To the delight of working population, especially at corporate, Tamil New Year was on a Friday... A long weekend to relax... With the same delight, I tried to book the tickets three months advance, once leave was announced at my office. But, reservation for a weekend at CBE is real war; I just escaped with a ticket on Trivandrum Express, although reservation on night trains is the real victory for me. Nevertheless, reaching CBE one night earlier was good right.. So, my friend, Kicha and I were eagerly looking forward for the weekend. We got the requested SL and SU berths [to enjoy the sceneries].
To the D-day...
We rush to MAS station after finishing our work at office. We had a great lunch at saravana bhavan and rushed to the...
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train just 10 min before the departure. We got into our seats, arguing on which side the sun would turn up... Right then, more people started getting in the train.. There were 12 of us in the bay meant for 8.. Our compartment got filling in slowly...
Disease spreads, differently !
As PKV sir pointed out in earlier blogs, I understood that disease of UR passengers in reservation coaches was spreading for sure... All of sudden memories of my adventure trip on Guwahati express flooded my mind... We kept trying to guard our berths from the disease... But, yet it wasn't the same as it was in Guwahati Express... Let me list out the differences,
1) The number of UR passengers in our compartment was around 50, as against 70 - 100 during the other trip
2) Ratio of Men to Women UR passengers in Guwahati express trip was 70 : 1 [I spotted only one woman], but in trivandrum express it was 20:30
3) Almost all the UR passengers were educated [they seemed to be :/ ] unlike the Guwahati express trip where the entire lot of UR passengers were labours [labours because I saw the nature of their luggage]
4) None of the UR passengers in the guwahati express seemed to have a mobile phone, but in Trivandrum express they had. Not just simple mobile phone, iPhones, Nokia N8s, Galaxies further confirming they were educated...
5) Age group of UR passengers in Guwahati Express was around 25 to 40... In trivandrum express, 18 to 30...
6) In guwahati express, they vacated our rightful berths and stayed in the passageways. In trivandrum express, they generously [??] offered to share our rightful berths
7) In guwahati express, they told us plainly, that they were traveling to Malda Town, WB (disappointing us right away that they will be round through out our journey) ... In trivandrum express, they promised to get down at next station [now disappointing us at every station by not getting down] ... they were using their wit to give us a pleasant feeling that journey would be comfortable from next station...
8) In Guwahati express, they had waitlisted tickets [they had paid the SL reservation charges]; in trivandrum express they had open tickets!
9) In guwahati express, they were forcibly removed at Tiruppur station [immediate next stoppage from CBE], with the help of chain pull and railways police... but in trivandrum express, they traveled their journey successfully.
Guilt!!!
Why this difference? Just because you are "educated", you are a "woman", you are "well-dressed" and have a "costly mobile" does it give you right to travel the way you like?
What mistake did those helpless labors do? It was their only weekly train to their hometown! But yet it is a grave mistake when a person from other state travels unauthorized...
Hero!!!
The trip. Yeah. So the people started flowing into the compartment like water. But in a twist to the story, we had a hero amongst us! ... To my pride, to every rail fan’s pride, they hero was TTE! He was young, sporty [his shoes were ;) ] and fully energetic! He started moving all unauthorized passengers to the door.. He didn’t discriminate anyone based on anything.. His aim was to have only 8 in a bay! He threatened to levy penalty on all open ticket passengers.. At AJJ, he removed them compartment!
Collapse!
But for size of the task ahead, our hero couldn’t stand up! There were more people coming! Too much for his capacity… He didn’t give up, my friend, on his way to pantry saw that he had some sheets [note* sheets – plural] of names on whom penalties where being levied! I do salute him for doing his duty!
How it ended!
With more people boarding at every station, TTE couldn’t manage and was not seen further… We tried our best to have our berths to ourselves… We were successful to an extent, not 100 % …
Loco pilot was not worried about all this. He just made sure the train reached CBE on time!
I got down only to see even more crowd boarding the reserved compartments …