Anecdotal

Bad Things Often Occur for Good Reasons

March 7, 2015

“When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

      Alexander Graham Bell

As the car moved out of Nagpur Airport for the second time that night, I anxiously glanced at my watch. The time was 09.30. The date was June 28, 2007. Actually, we had left the airport in the same airport taxi once some forty-five minutes earlier.  But we had to return when the driver discovered on the way that he had forgotten his mobile phone at the airport office. Thus, we were leaving the airport a second time.  As the car picked up speed, I hoped and prayed that there would be no more return trips that night.  

The taxi in which we were travelling was a free arrangement by the airlines that brought my son, Nithin and me from Delhi to Nagpur.  We, therefore, had no reason to sweat about the kilometres added by yet another return. But we could not afford the loss of time involved in it. Every second was precious for us since every lost second meant a second’s delay in reaching our destination. And we did not have a definite idea about the actual distance or the nature of the route to our destination.  We only knew that Raipur, the place to which we were headed that night, was located far away in another State, Chhattisgarh.

The air outside was hot and sultry. It was also static in a disquieting way. It appeared as if nature was standing in bated breath awaiting some impending disaster. Since the car had air-conditioning, the discomforts of the weather did not bother us. Soon we were cruising at a speed of 70-80 kilometres an hour.   As the car kept leaving the airport more and more behind, my fears of another trip back to the airport slowly receded. We settled down at the back seat for the long trip through unknown roads hoping that our misfortunes of the day were ending. But that was not to be.

But, how come we were in Nagpur if our destination was Raipur?  Well. As a matter of fact our destination was not Raipur. It was actually Rourkela in Odisha State. We happened to land at Nagpur in the aftermath of a misfortune.

A few weeks back, my son Nithin had completed his B Tech (ECE) Degree from TKM College of Engineering, Kollam, Kerala. It so happened that along with his B Tech, he had also cleared his GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) test securing a score that would make him eligible for an admission for M Tech in one of the National Institutes of Technology (NITs). Unlike today, no centralized admission system was in operation those days. Students seeking admission in NITs (and IITs) had to apply separately to each institution and had to attend the counselling as scheduled by each. Thus, Nithin was asked to attend counselling at NIT Jaipur, Rajasthan, on 26.06.2007, at NIT Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, on 27.06.2007, at NIT Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh, on 28.06.2007 and at NIT, Rourkela, Orissa (Odisha) on 29.06.2007. The authorities concerned had little concern about whether it would be physically possible for a candidate to reach these widely dispersed places as per the said schedule. We deliberated over it and decided to leave Hamirpur out and try the rest.

We flew into Delhi from Thiruvananthapuram and proceeded by train on 25.06.2007 to Jaipur.  The next morning, Nithin attended the counselling program at NIT, Jaipur. VLSI Design was his choice course. Once the interview was over, he was more or less certain that he would get admission. But the publication of the selection list would take a few days.  Since we could not afford to skip other NITs based on pure optimism, we returned to Delhi and boarded a train to Allahabad.  But, Nithin could not succeed in gettng an admission of his choice at Allahabad.  That left NIT Rourkela as more or less the last and lone chance for an admission for him that year. We were at Allahabad on 27 June 2007, and the counselling at NIT Rourkela was scheduled for 10.00 a.m. on 29.06.2007. It appeared that we could comfortably reach there.

On hindsight,  I know that the right route to Rourkela from Allahabad was to take a train to Kolkata and another train from there to Rourkela.  But it so happened that I was then associated with the IT implementation and training mission of my organization and was constantly criss-crossing the country in connection with my job.  That apparently made me arrogant about my own expertise on Indian geography. Consequently, I chose a rather circuitous route to reach Rourkela.  So, we returned to Delhi intending to take a flight the next day to Raipur and to travel by train from there to Rourkela.  I had made reservations for us for a train leaving Raipur at 11.30 in the night on 28.06.2007, scheduled to reach Rourkela by 06.00 in the morning on 29.06.2007.  While we were waiting at Allahabad railway station to catch the Rajdhaani Express to Delhi, we found some of the other candidates who had attended the NIT counselling, proceeding to Kolkata en route to Rourkela. “Fools”, I told myself. “They would not reach Rourkela on time for the counselling”, I muttered.  

