Hustle-Bustle

The Club’s busybodies got busier than ever. For once, the exercises were given the short shrift this morning while Hari Singh Shekhawat, Srichand Arora, Jagmohan Papneja, Arun Patil and others got running helter-skelter, making frantic phone calls, ambushing people on the walking track, comparing notes (pic below)... Even Santosh Tyagi was called from home. The air was buzzing with funny words like PAN card, advance booking, bank transfer, mobile number…
With less than 24 hours to go before helicopter bookings to Vaishno Devi open for April 1 (see February 26 post), a sense of urgency has seized all those going on the pilgrimage. Nobody wants to miss the eight-minute hop to the shrine. The problem is getting around a lousy ‘official’ website put up by the shrine board on which online bookings have to be made. Last night, Harish Wadhwa gave up after failing to get a registration (a pre-requisite for booking) till as late as 9.00 p.m. Bose Babu got to register by fluke at 10:30 p.m. after more than a dozen aborted attempts. Arora was the only one to be holding a registration till then.
Given this uncertainty and that the helicopter tickets are supposed to run out within three minutes once the booking lines open at midnight, it was decided to take no further chances with the Net and instead, engage the services of an agent for all our 16 tickets – even as it would mean having to pay Rs1,100 extra for a Rs1,400 ticket! Now, this joker sitting in Delhi, who thrives on the gullibility of the religious-minded, wants not only the full cash in his bank by the evening today but also the identity and address proof of every passenger. After that, how he produces the tickets from thin air is his business. Hence all the maddening hustle and bustle this morning.