A matter of life & death - Maiden Wise (or foolishly?)

DISCALIMER - This post may not be funny & humorous at all, as my sense of humour quotient has been on decline somehow. It should be read more from a transcript perspective.

"Adding insult to injury", I have heard and used this phrase many a times in my life....but whatever transpired from 1030 hrs - 2100 hrs, Mar 17th 2006, the lines between insult & injury got completely blurred.
Ok to give some background, after some thought and my stated respect (and not a gr8 liking) for IRON MAIDEN coupled with my otherwise unplugged social life in Kolkata had prompted me to make a weekend trip to attend the Iron maiden concert.

I had booked myself well in advance on AIR SAHARA to & fro. Catching the 10.30 flight was going to be a challenge anyway given my recent late-night electronic indulgences. Anyways, I did manage to reach the airport in time and boarded the plane. Within about 10 mins of taking my seat, the power inside the plane went off. This a was an almost first-one for me, last time it happened in the "video" coach I had taken between mumbai/pune. Anyways, its rather funny that custoemr service level expectations go down, the lesser money we pay ( paid 3.5 k for the blr ticket), so I was not too perturbed by this. This finally got fixed after ~45 mins with the genereal buzz level inside the plane going up. I was a little edgy when the plane took off but then everythign was fine, or at least seemed so.

The stopover was in Hyderabad. After the usual ~45 min stop, the plane again moved towards the air-strip only to turn back into the hangar again. And then it was announced that "we have found that oil is leakign from the engine, so we have to turn back to get this fixed. We apologise for the inconvinience but this has been done keeping in mind your safety only"!!! So mush for customer care!! I had tears in my eyes almost. And i was difficult to feel lucky or unlucky at that point. Unlucky - that I was getting late fro the show (the gates were to open a 3 pm in bangalore and it was already around 2.30 pm in Hyd), and lucky- well that I was still alive!!!
Finaly the passengers had it and teh usual hulla-gulla staretd within the plane. After about 30 mins, we were asked to vacate the plane as it would take quite a while to fix the problem.

After a lot of fight with the airlines staff, I was finally boarded on the 1645 Paramount airways flight. Things were still under control as I landed in BLR by 1800 hrs. "missed parikrama, that should be fine", was what I was thinking for I had forgotten the horror stories about BLR trafiic my frnds used to tell me.

In between, some more info, I had come without any luggage whatsoever, didn't have the show tickets witme (were lying with Nimbu's gatekeeper), plus I hadn't called up the guy (Pandey's flatmate) beforehand where I was supposed to be put up for the night, plus my mobile was not working.

Anyways, I took a cab from the airport and I reached at 2030 hrs!!! yeah 2.5 hrs within BLR. And that I had finally landed in BLR, i thought it might be a good idea to call up Pandey's flatmate as after the show finding a PCO may be difficult. I called up, only to find an irate kannada voice, i called up again, it was only harsher. Yeah, it was teh good ol' case of "wraang number, saaar".

I had become extremely philosophical by this time, and thoughts like "ye jeevan sab mithya hai, maaya hai" etc were hovering inside my head. Somehow, managed to pull myself together and finally landed at PALACE GROUNDS, the concert venue. It was 2100 hrs.
I asked someone there, how long have they been performing." 2hrs and max 1 hr more"!! I walked inside the grounds.

So there I was, coming all the way from Kolkata just for this show and missed most of it, plus I dont ahve a place to go in the night, and I cant even call anyone up!!!

It was one of the biggest "give-up" feelings I have got in my life, so I just started to enjoy the show.
Suddenly I hear "BUILDING!!!!" from somewhere behind my back, trust me, i don't like my nick, but it had never sounded so sweet ever before. I turned around to find SUTTA & TV, my two little angels!!!!!

Finished the show after listening to 5-6 songs, and ended up at sutta's place for the night, crahed into bed at first sight, woke up ~130 0hrs the next day and moved straight to the airport to catch my 1530 flight back to KOL.

The only takeway from this was, that my point of MAIDEN being not a gr8 band was proven right. yeah, I know this will invite a lot of comments, but that ain't bad, is it?