We were once again back in Delhi by around ten in the morning on 28.06.2007.  The air tickets we had held indicated that the Jet Airways flight we were to take was scheduled to take off from Delhi at 06.30 that evening to reach Raipur by around 08.30. I assumed that with a three-hour margin, we were comfortably placed to catch the train from Raipur.  Since we had time on our hands before heading for the airport, we roamed around Delhi’s Connaught Place for a while and had a leisurely lunch at a South Indian restaurant before proceeding to the airport.  We reached the airport two hours prior to the scheduled departure of our flight. But as I was proceeding to the Jet Airways check-in counter, a flashing neon board caught my attention.  As I read the message on that board, a stunning bolt of blazing fire went through my heart.  My head started spinning. I thought I was going to faint. The message on the board told us that Jet Airways flight 9W 735 to Raipur had departed.

Recovering from the sudden shock, I mustered my faculties and ran to the check-in counter. The personnel at the counter told me that the time of departure of the flight was changed from 1830 hrs. to 1600 hrs. They told me that my mobile number as recorded in their system was wrong, because of which they could not inform me about the schedule change. 

I am not sure whether I was paying any attention to what they were telling me since whatever they were telling did not change the reality that the flight had taken off.  My mind was filled with consuming terror.  My heart was racing. My brain was working furiously. We had some fifteen hours left to travel from Delhi to Rourkela.  The only flight that could have taken us to Raipur had already been up in the sky for over half an hour. The devastating truth was that, as things stood, it was practically impossible for Nithin to attend the counselling at Rourkela. The crushing feeling of guilt that the tragedy was the product of my own misplaced sense of overconfidence engulfed me.  I had no heart to face my son.  But strangely, he seemed to have kept his cool.  Actually, he was trying to calm me down saying, that if there was an M Tech seat earmarked for him at NIT Rourkela, nothing would take it away from him.  Looking back, I feel rather ashamed that I who had been advising him all along to be bold and equanimous in dealing with fateful situations in life had forgotten to practice it in my own life.  Of course, the easiest thing in the world is to give advice.

As a frequent flyer, I knew that the airlines simply could not wash their hands off on the strength of the alibi of wrong mobile number.  (At least that was the case eight years back.)  I was holding a ticket according to which there was at least two long hours left for the flight to take off.  I could not just walkaway accepting their promise of a full refund of the fare particularly in the light of the terrible jam in which we had found ourselves. So, I flitted from desk to desk pleading and trying to convince people concerned that I had come to check-in relying on the departure time recorded in the ticket I had held. Eventually Jet Airways agreed to fly us to Nagpur by a flight scheduled to leave by seven that night. The airlines would arrange a taxi from Nagpur to take us to Raipur.  But the critical factor was time. We were unlikely to reach Nagpur before 08.30 p.m.  We had no idea about the distance from Nagpur to Raipur or the time a road journey would take. We had no access to Smart phones, GPS or Internet on Mobile those days. We only hoped that we would be able to catch the train from Raipur. In any case, there was no point in staying stranded at the Delhi airport.

 

The airlines gave us two executive lounge coupons so that we could have some refreshments before boarding the plane. The longue had a choice of five-star dishes and hot and cold drinks.  But we were too stressed out to think of eating at that moment. I got some fruit juice, which we gulped down rather mechanically.  Eventually we boarded Jet Airways flight 9W 367 to Nagpur. The flight landed at around 0830 p.m. The Jet Airways authorities at Nagpur had already been alerted about our arrival.  By 08.45, we were in a car swiftly crossing the grounds of Nagpur airport.  But, before long, the car would re-enter the airport and we would finally be on our way to Raipur only by 09.30 p.m.

The driver was a man around thirty.  We were going at 70-80 kilometres an hour. I asked the driver about the time it would take to reach Raipur. (Since I could speak both Hindi and Marathi, there were no communication barriers).  He told us that it would take at least four hours. I thought if he could drive faster at 100-120 kilometres per hour, there was a chance that we would still catch the train. My logic was that it was possible that the train would be running late by an hour or more, as trains in this country usually did. It was a night journey on roads bereft of traffic and we could do a 100 kilometres per hour on an average. What I did not then know was a theoretical probability does not always match with ground realities. And so, I was not at all planning for an eventuality of our missing the train from Raipur.

An hour or so into the journey, the weather started changing. What began as a cool breeze soon picked up speed to turn into a storm. There were muffled sounds of thunder rolling in the distance.  I thought the rains were far away.  But soon it started drizzling.  Then a scorching flash of fire tore  the black sky apart from horizon to horizon. The ear-splitting sound of the thunder that followed the next instant almost threw the car off the road. I had trouble stopping a scream. Then the rains came pouring down. And the lightning and thunders continued.  As a person hailing from Kerala, I was no stranger to either heavy rains or chilling lightning and thunder. But what we had witnessed that night was a blood curdling death dance of the elements.  We could see nothing but the sheets and sheets of water crashing on windscreen, which gave an eerie blaze in the burning fire of lightning that kept striking without any respite.

