The Tatkal That Wasn’t

First time experience of travelling in waitlisted Tatkal ticket or rather waiting for long ‘kal’ to get listed but couldn’t.

Travelling on Indian Railways is an experience in itself. Our railway system is another machinery which the British used to build up their Indian empire. And it connects almost the whole country now like a cobweb made by a psychedelic spider. The rush of passengers on certain routes are so mind numbingly heavy at times that getting a confirmed reserved ticket seems godsend. The Tatkal system aims to put some berths aside for passengers who need to go somewhere in an urgency, and to allow them to book confirmed berths a day before journey. I am mostly a sleeper class traveler, the flag bearer of my middle class heritage throughout my childhood, adolescence and youth. Incidentally, thanks to prior planning and some luck for which my mom may thank her karma, I never had to travel in waiting list in my life. I had to reach somewhere, approached the nearest railway station and more recently IRCTC website, looked at available options and booked confirmed tickets, every single time. I have faint memories of an early childhood me travelling with my parents with RAC tickets, I guess that was one singular event of my life. In every other cases, I never had to go through the confusion and worries of traveling with a waitlisted ticket, until now.

As a relatively dull PhD aspirant with a meticulously screwed up career from bottom up, I hesitantly applied for ARIES PhD programme, something my peers and some of faculty members from University asked me to jump into. The best part about the whole application? They were paying the travel allowance (TA) for my journey, for toing and froing up to Pondicherry. I had never travelled to Lucknow and Nainital side of Uttarakhand so I also didn’t seem to mind the implication of the journey. Therefore, I had to book some tickets, railway tickets in sleeper class to be specific, TA obtaining procedure does classify the eligible travelling criteria quite succinctly. It turned out that Chennai-Lucknow route had an extremely surprising lack of trains, and only one odd Raptisagar Express was available at my service on the required day. IRCTC allows a 60 days advance booking window for reserved tickets and the chances of getting a confirmed one was only better than convincing my mom that I had grown up. Eventually, I had to resort to the Tatkal scheme. One day before the fateful day of journey, I woke up with a violent jerk at 6 AM only to find that it had already dawned and I was running terribly late for the queue which was supposed to be standing in front of the booking counter with such longing in faces that it seemed like they all came to purchase the last available loaf on our planet. I got up, put on whatever that were available nearby (I usually do this and still wonder why people don’t get spooked off by my dress sense!) and ran out of my building. I was looking for an auto rickshaw and as usual there were none. Some mindless roaming around and feeble attempts at bargaining with a not so sober auto driver only pissed me off some more, I had to get that ticket booked! Fortunately, my luck didn’t run out in early morning that day, I finally managed to catch one auto with a decent driver and reached Pondicherry Railway Station. To my horror, first four positions of two available queues were already filled. I had to sit in as a fifth, but it was even better than the best position in class I have ever attained in my school life, oh the pride! After filling out the booking form and entering my name on a makeshift register introduced by local railway authority, I was little relieved that one couldn’t take my place even if I dozed off in between. Around three and half drowsy hours later, I was finally standing in the queue, getting ready for my ticket to Lucknow. All I received was a halfhearted smile from the booking clerk telling that I could only book a waitlisted ticket on Tatkal, the quota had been filled already! I really didn’t know whether to confirm booking or let go of it, but the constant poking from my follower in the queue prompted me to take quick action and I got a position 2 on Tatkal waitlist. Now the people who are not so familiar with the whole Tatkal scheme and how it works out in real life, like I was, you can only regard this as a cruel joke made on you at your own expense with premium charges. The only apt comparison that I can think of right now was being placed at the extended merit list of IIT-JEE. And the worst part? Within hours of booking, a quick online PNR checking proved that I had reached the place of waiting list position 1, just one more berth before me, one small cancellation and I would get a confirmed ticket to Lucknow. The enthusiasm can become overbearing, after all I was so close to getting a confirmed Tatkal ticket!

