Life in Edinburgh
Chapter two - The Departure
Twenty fours hours to go. I thought well, for once let me begin packing early. I have already bought the suitcase, most of the things that I am going to carry are already dumped on a separate bed. Every one in my family does this. If we are to go on a long trip, few days before the departure we start dumping all the essential things that we would like to carry into a common place. This helps to prevent leaving behind things.
I thought this should be an easy job. I quickly made a pre-departure plan. I am going finishing packing within five hours, evening I am going to spent with my old friends partying, whole night I am going to watch HBO and then I am going to surprise my parents by leaving at 4 am (4 hours before schedule time). My parents are kind of old fashioned. They would prefer to wait at the airport/station for 2 hours before departure than arrive right on time. I hate to do this, why spent 2 hours waiting at the station when a 5 overs match can be completed in an hour, isn't there a point in my argument?
I suddenly remembered, I have given few pants for alteration which I forgot to collect. Those pants suits me perfectly but thinking this is going to be just another hostel life I want to be on safer side, so I decided to reduce the waist size by 3 inches. Hostel food always kept me fit; home food makes me ugly. I looked at the watch one hour to go before 10 am. In my locality shops dont open before 10 am because if they do then they pay more tax to the local political parties. I call it free style tax because there is no VAT on it.
It was just another ordinary day. Mother made her morning tea, sat on the sofa. Father brought out his bundle of secret files out of the Almira just like every other day and began his calculation ( I call it recalculation), aided by a 10 years old calculator. After every calculation he turns the calculator to get a better reflection to see the display. In simple words, the display dont work. Anyways, who am I to interfere when it doesn't bother him? He called me and asked "did you speak to Mr. Banarjee yesterday?" Damn, now I also have to visit bank. By the time I called it a day it was 11 pm.
In the morning it was more like dumping things into my suitcase. Well, 'dumping things into suitcase' happens when you graduate from 'packing things'. The cheering screams of my mother/uncle/aunt and the sweet voice of my grand mother was working wonderfully. My father has a different approach. After working as captain for nearly 20 years he likes to have a back up plan always, probably he was now thinking what to do next when I miss this flight.
Dont pani..ccc..CCC, I am here at Edinburgh now. I caught the flight at right time, dont want to remember any thing more than that though.
I wouldn't say my pre-departure plan had lots of miss calculation. I would rather like to think it was just that there were to many unexpected external factors which stretched my plan a bit too wide but who gives a damn about what I think!!!
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Click here to read Chapter one:
The sleepClick here to read Chapter two:
The DepartureClick here to read Chapter three:
The arrival-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