Suddenly the car stopped. We peered through the car window. The car was not on the road.  It stood in front of, what I guessed from its silhouette visible through the heavy downpour, a rundown shack. The driver got down and ran into it. I sat their tensely counting the seconds ticking away. It appeared that he was looking for something. He returned to the car a few minutes later fully soaked in rain. I demanded an explanation.  He told me that he needed more air in the tyres. The air pump there was out of order. I was enraged.  But I told myself that I should keep my cool in dealing with the driver.  We were in a tiny car in the middle of the night travelling through  unknown roads that passed through strange terrains. Outside the car, nature was at its violent worst.  Our sole hope of deliverance from that fearsome situation was the driver of the car whom we had known just for a couple of hours.  And offending him in any way was a sure recipe for disaster.

The driver stopped the car at a couple of more spots on the way before he was able to fill the car tyres.  I sat grinding my teeth in madding desperation. The driver still did not know about our real mission or the desperation of the situation, although his knowing it would not have in any manner changed the need for the filling of the tyres.  The driver only knew that we were being taken to Raipur since we missed the flight. Once we could catch the train, there was no need to share with him the story of our misfortune.  I also had my reservations about a more or less illiterate guy like him comprehending the significance of our mission.   

We continued our journey through that wild and menacing night. There were no signs of  let up in the fury of the nature. We had no idea whether we were running through the right roads or how the driver was able to find his way when hardly anything was visible through the car’s windshield.   Except for the rain drenched interstate trucks tiredly groaning its way through the lashing rains and howling winds, there were no other vehicles on the road.  We had no idea whether there was any human presence anywhere close by.  It was dangerous to be driving the car through such a terrifying night.  But it was far more dangerous to stop it. 

We had to pass through Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh States to enter Odisha. Minutes and hours went by. Our progress was agonisingly slow. My calculations on time to destination had gone haywire. But I no more cared. Getting out of the deathly situation with our lives and limbs intact was my only concern then. At every turn, I feared the car breaking down or it simply skidding off the road and crashing into a heap. As we passed through the jungles of Chhattisgarh, my mind was filled with visions of machine gun wielding Maoist Militants rushing out of the undergrowth to shoot, kill and loot us.  I was too terrified to wink my eyes or utter a word.  I furtively glanced at Nithin.  He sat there with his eyes wide open staring intensely into the devilish frenzy of the nature outside.  We had nothing else to do but to wait for daybreak or  a tragic final end of our agonies.

Pardon my use of impolite language.  But the truth remains that only when we are in deep shit, we remember our own inconsequence to think of God.  Suddenly we want divine intervention to save our souls. Suddenly we feel sorry for the evils we had been doing all our lives and would continue to do once we got out of the current pains.  Suddenly we would start praying. Or make offers (to bribe god). Or commit for a pilgrimage to some holy hill or shrine. Since we as a family would never attempt to bribe our way to divine intervention, the only option available to me was to pray.  And I prayed with all my heart. 

Nature’s fury continued without respite all through the night.  None of us had eaten anything during the entire journey. The last meal we ate was the lunch we had at Delhi.  Except for some kind of a pan-masala that he was occasionally dumping into his mouth from a shiny pouch, and a few occasional swigs from a bottle of water he had carried, the driver too had taken nothing since our journey commenced.  It was a great consolation that the terrors and tensions of the night had not shaken him.

It was close to four in the morning when we entered Raipur town. The weather was clearing. We had covered nearly three hundred kilometres in six hours. Considering the hell through which we passed, the driver had done a great job. We had no GPS or other tools to guide us. Yet we did not lose our way. All three of us were alive and the car was intact and running. But the fate of our ultimate mission still remained a huge question mark. Now that there was no chance of our catching the train as planned, I had to make a decision on how to get to hour final destination. I asked the driver to pull the car to the side and stop. When the car came to a halt, I explained to him our real mission and the truth that our actual destination was not Raipur but Rourkela. And we had to reach Rourkela in the next six hours. I suggested to the driver that he should take us straight to Rourkela and I would pay him for the travel beyond Raipur.

