I had an evening train to catch from my native, Puttur, which was 130 kms away. On the way back I dropped in at the Kapu site to complete the unfinished work.
Meanwhile I got a call from another site in Mangalore. They wanted me to come & give some technical clarifications. I wrapped up from one site & drove to the next. This was really tough - the interior roads were very bad as lot of construction work was going on all along the way. As usual my phone was continuously screaming for attention & I was attending customers at various degrees of dissatisfaction.
When I reached the M'lore site, the customer said that everything was fine & he did not need me. It was 1800 hrs. I had 3 hrs to catch the train; wherein I had to get out of this site, through the bad roads, 25 kms to Mangalore & another 52 kms to Puttur.
And then I decided to take the short-cut - it was not the highway, but would cut the distance short by 15 kms. I was cruising fine when I hit a traffic jam.. There was a festival at Polali temple & the road was blocked for almost 5 kms.. probably the only day of the year when traffic halted on this road; & it had to drag me in... It took me 50 min to get out of it - my anger being harnessed by old melodies on the car stereo.
Once out of the jam I floored the throttle. It was dark. The road was single lane & very curvy. But I had to catch the train; I had to stop an order getting lost in Bangalore the next morning. There was no room for carefulness.
I loved the Indica for once - you will be amazed the way it takes on steep curves & the bumps. Extremely stable for something on 4 wheels.
I reached home at 2030 hrs, changed, packed & left within 5 min. I reached the railway station 5 min before the train reached.
No, the ordeal did not end there. I had a RAC ticket which got confirmed after 2 hrs. I was standing most of the time as an old lady was already sleeping on my part of the berth. I slept after a mid-night dinner.
The next day dawned to lot more chaos. One of our machine had got stuck at the check-post & the authorities had already slapped a huge penalty on it. The customer, who was the cause for this hold-up, acted oblivious of the situation. Nobody else was shouldering the responsibility. The transporter was behind me to get his truck released. I had no other option - being a one man army for the state, you don't get the luxury of delegating work.
I sighed. One more issue among the many others: delayed delivery, service issues, spare parts unavailable, sky-high expectations of the customers & on the backdrop of all this melee, the ever inviting noose of "Come what may, you need to achieve your numbers.."
I wonder if I'm wearing the right shoes??
