David Beckham, Michael Ballack and possibly Didier Drogba and Arjen Robben. These are just a few the big names who will not be seen in action as the World Cup enters African shores for the first time.
Yours truly almost got added to that list, though not because of any physical stress or injury woes. The root of my tribulations was time, or lack of it. A day before scheduled departure, and this writer still wasn’t in possession of his passport, which the Regional Passport Office had ‘promised’ to dispatch last week, but only sent it for Speed Post delivery a day before my flight took off. At the Speed Post centre, one is was told that they don’t deliver mail, only process it.
Eight identity cards later, and the joint manager still said he couldn’t hand over the passport. He did however, give his word that it would be dispatched first thing in the morning, and would reach my postal centre by 8 am, to be collected after identity verification.
The day of reckoning arrived and at the postal centre, one was told that the travel document was not in the mail that came in the morning. Heading straight to the Speed Post centre, one confronted the manager — who was not in the premises the previous day.
After much deliberation, and a long lecture on their regulations, the manager finally fell in line and handed over the package, six hours before the flight.
That, however, wasn’t the end of it. The scheduled flight from New Delhi to Mumbai, from where the connecting flight to Johannesburg would leave, was late.
Slated for a 9.45 pm departure, the wheels of the Jet Konnect flight took off an hour late, leaving one with little time to shift from the Mumbai domestic terminal to the international terminal.
Rushing through immigration and security check in record time, at the at the boarding gate ten minutes prior to take off, one hears,
“You made it just in time, I was about to close the boarding gate,” from the cabin crew.
And finally on board, a pearl of wisdom from a a senior journalist. “You shouldn’t leave things to the last minute.”
No indeed.