As usual, my alarm went off at seven, but that morning it sounded more deafening perhaps because it was meant to work like an alarm. I and my family had our flights to London and we needed to be at the airport in two hours. Although the packing was done, but it seemed as if loads of preparations were still left to be made.

My wife woke up our two sons and was busy dressing them up, while I rechecked our luggage and bags. I kept reminding myself to keep the passports and tickets with me.

An hour and a half before the flight, I was ready and my wife was making breakfast. The cab driver had confirmed his arrival at eight as the journey to airport was of just fifteen minutes. At quarter to eight, everyone was done with breakfast and ready.

Everything was going as planned, but still in my mind a fear lingered that something would go wrong and these thoughts were replaced by even more frightening thoughts when my boss called me. I picked up his call reluctantly and he asked, in fact he commanded me to solve an urgent issue. Here I was ready to leave for my flight and there was my boss asking me to do some work. I quickly turned on my laptop and started working. Though I didn’t look at them, I could feel the angry looks of my family who were all set to go.

By eight, I was finished and we all moved out of the house, and waited for the cab. By ten minutes past eight, there was no sign of the cab. I called him several times, but he didn’t pick up and when he did, he said that he was on his way and cut the call. As minutes passed, the tension of reaching airport on time increased and my wife’s angry looks started to reappear.

At fifteen minutes past eight, the cab driver arrived. Though I knew that the roads were jammed because of rain and the driver was not to be blamed, I still scolded him out of stress. We settled in and were off to the airport.

It was raining heavily and the traffic was slowly moving. The fifteen minutes journey took twenty-five minutes to complete, and when we reached airport, it was fifteen minutes to nine. We ran inside to get boarded. When we reached the terminal gate, I could hear the announcement for the final call for flight A-380.

The man at the international departure gate asked for our passports and tickets. I quickly reached into my right pocket, then the left one and then the back one — they were all empty. I realised that I had forgotten something important — the passports and tickets!

Published in Dawn, Young World, June 9th, 2019