At the Pearly gates!!!! In hindsight, I must say, that trip to Hyderabad in November over two decades ago was Jinxed from the start. It was a last minute one, it had to be planned on the sly, been postponed once and meeting times rescheduled twice over. Honestly, an interview call from the top management of Oracle in 1990’s was a dream chance - a great career opportunity and I had to make sure that my current employer (Nexus – erstwhile Aurelec) did not catch wind of it. It was normal for my office team to stop by at home to help parents for my wedding preparations (which was around the corner). I had to ensure none knew of the trip and so had to work it on the sly. With travel banned at home with the wedding a few days away, the story was a very close high ranking IAS official, a family friend, was at an ICU at Pondicherry and hence the last minute travel. There were no direct flights from Coimbatore to Hyderabad and so had to get to Chennai which meant an overnight stay...