Got an odd call yesterday morning as I was getting the kids ready for school.

“Mr. Cohn?”

“Yes?”

“Your driver is trying to find you.”

(The suitably long pause of a person who had no idea that he had a driver, or if I had one, why he’d be trying to find me now.)

“Uh, where is he?”

“The airport. Isn’t he supposed to pick you up at 7:30?”

(I look at my watch to confirm the time. Er, and what airport?)

“Uh, what airport?”

“Bangalore – aren’t you flying in this evening?”

The conversation has proceeded to make less and less sense until it suddenly makes all the sense in the world. The lightbulb goes on, and, relieved to know I’m not on the wrong continent, I explain what must’ve happened.

You see, I’m going to be in India for a few weeks in January. A couple of days ago, I’d arranged local transportation for one of the legs: Jaipur to Bangalore. I watched the email thread propagate with my itinerary, and remember a message from Rahul to the transpo company saying “Please arrange for David’s transport from airport. Flight arrives 7:15 p.m. on the 20th.” The 20th. Rahul’s message didn’t say “January 20th”, did it?

So yesterday at 7:45 p.m. on December 20th, in Bangalore India (which happens to be 7:45 a.m. in Palo Alto, California), some poor hapless taxi driver was wandering the Bangalore airport, looking for a missing passenger who was quite literally on the other side of the planet. Could’ve been worse, I suppose. Could’ve been a lot worse.