Lost at Charles De Gaulle Airport.

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It was all very nice to see the chivalry of the French people when the conditions were ideal. We developed a severe complex seeing cars stopping for us to cross the road. People smiling and letting you go in front of them. I noticed it was all very well when there were more empty seats in the bus than people waiting outside and none was in any particular hurry. The real test of the system was on the morning we had to catch the flight to Delhi. There were a couple of passengers with a little luggage waiting for the hotel shuttle before us. A few more joined soon after and I was curious to see if they will maintain the same decorum as we had seen earlier. The shuttle bus arrived and we could see that it was almost full, just a couple of seats were empty. Chivalry could wait, but the flight wont. It was plain common sense and I should have guessed it right. Even the elderly showed remarkable agility and with our heavy large bag to pull us back, we were second last. A last second surge and loads of experience under such conditions prevented us from being the last one to board the bus. The bus driver was an expert. He hardly slowed down on turns. We were standing with both hands on the overhead bars and desperately trying to support our huge bag with our swaying body so that the last courteous man in this world who boarded the bus after us won't be crushed under it. I thanked god that I had a glance at the ticket before boarding the bus, at least we knew we had to get down at terminal 2E. With all our limbs occupied it was impossible to look at the tickets in the bus. All we could do was to crane our necks and shout 2E to the driver and people around us every time the bus slowed down. Anupama added to the confusion by saying that E may be pronounced A or I in French. So much for her French training classes. Terminals 2A and 2B could be seen, I thought I saw 2C too. A helpful gentleman in guided us to get down at 2D. 2D and 2E the driver shouted. Sure enough, we could see 2D and 2F written on the gates. I desperately searched for 2E and finally after some running around I found it. The arrow on the board suggested we take a curving ascending road to darkness to reach 2E. It seemed a long uphill path. It was then that god sent an angel in the form of a taxi driver to help us. Maybe divine intervention was needed to reunite us with our kids back home. Seeing me preparing to take the road to nowhere he signaled back with his thumb as he passed. A policewoman who had come out to smoke confirmed that this unmarked door was indeed one of the many unmarked entrances to 2E. Now we know why they don't allow smoking inside the terminals. Take the lift on your right and go to the second floor, the man at the enquiry told us helpfully as he eyed the huge bag. We obviously won't be taking the escalator with that piece of luggage, he thought. We went to the lifts and found they were just the designs on the wall, looking like doors with metal finish. There are the lifts, said Anupama, they were on the left. We entered one of the lifts and pressed the 2nd floor button, it lit up for a split second and then turned off. I pressed it harder with same result. Another family was waiting outside. They went in as we moved out of the lift, we saw them moving out too as we entered the adjacent lift. Here the 2 button was rock hard. It showed an uncanny determination not to be pushed around. Maybe it is -2. It was Anupama again. -2 worked perfectly and the lift stopped at -2. I could see a wall in front of the glass door. Panic gripped me, we are stuck between floors. The door opened behind my back, it was the underground car park. It was then that I noticed a message camouflaged on the lift, written in a way that would easily pass of as matching design, inscribed above the push buttons, " for 2nd floor go to door number 7". Coming out of the lift I found .14 written on the door. My Indian mathematics told me that door number 7 will be 7.00. we raced ahead and found doors 0.15, 0.16 and we knew something was wrong. Then common sense prevailed. The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle began falling in place in my mind. I took a 180 degrees turn and went past the enquiry counter to its right and sure enough I could see 0.07, it was gate number seven. I had previously thought that inefficient clerks were exclusive to the third world government offices. That was till I found myself in the line at Air France check in counter. There were two counters. One was occupied by an extended family of more than 10. That left one counter operational. There were two young ladies in it. What they conversed with the passengers for so long is still a mystery. The discussion was very animated though. A lot of laughing and various exaggerated expressions on face, while the line kept growing. We were fairly ahead but my heart went out to those who were joining the tail of the rapidly growing line. Had it been India, the serpentine que would have been breathing on their necks, but the European etiquette ensured a distance between them and the clerks and some customers take an undue advantage of it laughing and exchanging niceties with each other as if the others in the line don't exist.

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