The Rail Reseervation journey

The Train Booking


On a cloudy day we set out to book a few tickets at the Noida Railway Booking office. Reaching there was through a number of curves and returns which we had to take due to construction work for elevated road at Sector 33 and consequent shifting of the power lines. The last piece from Prakash hospital 'mor' (turn) till the Reservation office on the right side of the road did not have a pedestran walk way and we had to walk in the main line road where the vehicles both big and small came against us on their journey to Delhi. The road was slippery from the just then unusual March rains and the rain water with the extreme dust made a lethal chutney (cream) a recipe for accident to both humans and two wheeler riders. However, the people of the place are good and kind and the drivers took good care of the pedestrians on the main line road.


In side the Booking office we went to the Senior Citizens line and was about to get the reservation, the computer system failed. Every thing came to a stand still. Officers expressed their helplessness as nothing can move now without the computer lines working. Every body was free to wait. We chose to wait as there was every chance of the computers becoming operational before long. Those who were anxiously waiting and standing in the lines slowly settled down in the seats for the visiting customers.


We also settled down in our seats. That was absolute bliss. There was nothing to be done. Just as if it was in the running railway coach. Nothing to be done, no where to go. The officials also waited and took rest or saw whatsup videos or chit chatted in their respective seats as they can't do anything without the computer lines coming alive again. Now nothing can be done until the system became active. We are hooked. All around are hooked too Those who came to buy and leave in a hurry is blocked, if they wanted the ticket. Alll was free to leave without buying a ticket if they chose to do so.


I started feeling to go to the urinal due to my prostate and moved towards the huge urinal which had been built when the new building opened. To my dismay, it was not only closed, but also locked. The condition of the toilets and urinals had worsened by the misuse by people around and the visitors coming for booking tickets. The lack of supervision and cleaning by the concerned staff contributed to the total break down of the usable wash rooms. Most of the equipment had became unusable or broken by vandals and paan masaala and betel leaf spits which corroded all metallic parts.


A question to the Booking Supervisor and the Floor Supervisor got a benign assistance in the form of an allowance to use their personal wash rooms which was a great solace. In the meantime, the number of people visiting the facility kept on increasing and many new comers did not know what was the delay.

We kept waiting and enjoyed the peaceful wait.


The wait became slowly unbearable as people were asking if it will work at all. But nothing much can now be done as we used to do in olden times. The manual system has been totally replaced by the computer - inter-net systems which worked in coordination with their compact local servers. We were to wait. We were waiting from 12 o' clock and now it was 2 pm.


Waiting peacefully was not as much a problem as the mosquitoes around biting us of and on made the wait slowly miserable.

I was to buy a few tickets for May where as my immediate follower in the line was patiently waiting for a ticket for the next day. He waited peacefully in the dust and mosquito bites without any complaint with his gaze far away. It gave me strength and patience. Even otherwise, I found it a good time to write all that I was witnessing. We had all the rhetoric for progress and quantum jump, where as something was pulling us back, how so ever, all of us tried to move forward and that too at a fast pace. But the hiccups were too loud not to notice.

There was a huge bill board asking all the visitors to “SAVE YOUR precious TIME by bookig your tickets on the internet”. A gentleman down the line was fingering his pocket phone to book his ticket by the net. He has been doing it for long and still fingering. He may not have got the ticket. Otherwise he would have gone by now.

The patience of my colleagues waiting for their tickets was remarkable. So was mine. Me and my companion skipped our lunches to keep at the windows in wait for a machine to work. The mosquitoes at the seetings had their fill of our blood and troubled us from time to time. Next time we visited we have to bring the mosquito killer bats and other kinds of repellents. No body seems to give any care to the cleanliness of the counters on the side of the customers.


