The First Flight Experience Nostalgic Recollections

 

When someone looks at this topic, it is a project assignment for a primary school student at a private school. But bear with me and read on.

I was traveling earlier this week, and if someone asked me, : What is on your mind? My response would have been "Nothing ". Such was my state. 

But suddenly,  my thoughts went back to July of 1986, when I flew for the first time in my life, and it was a pretty incident-packed journey to get on the flight.

I had just joined as an Intern (under the Chartered Accountancy program) and was asked to go to the newly established plant at Hosur and help in "closing the books of Accounts " The company followed an August-to-July timeline for its book closure. I traveled by an overnight bus to Hosur (close to Bengaluru) and reported to the Plant Accounts Officer (a fine gentleman by the name of Noronha). 

My assignment was to get the closing stock valued. Little did I realize what an overwhelming job it would turn out to be. Lack of IT systems or integration meant a lot of manual work. And the store Ledger was not integrated with the Financial Ledger. The storekeeper gave me all the receipts and issues that he had made and the bin cards (around 3000) that had the stock quantity alone. Four months had passed since the last update. Getting back to the Accounting area,  I started searching for Purchase bills that I could link to the receipts in the bin cards by item, and then, once identified, I would value the receipt, the issues to production, and then arrive at the Closing stock valuation. Two weeks of nonstop work (a 12- to 14-hhour slog)  got me close to completing 2700 cards updated with values. 

Meanwhile, the deadline to submit the Financials was very close. Unless the Inventory entries went through, the financials would not be ready. Mr. Noronha gave me support. Totally, there were three people looking after accounting: Noronha, the Accounts officer; Mr. Narayana Rao, the junior management supervisor, taking care of the general ledger and Fixed assets; and Swa Ashok Kumar, the clerk, handling payments. Ashok joined me in completing the balance of the stock valuation. 

The Deadline day became the next day—How do I submit to HO? It was planned that I would carry the hardcopy by bus from Hosur to Chennai! (We could not fax due to the size of the sheets.) Now for the story of the flight: 

The Inventory valuation was completed by 3 PM on the last day. I heaved a big sigh of relief. Now the onus was on Mr. Rao. He had to manually summarize and post the journals and get the Financials out. My bus to Chennai was at 10 p.m. Ashok and I were relaxed, went to the canteen, and finished dinner by 8. When we came back, Mr. Rao said the Trial Balance he extracted did not tally! OMG—Scramble—Ashok and I got involved trying to trace the Journals and check for any potential casting errors. Time was running out. It was past 10 p.m., and my bus to Chennai had left. Finally, sometime past midnight, we found the error. Rectification followed, and then the Trial Balance was re-extracted. It was close to 1 a.m. 

Noronha took the call. He told me to go to Bangalore and take the first flight to Chennai. I was wondering how to It was raining heavily as well. Noronha called someone. He then came to me and said,"There is a Matador Van that goes to pick up newspapers from Bangalore, and he will drop them as close to the Airport as possible. (It was Victory Shine Travels vehicle.) The Matador Van rolled in at 2 a.m. There were no seats except for the driver! I launched myself into the back of the van and sat crouching with my little luggage and the Financials. The Vehicle dropped me at a bus stand close to the Airport (as per the driver, it was). This was around 3:45 AM or so.

Finally, an Auto came. It was still drizzling, and he dropped me at the airport by 5 AM. I went to the Indian Airlines counter and bought the ticket, paying cash. It was just INR 266, More challenges followed.

At the security check, I was asked to open my small suitcase. (No scanners!)) I searched for the keys but could not find them. I must have fallen into the Matador when I sat crouching! They had with them screwdrivers and Cutting pliers. One of the security guys broke the locks, took out all the things, and laid them down on a table! Finding nothing objectionable, they told me to close and go. I dumped all the things into the suitcase and then found a rope to tie it up.

Finally, I boarded; I do not recall the takeoff or landing. I dozed off! I do not remember my seat position well.

I reached Chennai and then took buses to reach North Madras, where the Factory was. This journey took me more time than the flight! 3 hours. Finally in with the Financials at around 11 a.m., Mission accomplished.

The General Ledger keeper quickly analyzed, and one thing was that the Hosur Plant account balance had to match the HO Plant account balance. It did not! However, I did something that surprised people and made their jaws sit up! I had extracted the HO account from the Hosur plant books for the last three months and brought it with me. The GL keeper quickly reconciled the balances based on this. Job Well Done!

I wanted to just go home and crash. Finally, around 3:30 pm, I left for home, which was another 120-minute journey...

There you go, my first flight experience. 

Some things to ponder: 

One may ask, Why did they send a trainee to do this key activity? I thought they were not aware of the volume and may have thought that, being intermediately qualified, I may be able to complete the task. 

It was such a learning experience for me—difficult to get such learnings today!

The decision taken to send me by Flight—No bureaucracy!! 

Guess the Company that I worked for—The clues are in the Titles and may be from the locations that I have mentioned. 

We have come a long way in terms of the way we work. Greatly driven by Technology  

No guesses for calling out who went next year to do the Inventory valuation.

I see many of you now thinking " When did i fly the first time "?