Getting connected...Again...

Greetings to you this Monday Morning!!

Hello everyone. I am back online …after being away for a few weeks.
First of all – My heartfelt thanks to all those who wrote to me saying that you missed my emails. It was a great feeling to read each of those emails. Each email affirmed my feeling that five years of Monday mails had done a lot of good to me…and that I must strive much harder to be at it consistently. This week, I don’t have any particular inspiration or learning to share with you…just a few lines to get connected again.
The last few weeks have been demanding in terms of time and work pressure. However what also made a difference is the fact that I was on the move for quite a few weekends in the recent past. Traveling can be fun and more than that a tremendous learning opportunity. I must consider myself to be very fortunate to have got an excellent opportunity to travel extensively and visit some wonderful places this month. I was in Atlanta, beginning July 05 and later I visited California.

I think the greatest learning in itself was the travel experience. I went through delayed flights / nearly missed flights / mixed up seat numbers / damaged and lost baggage / extra additional security procedures / misplaced computer notebooks and apartment keys and declined credit card transactions at airports - all in a matter of 10 days. The most bizarre incident, that I must share, happened at the Paris airport where the flight could not take off as there was one “additional” passenger on board. Well it was a wacky situation to have one “standing” passenger in a plane possibly because of an error on part of the airline staff.

How could that happen? I thought “It happens only in India”. This perception that “It happens only in India” was proved wrong then and on a few more occasions. The airline officials resolved it finally by offloading the last passenger who had boarded. As luck would have it, the last passenger on board was an Indian lady traveling with her friend and 3 children. After 2 hours of debate and discussion she agreed to travel by the next flight and deplaned. The flight was about to move when realization struck to her co-passengers that THEIR passports were with HER and now she was in Paris and they were sitting in a plan to go to the US. Boy…It was indeed an “out of the ordinary” moment. Once again we were in a “STOP” situation to locate her and get the passports. I just wonder what would have happened to this lady if some security search in Paris would have revealed 5 passports in her bag :-).

I believe that most travel experiences are a learning in some sense. As we invest more time in moving around, seeing new places, meeting new people and seeking new experiences we collect small bits and pieces of knowledge that eventually go a long way in adding to what we traditionally call as “wisdom”. That’s one reason why most people who we think are “wise”, have either a lot of gray hair or no hair. They seem to have invested years in becoming wise.

Have a great week!!