Finally, it was the hallowed day of journey, I had to start for Chennai from my lair in Pondicherry. And status of my ticket was still stuck in the same position at waiting list, more like the famous cows of Varanasi, sitting in small alleys at their whims, blocking the whole path for the commuters. It was a usual humid, cloudy and hot humdrum of a late afternoon and I started for Chennai via ECR (East Coast Road) with the same status and quickly extinguishing hopes of making it to the confirmed list before the final chart was prepared. Four hours later, I was standing at Chennai Central, trying to balance my luggage on my shoulder, avoiding the janitors who were constantly pushing people to take care of their responsibilities. The final chart was prepared and I didn’t make it. I tried my best to explain the situation to my mom over phone and confirmed that I was not coming back, I was going for the trip, confirmed ticket or not. A final position of waiting list 1 really tickled the sarcastic parts of my brain, a perfect sarcastic gift to an overtly sarcastic guy. As if IRCTC just put the confirmed ticket inside a box which had a grilled window on one side and even after trying so hard to reach it with my long hands, I just could not reach it by few millimeters. It was already beyond 9 PM among all these, and according to a very earnest well-wisher, I had to take my dinner, irrespective of my own choice in the matter, so I did. The electronic displays in station mentioned that my train was already late in arrival, and I decided to share a place for sitting with a drowsy dog, with me sitting and it dozing off near my legs. An overtly manned Raptisagar Express finally decided to show up after midnight, and I had to spring into action and meet a TTE. The blank stares of all the four TTEs walking towards the just arrived train did not instill any sense of hope in my mind. My questions regarding boarding the train and managing a berth were only met with a synchronized snigger. And a pretty loud one at that, something they made sure I could hear among the crowd. And the general compartments of these long distance trains are always sufficiently overpopulated to grow the sense of despair in anyone’s mind. Even the toilets were not spared, people were stuffed like farm animals, hygiene and safety be damned. I decided to take a quick look through all the sleeper class compartments, to check if I could find a single unoccupied berth on which I could spend the night. And just according to my expectations, not a single berth was free and a lot of them were occupied by more than one person, those who were travelling with RAC tickets. Exactly at this moment, it was a judgment call for me. Should I take the plunge and board the train or go back to catch a bus home? A steaming sense of adventure among the sweaty, sleeping bodies in compartments made me excited. “Everything should have a first time”, I thought, “so why not this time?” And I hopped in.

