enjoying myself

Indian Railways Zindabaad !!!!

Well all of u must have heard the turn around story of Indian Railways. In fact, Lalooji got IIMA certification for the same when he visited the campus last year. The kind of attention it generated in the media circles was nearly unprecedented. Even my nani who stays in mumbai n hv no clue of wht IIMA is also realised tht i was a part of sum decent college when she told me that 'beta tumhare yahan laloo aaya tha...tumhara college koi bada college lagta hai !!!". After tht branding exercise, a lot of ink & paper has already been put to use to sing paeans by different media channels & magazines. The 'Laloo khyati' transcended borders & reached international levels. Students from Harvard, Stanford & similar colleges started coming to Laloo Yadav to get sum real life management fundas. To cut short, Laloo became a much bigger & touted brand after he visited this campus & Railways were a success story which no one could ignore.

In fact, most of us are also very impressed by the way the Railways have started functioning. At one time the delays were an acceptable baggage which came with the railway journey. In fact i can remember that my Aunt used to come from Calcutta in summers. Her scheduled arrival according to railway timetables was 2 pm in the afternoon & I can never remember going to pick her before 2 am next morning. This 12 hr delay was considered to be a benchmark. We cribbed only when the delay used to get longer & this cribbing used to be more often than not.

Now all of you wud be wondering why I am doing so much of 'Rail pranshansa'. Theek hai guru, i wont do it any further now. In fact two very wierd incidents in the trains happened last week when i went home. naah re, there was no pretty gal sitting besides me in the compartment. she always seems to get the seat in the next compartment :(. While going to Delhi, I was sitting with that mucch waale uncle & a aged guy who kept complaining abt everything in life. The train started moving & now suddenly sum action started. A teenager came running into the compartment shouting tht sumone from his family was left behind and he pulled the chain. n the train stopped !!!! i always thot tht this chain was nothing more than an ornamental accessory, but it did work. Tht guy said thanks to us and just vanished. We were just debating abt pros & cons of individuals pulling chain when a battalion of cops arrived in seconds.

u talk abt cops always coming late, but their speed surprised all of us. More surprises were there in the offering. Now they mistook us as the people who pulled the chain & immediately threatened us with dire consequences. All our protests went unheard. n one of the lady cop took my ticket n vanished. These guys needed a bakra for stopping the train & coolly zeroed down on me. After all the passengers protested, the cops came directly to the point. wohi 'bakhsheesh/chai-paani/chunnu-munnu ki mithai' ki baat chaalu ho gayi. but i decided tht i was not willing to pay anything of tht sort.. actually jeb mein paise hi nahin the n these guys were still not technically gud enuf to accept credit card payment :) u know with all those ATM machines everywhere these days, the tendency of carrying hard cash has reduced. after these guys realised tht i was not going to pay and an hour of haggling, they filled an excuse in sum form n went away

The rules of the game
- If sumone comes n pulls chain in ur compartment, u r legally responsible
- U can pull chain only if sumone is left behind or a luggage worth Rs 10k is left behind
- You need to hv sum cash in ur pocket, dont always bank on ATM/card etc

Similarly while coming back, i booked a tatkaal ticket fr the same. In case u r not aware, this is a kind of ticket which u can book just before the 5 days of travel & u need to pay railways a cool 150 bucks extra for a sleeper. Railways recently announced a scheme to reduce this amount by half during the off season travel, n i got my ticket at ticket cost+Rs 75 only. But after the train travelled sum distance and TT arrived, i came to know tht this train was not covered in the discount scheme. Seems some manual error occured while updating the railway computer system for the list of trains coming under discounted fair. all the passengers like me who had tatkaal tickets like me were asked to shell 75 bucks extra and the poor TT was asked to repeat this explanation to each & every tatkaal guy. So it still seems tht Railways still need to continuously monitor their processes & need to come up with improvements regularly to avoid such kind of errors creeping in.

posted by amit @ 12:42 AM