SHOUT
I took LTC to Delhi with my family after a long planning. After two days of train journey, landed in Delhi Railway Station. I had booked the hotel in Karolbagh over phone.[ No email, no STD, No Mobile and only trunk booing those days]. Now do not ask me what is trunk Booking ?. Since the train was late by 5 hours, I thought it would be wise to inform the hotel manager about the late arrival and take his help for the route before I proceed from the station. I told the Auto driver to take me to nearby telephone booth..
I telephoned to the hotel and got the answer in Hindi. I asked for the Keralite Manager with whom I used to talk. The person at the other end
answered to my query that he has gone on vacation to kerala. At this juncture, the Auto driver intervened
and asked me, where I want to go ?.He then
added that ' He can help me'. All hotels might have been booked for Asian Games, he added. I tried to confirm once
again with the hotel over telephone and got the same response in Hindi that my reservation was cancelled due to
security reasons. I did not get any suspicion at this point. So I rang up again with
another number of the hotel I
had, from the same booth and again got the same reply. At that time I became
little tense, but I did not show it to my wife[ That was the first time she had traveled to North] as I was pretending to be very brave and was trying to impress her with my [ broken] Hindi language in our first trip to
Delhi.
Then the Auto driver came up with a solution. He said, 'I know a good hotel near
karolbagh and I will try to get the hotel bookings for me there'. I agreed, and
He took us to that hotel and spoke
something to Hotel manager. It was almost dark so even though the rates were high, I took one room there.
The room was good but the doors were not strong and locks were not proper. Somehow we felt something is wrong somewhere and we were not feeling comfortable. We decided to go out secretly
to our original Hotel where we had made
our reservation and we left that place silently
under the pretext of going for a tea leaving our luggage in the Hotel. To our
surmise, we found that the ' Malayali Manager' was sitting in the counter and he told me he was expecting me. I asked him
about my phone calls and he said in
surprise that no phone call was received by him. I checked the numbers found correct.
Then .....we realized that we were trapped
by an organised gang.
I decided to take a room there and left my wife and my young children there and came back to the hotel where my luggage was there. On the way I was angry but I was frightened. but then I remembered a piece of advise from one of the most respected senior officers of my career. I was attracted to him for his intelligence and balanced approach. He told us in some context to Shout loudly whenever you feel you are trapped to gather attention of people around. His advice have been my code of practice in many issues especially in my formative years of career. So I decided to use that simple tool.
As soon as I reached hotel, I started speaking
in loud voice which gathered attention of others immediately and the management
responded immediately by asking me to
vacate after paying one day rent. I
continued to argue and told them that the Auto driver, the booth owner
and you were In collusion for the organised cheating. I did not relent,
till the owner came and finally he told
me to get out. I escaped immediately from there and I cannot imagine what could have happened to me, if I stayed there.
Looking back, I thank God for giving
me timely wisdom and the good
people in my life.