MC Travel Special | Funnycontrol: TNPL - Travel Now, Pray Later

One feels for the guy who sells credit cards at airports saying: “Free ticket and lounge access. Take free ticket and cancel the card." (Representational image: Clay Banks via Unsplash)

Dear Funnycontrollers,

It is that time of the year when we must travel again to keep our Instagram account alive. Or else the algorithm will punish us. And we must not displease the algorithm. Or you will watch in despair as your noble world-saving idea gets one like, while your neighbour’s kaccha badam video gets 1 million.

Luckily, the algorithm rewards people who believe in CTC over take-home and apply the same philosophy to travel. For instance, travelling to ensure you finally get enough reward points on your credit card to buy that toaster is a rational decision. If you live on Instagram and not in real life. But one feels for the guy who sells you credit card at airports saying “Free ticket and lounge access. Take free ticket and cancel the card. Hahaha. I know company loses  money, but they don’t pay me enough to have any loyalty anyways, haha.” His zeal to cancel immediately makes one wonder if he worked as an Uber/Ola driver before. He doesn’t even care about your destination.

The issue with this demotivated employee is now every Tom, Dick and Harry has airport lounge access. Which means it no longer feels like a lounge, it feels like a dhaba. You can tell the middle class “credit card free lounge access” junta from the way they will be arguing at the lounge entry itself. Wanting to know if soup can be served one by two in India, why can’t two passengers be allowed in the lounge on one card, one by two?

I mean if a business class passenger has to deal with crowds, it sort of defeats the purpose, right? If I can’t subtly show my business class boarding pass in the Instagram upload from the lounge without someone in the background ruining the shot, I might as well travel by train.

When did we start travelling to signal our status? I mean I am happy to share my Uber journey with all my readers and my many many fans on social media (of which 99 percent should not even know my last name, much less my address.). But do you think they will judge my jokes to be any funnier if I was travelling by Uber black instead of Ola share? Please send Ola money if you do.

I check into the hotel where the staff informs me check-in time is 2pm and checkout is at 10am.  Apparently 4 hours were lost in daylight saving time. I mentally prepare myself for the battle of the breakfast buffet the next morning but luckily the stint in the lounge with fellow credit card cancellers has toughened me up.

Many people have booked the holidays under TNPL – Travel Now, Pay later. But why must I pay for their financially irresponsible decisions? I mean if husband and wife are going to stare at each other angrily, and the kids continue to break things to escape from the anger, why not do it at the local OYO instead of ruining my 5 star experience?  Please take your children away from the dosa counter. To use three of them to block the line is child abuse. But I must admire you on planning them for this purpose years in advance. I am sure they will put this on their LinkedIn profile when they grow up.

On my next trip, I skip the 5 star to be financially more responsible. However, I fail to realize most OYOs have laid off so many in the pandemic that the support staff is now selling credit cards with lounge access in the reception area while your calls for room service go unanswered. It is obviously a non-smoking room despite clear instructions and the smoking area is 200 kms from your room but only 2 kms away from the North Korean border.

You have booked “with breakfast” so the criminals will start calling you relentlessly from 7am (exactly when you went to bed) so they can be free of this humongous obligation. They have all the options except the things you like. So like how you had to choose your college and stream based on a 2 hour performance in a written exam framed in the British era, you choose “steamed idli” and “butter toast”. What arrives is “steamed toast” and “butter idli” which goes well with the lukewarm complimentary coffee. Luckily it is matching the temperature of the equally lukewarm “seasonal fruit juice”. One presumes from the taste, it is the  season of droughts or floods.

You go up to the room which has the air-conditioner at full blast to beat the heat wave outside. But the remote control is missing so you have icy blast or heat blast to choose from. Which are also the only two options in the shower. But it does have an ancient bathtub with no stopper. Which feels like a metaphor for all your past relationships.

You begin the check-out process to find they have not put your GST number on the bill despite three reminders, and when they do, they put the company name as “bedroom comedy”. Which aptly describes your attempts to sleep on a “Queen sized” bed which was put together one by two.

As you finally reach the airport in a mad scramble with just 5 minutes left to gate closure, you find out the flight is delayed by 2 hours.  And that the salesman cancelled your “lounge access” card on his own. But you do spot staff from the hotel trying to sell you another one.

You decide you can either do something crazy to vent and maybe cause a security lock-down at the airport, inconveniencing everyone else, or do something useful with the time... that’s how this article got written.

I hope to meet you all in an airport lounge sometime...one by two.