dept PWD who can be renamed as Private Wealth Dept?
Mahesh, I stayed in Bangalore :):) and 20% is an understatement… the stress due to the traffic and bad road conditions continue to have an impact much after we leave the roads and reach home.