The driver was hesitant. Rourkela lay at a distance of over 400 kilometres from Raipur. His assignment was to drop us at Raipur.  He was too tired to drive such a long distance further after the struggles and horrors of the night. He was unsure whether the owner of the car would permit further travel into another State.  Then I tried to impress upon him the importance of the mission. To my pleasant surprise, he seemed to understand the significance of the admission for my son at NIT. But he was still unsure whether his boss would agree.   I suggested that I would call his boss if he could give me the mobile number.  But the driver knew that there was little chance that his boss would answer a strange caller at that unearthly hour. Time was ticking away. I looked at him with pleading eyes. He picked up his mobile phone and called (Thank God that he insisted on going back to the airport to pick up his phone). After a long pause, he started speaking. I heard him explaining our predicament and making entreaties. Then he put down the phone and started the car. The second leg of our long journey started.  It appeared that the challenge of the circumstances had suddenly made  the  driver  more kind, alert and active.

We soon passed Raipur town that lay quietly asleep in the pre-dawn cold of the rain-dripping air. The only sounds we heard were the humming of our car engine and the gurgling of muddy water through the dirty drainages on the wayside. The car was accelerating. We lowered the window shields to let in some fresh pre-dawn air.   We had to go at an average speed of 70 kilometres an hour to reach Rourkela by 10 o’ clock. But considering that we had to cross state borders and check posts and that we had no idea about the kind of roads ahead,  the outlook did not look very promising.  But we had no options but to give it a try.

The roads were more or less empty so early in the day. We were making good progress. The tension inside me was slowly unwinding. Suddenly we saw a row of stationery trucks in front. The car stopped. The driver got down and made inquiries.  A huge trailer truck had hit something in the heavy rain of the previous night and overturned. It was lying across the road blocking traffic. We always encounter such situations on long trips. But that was no solace for us at that moment. When it looked that the tide was turning in our favour, the whole game was back to square one. The driver hurried out and started talking to other drivers. Eventually, he learned that small vehicles could pass by taking a diversion. He ran back to the car, started it, turned it around viciously and sped for the diversion point.  Before long, the car reached the next check post.  There was a long queue of trucks waiting for their turn for checking.  We parked our car behind the last truck. Precious moments were flying away. Again the driver sprang out of the car and vanished. After learning that passenger cars needed no checking, he raced back to the car, started it and pressed down the pedal.

As the sun rose, we entered the State of Odisha.  The conditions of the roads changed. We were now travelling on well paved, wide and straight roads. But for intermittent drizzles, the weather was sunny and clear. The traffic was lean. The car was racing at full throttle. So was the clock. I kept looking at my watch and the milestones on the wayside. The clock crawled to 10.00. We were still around a hundred kilometres away from Rourkela. I called the NIT admission office and explained our predicament.  The official who answered told me that the counselling has started and candidates would be called in the order of their position in the admission rank list. Nithin’s rank was in the thirties. His first choice of subject was VLSI Design and the second Telematics and Signal Processing. Both these subjects had ten seats each in the general quota.  It was expected that some of the top ranked candidates would not show up having taken admissions in IITs or other NITs or may opt for other topics. So there was a fair chance that he would get at least his second choice.  But he had to be present when his name was called.  In his absence, the seat would go to the next candidate in the rank list.  The allotment once done was final and the admission office could in no way intervene in the matter.

I fervently hoped and prayed that the process of counselling of each candidate above Nithin in rank would take time enough to allow us reach in time his name was called. But I also knew that by every passing second his chances were steadily slipping away. I unburdened my heart to the driver.  He tried to pacify me by saying that an admission for Nithin was a done thing. “Don’t worry sir. I have also been praying all the way. If your son does not get admission, I will not take the money for this drive”. I knew that he could not afford to give up his taxi fare. In any case, money was not an issue at that moment.  But the very fact that he tried to act so assuredly had helped in lifting up our sagging spirits.  He pressed down the accelerator to the floor.

It was eleven o’ clock when we entered Rourkela town. But none of us knew where NIT was located.  We started asking for directions. Every stop to seek directions was gobbling up precious minutes. A police officer told us to take a turn from the Biju Patnaik statue. Amidst our panic, we shot past the statue and had to return to take the turn. The needle of my watch was edging towards 11.30.  I was on the verge of going insane with anxiety.  Then at a distance, I saw the huge entrance of NIT, Rourkela. The time was past 11.40 a.m. At last our troubles were ending either way, I thought.  But it still had not.

