Working in reverse

Saturday, December 1, 2012: Yesterday afternoon I heard about the demise of I K Gujral, former Prime Minister of India. Except for last year, whenever I was in Delhi for more than a week I always met him. He had a keen interest in the activities of United Nation Associations (UNA) and did attend various functions of UNA from time to time. I pray his soul rests in peace. In the evening a thought flashed across my mind, “…. will the December 4 felicitation programme, involving a chief minister, happen amid national mourning”. Then I thought that normally national mourning if for three days and our event was scheduled after four days. But when I read in today’s papers that the government had announced a seven-day mourning since I K Gujral was a former Prime Minister, I was certain that the chief minister would not be able to attend our function.

Around 1 PM I received a call from the Chief Minister of Rajasthan’s office and the Principal Secretary of Industry informed me that the December 4 event would have to be postponed. He expressed a desire to finalize another date immediately since this event was long due and had got cancelled a number of times earlier at the last minute due to various reasons. One of the dates suggested was December 9 which isn’t suitable for me as the Shree Music Festival in Jaipur would be held from December 7 to 9, 2012. Let’s see when can we work out a new date. The cancellation of this visit has created a lot of work for me and my office as we were on the final leg of completing the logistics for the whole event. Cancellation for us means working in reverse. That is formally calling off the event. Informing all the dignitaries, guests, vendors and calling off bookings and so on. In a nutshell, it means huge amount of work to be accomplished in very little time.

In fact, we had a tough time to organizing rooms for the delegations due to the wedding season. Also, the cricket match in Kolkata had its share hotel bookings. We, however, had overcome many hurdles to manage and arrange accommodations for the entire delegation in three five star hotels and three different guest houses.
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