Amar Dilli Darshan

The title of this article, which has been written in Bengali, means "My Seeing of Delhi", in the literal sense of the phrase. Actually this was not the first time I came to Delhi. I came here three times earlier, among them two visits were nothing but a sojourn to my journey to Faridabad. But last time, 3-4 months ago I came here for a meeting in the MOEF. None of these visits could be used for any kind of sightseeing or knowing Delhi properly.

So when I was asked to visit Delhi for an official work from 6th to 10th Dec, I was kind of elated that this would probably be the occasion for knowing the city of delhi properly. I came to Delhi on Sunday, 5th of December 2010 for the purpose of calibrating one infra-red pyrometer which is used in our Hydrogen Generation Unit for measuring the reformer tube skin temperatures. The calibration was scheduled to be conducted at National Physical Laboratory (an umbrella organization working under Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), Govt of India).

As per schedule I boarded a Jet Airways flight on 5th of Dec '10 which was scheduled to depart from Lokpriyo Gopinath Bardoloi Airport at 2:30 PM. But before boarding the flight, I had to undergo some tense moments. I was over optimistic in my time calculations and did not keep enough cushion while coming to Guwahati Airport. Anyway, I was just able to reach Airport at 10 minutes to 2 PM. But at the airport gate there was a big queue for entry to inside premises. This was the most rush hour of the day and on an average 1800 passengers per hour are plying during this time, so it is no wonder that there would be a big rush during this time of the day. Anyway, I finally got the entree to the airport premises at around 2:05 PM. Another five minutes were wasted for baggage x-ray and check-in.

When I finally stood in queue for the security check, it was 2:10 PM (remember my flight was scheduled to depart at 2:30 PM and boarding has already started). Again there was a long serpentine queue of passengers before the security check gate. Now I started to get some palpitation. I was frenetically looking for a Jet Airways crew who can help bypass the serpentine queue and get past the security check. But unfortunately there was none, though some crews of spicejet were doing the same thing to their passengers which I was craving Jet Airways to do. Anyway I had a hope (though not sure) that since I was given a boarding pass, they will not fly leaving me behind.

Finally, after complying with all the formalities, I boarded the airplane. It was 2:30 PM exactly when I was finally onboard. Anyway, I thought all is well that ends well. I could make it after all, and there was no time loss in waiting at the airport. May be it shows my great time management skill!!

to be continued...