“Aunt is no more. Ask Dineshji to come urgently” was the terse message on my cell quite late into the night. My dad’s sister had been unwell for sometime now, and two heart-attacks in quick succession were very fatal. Once the grim news had settled, another task awaited me. I had to make travel arrangements for dad, as he had to travel to Kanpur, the opposite end of India. It was midnight and Mumbai was sleeping tight.

Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t carrying my laptop either, on which I could access the Web and make the requisite arrangements. I was cursing myself at leaving my laptop back at home and wondering what to do next.

Suddenly, out there in the grim environ, a small 20-watt bulb lit over my head, dispelling the confusion that had cloaked my mind. My E61 turned out to be the Excalibur that I was hunting for. Due to the erratic travel schedules, I have subscribed to GPRS service on my cell. I use it to surf, check mails and send my articles. Agree, the data speeds are pathetic and it takes ages even to mail a simple word document. But that is a small price one has to pay for convenience.

In a jiffy, the Internet explorer was open on my cell and I keyed in ‘Makemytrip.com’. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Makemytrip was WAP enabled and had been optimised for the cell screen. The best thing was the layout was a bit intuitive keeping in mind the small screen and few clicks that go with it. Within, five minutes, I had whittled down the search to an early morning flight to Kanpur, punched in the details, made the payment through the credit card and presto, the work was done.

In another five minutes or so, I checked my Gmail on my cell again to find the confirmation mail from Makemytrip with all the requisite details. Within a few hours, we were at the airport, armed with the printed copy of the airticket in our hands. Continue reading …