A Diwali in Train!!!

Travel through train has always been enriching experience for me it gives me opportunity to meet different minded people and I love to share my ideas at the same time accepting what comes along. This year I have been travelling lot back and forth to home also no hike made me think twice to travel through flight and I decided in favor of train.

IRCTC (Service Unavailable… Almost Always in the Morning)
No I wasn’t trying to book TATKAL ticket instead I logged in 90 days earlier in the morning around 7:45 AM and guess what “website wasn’t responding”. But I was lucky that day and after multiple attempts at last around 8:15 AM I got ticket confirmation but Oops it was RAC 6. No issues I thought as there are still 90 days and it should get confirmed by day of my travel. Considering amount of revenue IRCTC generate they might have done better job with their server management and reservation algorithm…

Female23 = Male24??
Chart revealed that status for my ticket is still RAC 4 and I have to share birth with a F23 (name not mentioned but its female 23) little bit shy and happy I marched towards my seat. Once settled with luggage arrangement I sat peacefully and was greeted by a gentleman who was wondering and praising how railways have managed to have birth sharing for male but have given confirmed (no sharing) for female. I wasn’t convinced but when he informed that I will be sharing seat with him I jumped with wonder how can a Male 24 is equivalent to Female 23 but soon realized he was lying and F23 was his friend and he doesn’t wanted her to share seat with me… No issues I said as I wasn’t interested too… Really??

Honest TT (But why Rude?)
I feel honest people tend to think that they are doing a favor on society where honesty level is degrading day by day and they tend to be ruder in their conversation. Hope day will come soon when honesty will be minimum level of expectation from all of us. I have met this TT multiple times and I really appreciate his honesty and he never asks for any bribe for birth allotment.

INFOSYS Train:
At last everything got settled in and its time to get acquainted with the fellow passengers after all its matter of 24 hours journey. To my surprise 7 out of 10 passengers were either employed with Infosys or their spouse. Infosys isn’t known to be paymaster but yes its known for better employee satisfaction and facilities in terms of various benefits its provide. I just uttered why cant Infosys has a train of its own with concession for their employees or may even sponsor some of the trains as other business are doing and have special concession for their employees…

State Effect:
One of the couple who was travelling with us was unlucky to get only one ticket confirmed and other was in waiting list so TT forced the gentlemen to get transferred to Sleeper coach. He had heated argument but everything gone in vain and TT won and rightly so. During night TTs were changed and we tried to convince gentleman to get back to the coach but he was so scared that he spent all his night in sleeper coach. When I got up in the morning I saw this gentleman back to our coach. I asked him if he is going back to sleeper coach again and he boasted up “Ab main yahin rahoonga ab koi kuchh nahi bigad sakata” (I will be here only now no one can do anything). I started wondering about sudden change in behavior but couldn’t discover enhanced confidence. Oops state effect came to my mind as I discovered train has entered in the state of his residence. Alas!!! When there will be a day when we will say I am just Indian, no boundaries within India, no hatred speeches, no politics based on caste/location/religion. I just can pray and hope you feel the same…