NIT, Rourkela has a sprawling campus spread over 750 odd acres of real estate.  The campus was breathtakingly green, beautiful and meticulously laid out.  The security at the gate gave us some directions. But there were too many roads going in every direction.  We took several turns but reached nowhere. Then we found a student on the sidewalk.  On our request, he got into the car to act as our navigator. We were informed that the counselling would take place at the audio-visual centre. We raced forward, but ended up in front of a closed gate.  The security who stood behind the gate told us that we had to go back and enter through a side gate. We turned around and sped at breakneck speeds.  Eventually we stopped in front of the audio-visual centre. The time was nearly twelve noon. We got out and dashed towards the centre.  The doors were closed and there was hardly any human presence around.  Turning back, we met another student to whom our navigator spoke.  He told us that the counselling was probably over and everyone had left. Sad, tired and crestfallen we slowly traced our way back to the car. Suddenly another student appeared from nowhere. He told us that there was some activity on the first floor of a nearby building.  I ran for dear life and rushed up the stairs two at a time. 

Yes. It looked like the place.  I asked for the room where M Tech counselling was being held. In a moment, I was crashing into the counselling room, bedraggled and breathless. I went to the first desk. “You are coming now?” the official at the desk looked up and shouted. Sudden panic gripped me. He disinterestedly pointed to another person who sat there scanning through some paper on his desk.  My heart was racing like mad and I was trembling like an aspen leaf. I dashed towards the man. As I was reaching his desk, he raised his head and called out ‘Nithin V George’.  From behind me, my son shouted, ‘Yes Sir’.

Like a zombie, I walked out of the room on unsteady legs.  I was shaking all over. Tears came rushing to my eyes.   I pulled out my mobile phone and called my wife.  We both cried. Suddenly I was too exhausted that my legs buckled under me. Before I could put my phone back into my pocket, I crashed down onto the floor in a heap.

Epilogue

We commenced our journey back home by the evening train.  The day after we arrived, both of us were down with severe fever.  Nithin was diagnosed with Typhoid. I got off with viral fever that kept me tied  to the bed for a week. Two days later the admission list of NIT, Jaipur, was published. Nithin’s name was very much there as anticipated. He was more or less at the top of the list of candidates selected for the VLSI Design course. But we chose to stick with NIT, Rourkela considering the pains, risks and agonies that we had to go through in securing that admission.  We believed that there was an element of miracle in that admission. We did not have the heart to sweep it aside. 

And it turned out that our decision to stick with NIT, Rourkela and the Signal Processing course was the right one.  At NIT Rourkela, Nithin had the good fortune to associate with some of the internationally acclaimed experts in his field of study. His professor (whom I do not wish to name for obvious reasons) took a special interest in him.  Thanks to his mentoring and active support, Nithin received a Canadian government scholarship to carry out his M Tech thesis work for a semester at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He passed M Tech as a topper winning the Institute’s medal, which he had the honour of receiving from the hands of the former President of India Dr A P J Abdul Kalam.  He eventually obtained his Doctoral Degree from an IIT at the age of twenty-six and shortly thereafter joined an IIT as one of the youngest faculty members in the IIT system. 

Behind all these accomplishments was one person whom we would never forget in our lives.  That person is the driver of the airport taxi who drove us through a terror filled night at great risks to cover some 750 odd kilometres of perilous roads through a night of deadly weather.  He drove almost non-stop for fifteen hours to reach us at the nick of time to ensure that Nithin did not miss his chance.  Although uneducated, he could grasp the criticality of our situation and appreciate the value of the admission we were seeking.  He was a man of great resolve and cool manners. His optimism was reassuring. His concern for us strangers was overwhelming. Later, Nithin would dedicate his PhD thesis to that unknown airport taxi driver whom we would never again meet in this lifetime.  

Certainly, I cannot overlook the divine providence acting unseen to help us. The car could have met with an accident while negotiating the dangerous terrain and furious weather.  The car could have suffered a breakdown in the dead of the night somewhere in the fearsome and deserted strips of the road that we traversed. We could have missed the route or taken the wrong route to end up nowhere. The driver could have been less enthusiastic about our mission. He could have slept on the wheel or stopped the car on the way to eat, drink or take a nap.

It also taught me some lessons. One of it is that anxiety serves no useful purpose.  I understood that things do not necessarily occur by accident but have a definite purpose.  The other was that alone, we would achieve nothing in this world.  The biggest achievements we make may have a critical contribution from people unknown or upon whom we tend to look down.  The incidents also confirmed that, “whatever the mind…can conceive, it can achieve” (W Clement Stone). And finally, I understood that there would always be light at the end of the tunnel and that bad things often happen for good reasons.

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