Days 4 and 5: March 20-21, 2016, Kolkata-Delhi-Mohali
On Sunday I shook hands with a man who once shook hands with one of the most famous men in the world.
I met, at Kolkata airport, an Indian gentleman who worked at a leading record label in the United States in the 1970s. One of the artists on that label was Elvis Presley, with whom the aforesaid gent shook hands once while Presley was on a tour of the plant.
On the six degrees of separation flowchart, that handshake I rightly felt, opened me up to having shaken hands, with just a couple of degrees of separation, to some of history’s greatest characters.
What better way to start a short two-hour journey to Delhi, and then onwards to Mohali? For reasons too pedantic to detail here, the journey to Delhi ended up taking over 15 hours and two planes neither of which wanted to take off.
It was easily one of the worst aviation experiences I have undergone, and also indicative of the challenges of traveling in a country as vast and bureaucratically convoluted as India.
And had it not been for the fate of the New Zealand women’s team, I probably would still be wallowing in a pool of self-pity.
Their side had to fly from Chandigarh to Nagpur on Friday evening, after completing a win over Ireland in Mohali. What is a four-hour direct flight somehow morphed into a logistical nightmare that involved stopovers in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai and two changes of aircraft before landing in Nagpur.
It took them 12 hours and it hardly mattered as they rolled over Australia for a comfortable win. And I figured, if an international team of elite athletes cannot beat this system, then who am I? Well I did shake hands with a man who shook hands with Presley.
Osman Samiuddin’s World T20 diary:
Day 3: In Kolkata, Flurys is on everybody’s radar
Day 2: A decade hence, Kolkata is still just as enchanting
Day 1: Buzz in Delhi and Kolkata, but nothing to do with cricket
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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