Since I didn’t have the necessary apparatus as described in the first post, to deal with the anger, I had to rediscover and reinvent a few. And 13 hours in 4 different airports is a lot of opportunity to resort to different techniques, especially designed to resist prolonged frustration attacks.
On a rare rainy day in Chennai, a heart filled with post-diwali joy, and suitcase filled with lovely sweets and savouries, I was all set for a journey of a few thousand kilometres across the Bay of Bengal.
Scenario 1: Dealing with delay on a hungry stomach
After a number of innovative security procedures, and delightful restrictions, I reached the waiting lounge to board the flight. I had a camera bag, and one carrying laptop, but the security guys didn’t like 2 bags, so I was forced to hurriedly buy one massive jute bag (koani pie) to put the stuff. Then I was gleefully allowed to pass thru, just to be told that the flight is delayed by 2 hours since the runway was flooded caused by a dead rodent clogging the storm-water drains.
Technique 1: Search for alternate entertainment/distraction
I was suffering from a temporary loss of interest in cricketing affairs, after yet another humiliating exit by the Indian cricket team from a prestigious tournament. But that wet night witnessed the display of some icy cool temperament of an English cricketer Kevin Pietersen, who steered his team right out of a hell-hole to the bosoms of sweet victory, all the while having the unfazed expression of an corpse who died while watching a repeat performance of a boring drama! By the time England hit the winning runs, I was so engrossed with the thrilling match, that the flight attendants had to wean me away from the idiot box, tempting me with a well prepared dinner onboard.
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The hour-long flight to Colombo was quite uneventful, and didn’t give a clue of what lay ahead of us. On landing at the Airport with a connecting flight in less than at hour at around midnight, I was ready to the slow-motion sprint act. We were then informed that that flight was cancelled due to flooding (again) and delayed by 7 hours till morning. Then multiple scenarios presented themselves one after another -
Scenario 2: Stuck inside a queue that is like a snakes' intestine (and the reptile is suffering from alimentary congestion! )
I found myself standing hopelessly in a queue, which was supposed to lead us to allocation of hotel accommodation, with nobody actually revealing the truth that the airport was cut-off from the rest of city due to flooding of the connecting roads. Watching people constantly complaining in muted tones, executives losing cool with the airport staff, and queue-breakers trying to advance in a line that’s never going to move!
Technique 2: Music from outside and within
Started to listen to music from my hard-disk player on a low battery, listening to slow melodies, instead of fast energetic numbers, which I tactically estimated, might consume more power. Despite my power saving efforts with advanced logic, the music lasted for 2 songs, and ended abruptly with the squeaking sound of a common lizard being accidentally stepped on under your bare feet.
It was time to put inside the hardware player and bring out the software based music player inside my brain - my inbuilt infinity mp3 player.. Like any lover of music, we possess memories of a huge list of favourite songs. With some training during sleep-less nights, I can now invoke any song from memory and play it in low-fi mode. A few minutes later, irritated bystanders were staring a foot-tapping, head-nodding, hip-shaking and whisper-singing moron enjoying himself in pure solitary and guilt-free pleasure, while they were fretting and fuming for no apparent reason.
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Scenario 3: No Acco, No bed, no silence, no darkness, no fellow-travellers, no sleep, no food, no nothing for 7 hours starting from midnight.
Technique 3: Victimise other victims by boring them with insipid conversation
Looked around for other suffering souls and found 2 poor guys - one from B'lore and the other from Hyd'bad. And we started our own deccan chronicles, talking about everything from politics to pot-holes, heated discussions about the security guy who disallowed me from shooting pictures of some colourful masks on display, but still managed to take this :)
Observing the sales girl who slept fitfully in a shop that sold costly cameras and lenses and open at 3am, about the duty-free shops which accepted any major currency, but returned change in 3 different currencies much to the delight of a coin collector, and a general discussion on the deep shit we were currently in and how we were sadly getting used to the stench.-------------------
Scenario 4: Infinite delays :
till 6am, the information displays read 'departure at 0700hrs', at 7.15am it read 0800am, at 8am it 8.45a, and finally the flight took off at 9am ! (How could the flight take off any earlier, without the crew being able to reach the airport due to ..?? flooding again !! )
Technique 4: Anger -> Frustration -> Sarcasm -> Irony -> Humour -> Peace (-> Moksha)
With every other announcement of further delays, we were no longer losing our temper, but rather remembering the movie 'Terminal', playing games slow-coffee-drinking-race and, for a moment even considered responding to the 'job vacancy for electric trolley-driver’ ads!
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By the time the author of the post landed in Singapore after spending half a day researching anger management, he received a nomination for a Nobel Peace prize and conferred upon an honorary doctorate for saving humanity humbled by hellish horrors due to the hopeless habit of harbouring hatred.
