Drama filled journey

Yesterday I was traveling from Bangalore to Coimbatore to visit my sister’s by flight. It is usually an hour and a half journey from my home. So booked the cab accordingly. When the cab arrived at 10.30 am (for my 1.30 pm flight) I didn’t expect the excitement that was gonna follow.
Just close to my home the traffic jam started. Since I had a 2000 Rs note (finally got one when I had been to a bank), the cab driver requested me to give him the cash instead of using the credit card and he called up his friend at the airport to have some change ready because the travel was expected to cost around 1200/- Rs and he didn’t have the money to pay back the rest. That is when his friend informed him that there was some heavy security in the airport and that the traffic was too high on the roads. Now my estimated time shot from 11.45 to 12 pm. I asked the driver to ensure to drive through less congested routes and got my kindle out. We were hitting traffic every now and then and I tried not to check my time lest I get worried and anxious. But almost close to 1/4th of the distance I heard a ‘bang!’ sound followed by yelling and some cursing by my driver.

Looks like my driver tried to overtake a suddenly stopped car only to have that car not see us and come forward there by hitting our car on the right back side creating a dent. Now the other car driver(another cab) was chasing us and was trying to get us to park the car and sort this out. Both the drivers started shouting that each of them had heavy damage but the other driver was hearing none of it. He threatened my cab driver even though he (my cab driver) tried to convince him that the mistake was on both sides and that his car had the maximum damage and also he was getting late to get to the airport. When the other car driver didn’t relent, my car driver decided to give him a miss and went through some lanes trying to stop him from tailing us and merged to the main road. I was all the while wondering what happened to my day suddenly. Hitting, Chasing, Escaping and Hoodwinking… 🙄
It was already 11.45 pm and I wasn’t even half way through. Now I started to worry, because there is no way I could get in (along with an additional baggage to drop off) and get to the gate before boarding time. I also started to check for the next flight just to be sure that my trip to the airport will not be wasted. By about 12.10 or so, after very long waits every where and the frustration of the driver at having his car dented (which was pretty new by the way) we reached the highways by 12.20 pm. From there the route was quite empty when compared to the roads inside the city. Finally, after that tension-filled will-I-make-or-not moments, I landed at the airport at 12.40 pm and the boarding was about to start at 12.45 pm.
Ran to the counter which was about to close and that girl looked at me up and down, totally disappointed. I told her that I had been through some rough journey and I really can’t help that I am late. Got the boarding pass (which wasn’t necessary because I had it on my phone, but these airline people will give you one on paper anyway) and my luggage receipts and ran through the airport all the time wondering ‘how I will ever talk / comment about people who run through airport at the last minute from here on, when I am doing just the same’ (wonder why I was worried about that…but I was) Thankfully not much queue in Security line. After that when I reached the boarding gate at 1 pm is when I breathed a sigh of relief. And they hadn’t even started to get ready for boarding. The boarding started only by 1.25 pm for 1.30 pm flight and it was 10 min late anyways.
And the whole flight journey to Coimbatore was only 30 mins in air. Reached Coimbatore by 2.20 pm. For a flight journey of 40 mins in total, I had to endure the traffic filled travel of 2 hours, which was OK, but it could have been with less drama, tensions, and suspense. But the highlight of the day: My nephew was very happy with his Thomas and Friends train set which I got for his birthday and we ended up building the big set and play with it in the evening. All the drama was totally worth it.