Midnight in Mumbai – #GoodLuck

 This happened on Christmas eve last year. I live in a joint family in Mumbai and one of my cousin Yogesh recently started working in London. His contract expires in 8 months with his London employer, and after that he’s suppose to move to Canada where he has another opportunity. 

 To complete the formalities for Canada, he was short on police character verification document. Somehow he didn’t took a copy of it with him to London and so he asked my younger cousin Nitish to scan and mail it to him. Our scanner was not working, so Nitish took a snap of the document and sent it through WhatsApp.

 Bad luck happened when Yogesh didn’t check it until 7pm ( London Time ), after which he messaged Nitish that he wanted a scanned copy and not a picture of it. He didn’t wanted to give them ( Canadians ) any reason for rejection. But it was already 12:30 am in Bombay and Yogesh wanted to submit the documents before 5:00 pm ( Ontario Time ), so Nitish had until 03:30 am ( Bombay Time ) to complete the work given to him. For almost half an hour Nitish inquired with his friends for scanner but again to his bad luck none had it.

 At around 01:00 am, Nitish woke me up and asked if any of my friends had a scanner or if I know any stationary or xerox guy who would scan a document for us. I said no and asked him to take a good pic and send it to Yogesh, to which Nitish explained me the entire situation.

 We discussed for some more time and then I suggested that we’ll have to look into unconventional places and will have to request people for help. So we decided to go out and search for a solution. We took the keys of our sister’s Rampyari ( old scooty pep ) as keys of Pulsar was in our elder brother’s room and getting those keys meant waking up our brother and getting battered for not following a simple instruction. So we went out on our sister’s scooty.

 I suggested that I remember hotels having scanner at their reception to scan documents and we should try requesting the receptionist. Nitish wasn’t convinced and wanted to search for xerox and stationary shops which operate 24X7 so he googled for it.

 At 01:30 am in the morning Nitish clicked on one of the links and picked a mobile number with the heading 24 hours Stationery.

Nitish : Hello, aapka stationery 24 hours hai kya ?

Other Person : M@#@%^%$#@ Teri M!@#$#$!!! ….Call Ends

 It was quite funny and disappointing at the same time. Again I suggested we look into Hotels or Night Call centers for help. So went to a commercial area in Malad and tried asking for help to people who came out for a break but none agreed to help. After asking a bunch of people we met Anurag Singh ( Editor of Savdhaan India) and Pravat Ojha ( Editor of Sadda Haq ). They took us to their office but unfortunately even their office didn’t had any scanner. Then for almost 20 minutes they called their friends working in different Production Houses for scanner. Even though they couldn’t help, their helpful gesture was enough after so many negative reactions from people.

 Since we couldn’t wait any longer without trying for ourselves we left Anurag and Pravat’s office after exchanging numbers with them for in case if they found anyone with scanner.  

 Our next destination of request was a Hotel in Malad, we requested them for help and even they denied.

 Again I suggested we should try requesting either in Hospitals or Police Stations as they might have it. On our way we saw a small hospital and asked for help, the Doctor said they didn’t have it and suggested us to try another hospital nearby.

 We went to that hospital, it was locked and lights out. But we could see the nurse sleeping on the bench from the glass walls. It was almost around 02:45 am in the morning, we woke up the nurse and asked him for help. To our #GoodLuck he agreed to help and went to the residing doctor. The doctor was a bit suspicious about our unusual request, he said he’ll have to ask a senior doctor. So he called a senior doctor to ask for this request. We could sense from the conversation that he might not just agree but Nitish was quick to think and requested to talk to the senior doctor and after some pleading and request we got Lucky. The Doctor gave us the permission to scan the document. The residing doctor scanned the document for us and we emailed it to our brother in London.

 Later at around 03:00 am we proudly messaged our brother, “Its done” and bragged that its 03:00 am here.

 Our brother Yogesh secured a 3 1/2 year contract with his Canadian Employer.

 In the end, I guess it was more of our khuj.ly that we went on to push our lucks and got bloody lucky on a joyride to explore. And I reckon it was one of the best life changing experiences of 2014. 

 Start-up lesson : You’ll have “n” number of valid and justifiable reasons to not start-up or do anything you’re thinking off, but you just need one khuj.ly, good enough, inside you to just do it and be successful.    

 This experience taught me that the only thing that could prove costlier is avoiding an experience, avoiding to even try. You never know which experience will lead you to your salvation.   

 If you think this wasn’t #GoodLuck enough, read this My Roll Call to Destiny : My life changing experience, the #GoodLuck that The Rodinhoods OH brought me and completely changed the way I think and see things now.

p.s. Dear Readers, This post is not meant to encourage you to get your documents scanned by Hospitals.

Twitter : @KaushalChetan

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