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.