In the beginning, I thought I got a blow in my head and everything looked dull, dizzy and dim. Then I figured out it was the combined effect of irregular lighting, protruding limbs from half asleep bodies, and the resulting hopelessness that engulfed my mind at that time. I asked the first passenger I could find awake about the berths. This middle aged man with a sunk in face, a super lean figure wearing an ill fitted shirt with cheap cigarette packet protruding from its pocket, was travelling with an RAC ticket. His drowsy eyes were apparently waiting for a miracle on Chennai air. He heard me the second time and slowly rose up a little to tell me in a seemingly Uttar Pradesh Hindi accent that nothing could be arranged at that train at that ungodly hour. I managed to find a little corner in the lower berth to sit and put down my unwieldy bag in the middle of that compartment. A quick nudge from the sleeping man on that berth and annoyed looks from the other passengers immediately made me realize that my journey had started with an astounding chance of bustling social interactions. While the train was already two hours late, it didn’t begin to move before next 30 minutes. And when it finally did, one of the TTEs that I met in the platform appeared with his huge list of virtuous and sinners. My eyes widened, and so did almost of 15 other peoples’ – holding our breaths to wait for the TTE to arrive at our unwarranted places and save our souls. And he did show up soon, with a certainty of a vulture approaching a thirsty, tired traveler in a desert. It is really interesting how almost anyone can become a person of interest given the right reasons at the right time – our TTE also became a small celebrity, with a group of misfits, including me, circling him with eagerness in their eyes and streaks of hopes in their hearts. And like a perfect heartbreaker, he just torn our hopes asunder of catching some sleep for few hours with a swift waving of his hand. How convenient and easy for him to dismiss – just loved getting a quick rejection like the countless ones I had before, but the joy of getting it from a new avenue! The train left Chennai Central in the meantime and was picking up speed and I literally had nothing to do rather than standing awkwardly in the middle of a compartment with my bag nearby, ready to be pushed aside from place to place till I reach my destination. Fortunately, I was not alone. Little hopes in my heart leapt to a new high when I met a fellow waitlisted passenger who seemed to be of my age and was standing with his own luggage and a little amused look on his face. He simply came closer, employing an expert maneuver of jogging, jumping and sidestepping people which insisted that at least he was not a newbie in this route like me. After confirming about by destination, he nonchalantly assured me that the TTE would not listen to my words, unless they are backed by colourful illustrations of MK Gandhi by the side. I already paid extra for Tatkal and had no intentions to give our ‘black coat’ acquaintance an undeserved monetary boost. But it also didn’t matter, I finally got someone to talk to, at least the rest of the journey wouldn’t be boring, I cheered myself up. It turned out that my fellow ‘unlucky’ passenger was doing his M. Tech. from NIT Trichy and was going home at Kanpur in an emergency at home. Our conversations really picked up, from engineering to physics, from science to politics to complaints about food available in Tamilnadu – annoying the hell out of people who were lying down in at least two adjacent compartments. We kept moving, we didn’t want to get into fights with ‘sleepers’ this early in the journey, till we got stopped by two patrolling policemen who looked at us pointing their high power torches directly at our faces. We started moving again, but this time in the opposite direction, moving down two bogies in the process. Finally, I managed to see a side lower berth which wasn’t occupied by two persons with RAC tickets, just a middle aged man beginning to bald, sleeping comparatively peacefully. I just pushed my bag under the berth and sat by his feet without disturbing him. My fellow engineer also tried to pull off the same with the next side lower berth where a lone woman was sleeping, only to be kicked out with violent verbal abuses from her husband from an upper berth. He just gave in, his heart being little lighter from all the hopes he lost in the meantime touring the sleeper class bogies and sat on the nearby lower berth. It was 3 o’clock in the morning, we both looked at each other, and we knew quite well that this was most likely our fate for the rest of our ride. After two hours of trying inefficiently to doze off, my head hitting the side wall almost periodically, my unlikely host woke up. By good luck, he sympathized with my plight and lied down again giving me more space to sit. One hour later, it was already dawn and I was seeing sunlight peeping inside our compartment once again with drowsy eyes and a tired body. This fellow woke up completely and offered me something that I didn’t expect. He had fellow passengers in a separate compartment, he would visit them and meanwhile I could use his berth to catch some sleep! It was an unanticipated pleasure, I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to convey more, my gratitude to him or my unstoppable urge to lie on his berth and sleep. So I guess I managed to do a bit of both, frankly a quite a large bit of the later. When I woke up several hours later, he came back to reclaim his berth and I was more than happy to sit up. I had to make the required calls to all important people to let them know about my conditions, and on top of that I was hungry. It was already past noon and the pantry car staffs were hawking their inedible fares, I bought one. I figured out that my fellow engineer also managed to grab an upper berth after I went to sleep and crashed for a few hours. I was already on my second day of journey and finally didn’t feel sleepy enough to occupy my time. It was a lazy afternoon, a cloudy bore of a day, which seemed like about to weep at any small perturbation. I whipped out my smartphone in a not so smart manner to check out if someone was available on Facebook to chat. Two hours and some serious confrontations over Facebook chat later, I ran out of juice on my smartphone, constant disconnections and extremely low coverage didn’t help. I had to do something to distract my mind, my acquaintance was still sleeping on the upper berth. A long train journey in itself has almost nothing quantized about it, only disjointed and disgruntled pieces of experiences – so I chose to read a quantum mechanics book. It was late evening when my reading was curiously spotted by a young lad, barely growing his moustache/beard and a sort of amused befuddlement in his eyes. “Can I see the book”? He asked. I happily agreed and ten minutes later he joined me to talk about Physics. My waitlisted acquaintance had also come down from his upper berth slumber and joined our little conversation. The small and big issues in physics, things that we understand and moreover those which we don’t, all came into discussion and I was elated as usual. It turned out that our new fellow physics appreciator was a brand new entrant in engineering studies in Kerala, and he was returning home with his father momentarily before his classes would start. He mentioned about an empty berth in his compartment, and I picked up the scent like a trained hound. It didn’t take me long before I was sitting with him on his own upper berth, devouring two of his bananas while he was taking out his chess set. It turned out that he was a national level player, and was itching to play rating tournaments but held back due to pressure from academia. National level or not, how could I resist the invitation to play a few hands, even on an unstable upper berth? The games turned out to be more of a discussion about chess openings, middle and end game rather than cutthroat competition which usually saw two people silently trying to outwit the other. Two games later, it was inconclusive who was a better player, we both had one win each in our kitties, and strong urge to sleep on our eyelids. The train was supposed to reach Lucknow before midday and I was up by 8 o’clock. It was close to 10 AM when the older engineer came to bid us adieu, we had reached Kanpur. I tried my hand with pantry car food again, a joke in the name of breakfast and climbed down to lower berth. I had to get ready, Lucknow was fast approaching and it was a gloomy day with raining all around. An hour later, the train finally came to the destination I aimed for, slowly, screeching with love and a light bobbling that somehow indicated that I had to depart. I was in Lucknow, for the first time of my life, without having a concrete plan of how to reach my next destination, just like I was travelling in waiting list for the first time without a concrete plan of how to survive the nights.

I did not expect anything from my impromptu railway travel but it didn’t disappoint me. I got to discuss the subject I love the most, I played Chess after a long time against a real person, with a real chess set and not a virtual make believe conspiracy. Although it was late for a middle class boy like me, I finally got to travel unreserved in a reserved compartment, jostling with people, getting jabs and cold stares. The feeling of being back in train once again was liberating, so much that I can take liberty with my own words here. I just cannot wait to travel again with a waitlisted ticket, with hopes that I will not get killed and my body harvested for organs.

P. S. If anyone is really planning to do that, it’s not a good idea, most of my organs are failing anyway. No one will want to have them, even for free!