Destiny's Child

Have you read Sudha Murty? Her books are generally compendium of short, real stories that bring out different aspect of human behavior… very educative, full of moral stuff. You would wonder how come so many fundu things happen to her. In fact in one of her books, she does mention people asking her this question. It seems she travels a lot and she observes. I travel a lot. I observe. But only weird and funny things seem to happen to me all the time. I think it’s all about destiny. Some are destined for philosophical stuff and some lesser beings like me are destined for funny/weird stuff (well, some of you might argue that it’s not about observing… its about the way you observe and may be you are right but let me just blame it on destiny – it’s sexier that way).

This posting is kind of prequel of my previous one. The last one was about Nagpur to Pune. This one is about Pune to Nagpur around four days before the memorable Indigo flight. I am not trying to do a Star Wars here, I just happen to write it in the reverse order.

This is how it happened –
It was one of those gray Monsoon evenings. We reached the railway station around 30 minutes before the train departure time. It must have been at least 5-6 years since I had boarded a train. The train was not yet on the platform. It was raining, it was humid, hot and the platform was crowded and dirty. My daughter started cribbing about the dirty platform. I was just hoping that she does not look down the tracks.
I guess the railway tracks at a railway station are the dirtiest place in the world. What is it about it? Looks like people find pleasure relieving themselves at a railway station or is it that people find it easier to shoot the target when the train is stationary? Who says Indian trains are not fast enough? May be they are not… but they do sway a lot while moving!

In order to kill the time, I decided to go and check the reservation board… it was all chaos there… the pages were all torn, some were lying on the platform, wet… someone was nice enough to make a ball of fallen papers and keep it on top of the board! Anyway, I could find the relevant chart but I was least worried… after all, I had done the reservation from internet…

Anyway, the train that was supposed to leave Pune at 5:30PM was not there even at 6:00PM. Our porter came and said he had to leave as it was 6:00PM already. I thought the work-life balance was an issue in the IT industry only… anyway, he was quick to explain that his shift was over and they are not allowed to work beyond a given time… he was nice enough not to take the full money and also got us another porter…

The new porter said that we will have to wait for a while once the train arrives because he had another passenger to take care of… I did not think of it as an issue since Pune is the first station of this train and generally it takes at least 30 minutes for the train to leave…

Indian railways have improved a lot… they have small displays on the platform which tell you the location of each coach… it’s just that when the train finally arrived, every coach was shifted by 2 – I could feel the whole mass of some 1000 people moving in one direction… Standing there was like swimming against a strong current…

Anyway, my porter came after 5 minutes and we got onto the train. I was very happy that we had birth numbers 33, 34 & 35 which was equidistant from both the toilets. I had 1 wife, 2 small kids and 3 big bags… I don’t know what kick Priti gets carrying stones from Pune to wherever we go… she claims there is useful stuff inside and not stones but I don’t believe her… Also, I realized that the space under the seats has shrunk over the years (or was it our bags?)… We had to literally kick and shove the bags inside… Anyway, now, I was not too worried about not bringing the chain and lock… who would touch these bags?

Some 5 minutes after we settled down, 2 people came and asked me my seat number… then they showed a ticket for seat number 33 & 34. Priti said she did not see our names on the chart while boarding… someone said they have another 3 Tier AC coach and may be we are sitting in the wrong one… It was almost 25-30 minutes since the train had arrived – about time to leave… I got down quickly and checked the other coach – I could not find my name… suddenly I realized and shouted ‘जय Lalu’. I was upgraded to 2-AC… I jogged towards 2-AC with stars in my eyes but they quickly turned into dirty specks… the names were missing there as well… I quickly took out the print out of my “internet” reservation and checked again… My eyes popped… my jaw dropped and hit the platform very hard… I had a reservation for August 26th rather than June 26th… Damn it…
Being equidistant from both the toilets became a curse… The train was about to leave… Fortunately, I found a porter… somehow pulled out the “well stuck” bags, got through the sea of people and luggage in the corridor and got down from the train…

I know what you guys are thinking… this guy cant even book a simple ticket on net… But excuse me, I would like to blame it on the bloody IRCTC web-site… I book all my personal travel on internet and have never made this kind of mistake before or after… the web-site really sucks… all those who have tried using this web-site would empathize with me… ‘जय Lalu’ quickly became ‘हाय Lalu’….

Anyway, I found a TTE and asked him if I could get a berth… he said we should have tickets before boarding the train… The train was on platform 3 and there was no point going all the way to platform 1 and getting the tickets… then someone said another train (which also goes to Nagpur) was on platform 1 (incidentally, that train was also about to leave)… One confident looking porter, a sheepish looking pair, 2 smalls kids and 3 big bags ran to platform 1… As usual, Murphy’s law kicked in… we had to cover the whole length of the platform twice because of the way they had placed the coaches…

Met the TTE of the other train… He was nice enough to tell us that we could board the train if we were willing to pay the fine for boarding without ticket… I loudly cursed the other TTE… Anyway, this guy offered us seats in 2-AC and quickly calculated the damage… we quickly peeked into our wallets – luckily we had enough money… Then the TTE said we should get onto 3-Tier sleeper… I thought he was playing around and asked the porter to get a taxi… the TTE relented and allowed us to board 2-AC directly…
The whole ritual of boarding the train and shoving the bags under the seats was repeated. The porter took a fat sum from me because there was no time to negotiate earlier… He argued that it was still less than the taxi bill we would have incurred… Wow!

The train left after a while and we took a sigh of relief. The TTE entered after a while and my jaw hit the floor for the 2nd time that evening… this was some other guy… He said – “Ticket please” and I mumbled something… anyway, he was briefed by the other guy…
He prepared a ticket, including fine etc, for Rs 4,987. He said we would get only 2 berths and not 3. I gave him Rs 5,000 and waited. He opened his wallet, I waited. He put the 10 crisp 500 rupee notes in his wallet, I waited. He looked into his wallet, I waited. Then he looked up – I put my hand in my wallet but still waited… Then he said – “Can you give me 2 rupees? I need to return you 13 but I have a 10er and a fiver”… My jaw hit the floor for the 3rd time that evening…
He left… I was half expecting him to come back and ask for money for the favor done to me… He did came back… Well after we had all fallen asleep (we did manage on 2 berths)… Smart move, isn’t it?
He woke me up and said – “Sir, your third berth is ready”…

Before, you guys feel I am also sounding like Sudha Murty…
I was telling this story to my relative and friend Rajesh. His theory was that this guy must have been "पहुची हुई चीज़" … He was sure that the TTE had printed fake receipts and must have pocketed all the 5000 rupees… I don’t agree with Rajesh.

I was thinking I should have taken a flight… but that was before I returned on the Indigo flight!

Anyway, I plan to frame the ticket and proudly display it… It says PWT – “Passenger Without Ticket”