The lighting at the building was old with use and had lost most of their reflectors. The electricians are the ones who are to keep up the lights. But cleaning is not their part of the job. The long tube light fittings were covered with cobwebs and at places the best of things do not work. The bulbs and tubes had fused off or removed and not replaced. Anything in our country are like that. Everything work for a while and slowly the nicest of things do not work. The bare skeleton only works. It is as if no body has a care for the nicer part of things to work. The result, every where we get slip-shod work or service.

Recently read book - "Othappu' by Sara Thomas

Recently read : Othappu – A book by Sara Joseph

The word othappu in Malayalam means temptation. This is a word which every body underestimated from the time of creation. It was the devil tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden.

And both Eve and Adam fell as we all know. Thereafter all kinds of jealousies and violence take place on earth which continues till date both individually and in groups.

Here the simple theme is around the life in central Kerala where a simple youth from a poor family goes out to learn and become a devoted priest, becomes one and in the nascent stages gets shaken by the mesmerizing eyes and feet of another youth, a nun who comes to the church for her prayer activities. It encompasses the lives of the priests and nuns of the Malayalam country, especially central Kerala.

Hilarious and emotional to read, especially for those who have grown in and near the churches, the novelist is depicting the life and times of yesteryear Trichur and to an extent its Catholics who are so much devoted and stead fast in the daily activities which are bound by tradition. It is difficult for them to escape from that circle and have another life.! The Trichur Rice Market which the novelist depicts is so well put in, one can smell the odour of red chillies all over in that market even today.

And the dialogues of the people with the original beauty of it in Triichur, where most of the families will have a 'double name' by which they are generally known by the people around and another great name to be used ceremonially, once they are rich and had to be addressed in public where great people are around. “Channere Varkey Mashu” is so well set, any body in the District of Trichur will feel they are reading somebody near their own houses.!

I felt this has something to do with the caste system of the olden days, in which the poor people were allowed only to put in names bearing a kind of lowness in it, like 'thevan', 'koran' 'kandan' etc, in the south India and dhukhia', 'kaalu' in the north. The tradition is always to get rich and keep the riches so that the family flag flies high, but in the process people became arrogant and overlooked ones own brothers and sisters who are not that accomplished as themselves and went on to heckle and put down who wanted to come up.

The youth, in any case, are not much subdued by all that. Others help them from time to time and they survive most of the life's trials as all youth but in the process are unable to help their near and dear, viz. their beloved, fathers and mothers. The father of the young priest who leaves his priesthood is a gentleman who does earn his daily living and feed the family with his meager salary in the 'Whole sale Rice Market' by lifting the huge bags of rice and other groceries which landed up in the market. His head is held high among one and all around him, as 'His son is going to become the Priest, becomes the Priest, 'and proves to be a good Priest at that', whom even his own 'Mothalaali' (Merchant owner of the shop where he works) looks with awe. But alas, the moment of extreme paang comes for him in the form of the news, that his loved son whom he was looking forward as a icon has left his calling as priest hood and is going here and there! In a traditional setting like Trichur, this is some thing which no mortal can take..and naturally, he ends up his life

on the very beam of the shop where he was lifting the huge and heavy rice bags for the last forty-fifty years.

The novelist beautifully touches up the lives of people who are still kind and dare to help the youth and his fiancée who run for their dear lives while still trying to do all the good to others wherever they moved, but without wherewithal finds it difficult to go forward. It is here the nun out of the convent who does not have much standing dares to return to her brother to ask for a job to which she is well qualified. There is a situation created as 'if the ignominious girl' picks up the job, the brother Mayor will find it shameful for 'STATUS' ego. This kind of difficulties are found in all places and parts of our country among all kinds of people.

It is a book which can be read for the beauty of the depiction of Trichur and its people, their markets and the lives of the common man as well as the rich, their institutions and the general belief of the people, their strifes in daily living etc. Over all, the lives of the undaunted Goodness doing priests and nuns who keep on doing good regardless of the outcome and their touch way of keeping themselves the lowest by humbling themselves through acts of fasting and penance.