Zero
I have always maintained that the best bit of any vacation is the taxi/bus/train ride to the airport/railway station. Especially, if the taxi/bus/train ride is prefaced by you having stealthily snuck out of office, leaving your laptop open (to create the illusion that you have momentarily left your desk) and without informing your owner, or as they say in genteel society, employer. The sense of anticipation, the feeling of leaving behind the monotony and drudgery of everyday life and of course, the thrill of not knowing if you will make it to the station/ airport in time, what with all the stealthy snucking, is heavenly. A vacation, in itself, begins and therefore, in keeping with the laws of physics, is also required to end; thereby causing much grief, melancholy and despair. But the pre-vacation is perhaps one of the few, if not the only pursuit, which a man starts with much enthusiasm and eagerness, and is happier still, when it's over.
I am not really a person who is a stickler for any particular brand. For instance, I know people who swear by Tata and have bought both the Indica (twice) and the Indigo, purely out of brand loyalty. I mean, why else would they? In fact, this person had to be shackled to his bed for a fortnight and it was only after a considerable amount of threatening, cajoling, convincing and possibly, psychiatric counselling that he gave up on buying the Nano. Be that as it may, I am not really fussed about brands, but I realise I have ended up flying Air India quite frequently. I have often wondered why because its is definitely not a conscious choice. Its not the Aunties, that's for sure. I eat whatever grubby broth they serve on Air India flights simply to avoid being given the Eye by the Aunties.
"Are you wasting that food? Do you know how many people don't get two square meals a day? And you, thirty thousand feet in the air, just throwing it away. Forsooth!"
All that in just one split second of eye-contact. Shudder. Having been cowed by the Eye on more than one occasion, I have now devised a foolproof plan to counter it. I cannily refuse to eat anything on the flight thereby thwarting the Aunties completely. To paraphrase old jungle saying: No bamboo grow, no flute play.
Its not the in-flight entertainment system which attracts me to Air India either, because there is none. Unless of course if you (like me) consider watching an old man, wearing a toupee, nodding off and waiting for the toupee to fall off his head, entertainment. But even then, Air India can hardly take credit for that. I suppose its just one of those strange cosmic mysteries of intertwining fate. Maybe I am a reincarnation of the handsome and financially loaded royalty-type fellow who served as the model for the dapper little Maharaja mascot of Air India. Who can say?
So the point of all this being, that on March 25, 2013, I snuck, very stealthily, out of office and took an Air India flight from Mumbai to Delhi, which landed in Delhi on the morning of March 26, 2013, which was incidentally Holi, at 0130 hours.