Something is better than nothing

Across a drawing room conversation my cousin described a very interesting road trip which he had undertaken along with his family.

“We were returning from Pratapgarh, UP, to Nagpur by road in our SUV”, he said. On the way we decided to go to Maihar Devi Temple where we partook darshan and halted overnight. The next day we started from Maihar and as we embarked upon the Katni highway I noticed that the rear speakers of the car stereo were not working properly. I pulled aside to address the problem. Alighted, opened the rear trunk compartment, unloaded the luggage and located the loose wiring connection which was causing the problem. When the stereo began to once again function properly everyone was happy and I myself glowed in the overall appreciation accorded to me for my technical prowess which was instrumental in relieving the drudgery of music less road journey! Later on we took a sightseeing detour to Barghi dam where we had our lunch as well. Here we had a general discussion about how to proceed forward. Nobody was interested in another night halt, so we decided to head towards Nagpur which was our final destination. The final stretch was agreeable to say the least. The weather was pleasant, the music lilting and the conversation boisterous. We negotiated this stretch of the journey in a jiffy. We reached home at around 10 pm post a sumptuous dhaba dinner. As everybody was disembarking and stretching their limbs to relieve the stiffness of joints, I was shocked to see an empty dicky staring back at me! Where were all our bags and baggage? As the enormity of the problem sunk in, I realized that in all probability I must have left the entire luggage lying beside the highway where I had unloaded it to repair the faulty stereo!

The error of absentmindedness was indeed gargantuan! The women folk, especially my wife, were livid to say the least. Somehow I unconvincingly placated everyone that what was done could now not be undone! And that there was nothing else which could now be done at this time of night except to go to bed fretfully!

The next day we called up the hotel where we had stayed overnight at Maihar and obtained the telephone number of the Maihar Police station. From there we got the number of Katni Police station. To them I described our predicament of the lost luggage. The entire conversation was devoid of any solid hope but still I left my phone number with them in case they came up with any lead. Against all expectations of my rational thought process we got a call back from Katni Police station after a few hours saying that they couldn’t locate the described bags and baggage however they have come across a cloth potli filled with assorted garments lying by the wayside. My brother-in-law who is a senior railway officer arranged to collect the said potli from the Police station and got it delivered to Nagpur railway station.

Although the cases constituting our luggage were of significant value, we could recover partially what had been lost altogether. It was indeed a small consolation.