Sai's Travelogue

Though I am a S.I now, I am getting very lazier to type stuff. Anyways, this post was in my mind for quite a long time. Yup, I am going to talk about my experience of my train journey to an interview. First, let me talk about the difficulty I faced in booking the tickets for this wonderful journey. Since I received the confirmed dates as late as possible, I ended up at cross-roads with no tickets to travel. My planned journey dates were May 12 and May 14. Thanks to the government's vague policies of releasing the tatkal quota 5 days before the journey. I had to be at the railway station on May 7 and May 9, as early as 8 a.m to get myself a ticket. Else, travel agents would have booked all the tickets with fake names. It was like performing a tapas, upside down to buy the tickets.
In the final leg of my journey, I happen to learn that the tickets get booked up by 30 minutes after releasing the tatkal quota for a particular day. This is ridiculous. With more travellers, the government needs to find more trains. After all what are the railways are for?
It was a rainy Monday in Coimbatore. 6:30 a.m. Mom called Bairavan, the autodriver to drop me at the railway station. I usually don't like the inquisitive nature of strangers who are so curious to know my destination and why I am going to that place. Bairavan is one such example and I was patient to answer queries. I felt sad for his ignorance since he does not know the journey duration as well as the location of Bombay in the India map. He wished me good luck.
The display showed that the Lokmanya tilak Express from Kurla would arrive at 7:45 a.m., running late by an hour and fifteen minutes. I got irritated by this delay. I was kept waiting at the platform which was something more than mud and cement for nearly 90 minutes. Later, they train arrived by 8 a.m, 15 minutes more than the promised delay! We weren't allowed to enter the coaches until 8:45 a.m since they required cleaning. The train moved out of the station by 9:30 a.m. My seat was a side lower berth which I hate. My co-passenger was a middle aged person travelling to Namma Bengaluru!
My other co-passengers were a couple returning from their honeymoon( who were more friendly to me!), An old tamil brahmin granny going to BLR, A software engineer bound to Pune......

(to be continued.......)