Not quite a Happy Journey. My journey in General Class.

Since my phone has went black and having nothing else to share, I decided to pen down this story from 2017. This wasn't my first time traveling in a General coach, neither was it my last. So, how did this journey found a place in my travelogues library, let's find out. This is my journey onboard 12304, Poorva Express from Etawah to Patna.
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Sweet 2017, fresh out of school, spending my days playing GTA, NFS, and everything my laptop from 2012 could manage. Good times. Then one day, jealous of my quaint life, CBSE decided to drop some results and entangled me in the life beyond. So, in the cascade of events, I had to travel to my college for my admissions. On a short notice it was difficult to get a confirm ticket, even in July.

So me and my father decided to take the Marudhar Express. Unable to get a current ticket from the counter, we boarded the SLR and it was surprisingly empty throughout the journey. We had a return ticket in the legendary super-crawler, Toofan Express, but living upto it's name the train was running almost 10-hours late. Left with no choice, I booked another ticket in Poorva Express, which was stuck at RLWL2.

It was still the demonetization era and the daily withdrawal limit from the ATMs was still ₹30,000 per day. And some megamind in my university had decided that the only acceptable method of fee payment was through demand draft, which required cash. So after the admission, we were left with some ₹500 and no way to withdraw any extra cash. Certain of the ticket confirmation we reached the station.

And as the tradition goes, the ticket didn't confirm and canceled automatically. By this time we were left with ₹300 cash, having bought some bananas and paid transportation charges. The single passenger GS ticket to Patna was ₹210, with no option of online payment. We decided to buy a single ticket, and someone from home would hand us cash at Mughalsarai, so, if required, fines would be paid at Patna, else it was fine. Turns out, none of these happened. IRCTC never refunded us the ticket price, so I'll call it even.

LHB was still an emerging concept in the regular trains back then, and we were accustomed to regular coach compositions. So, we stood at the back to board the GS. And by sheer luck, the coaches in front of us were AC. Being the rule followers, we decided to move ahead towards GS, but with only a 2-minute halt, we managed till S-7 until the train honked, and we boarded it. Again, the coach was nearly empty. So, we decided to pay our fines and get a seat in SL.

My father had extreme faith in the words said at 8pm on a fateful day in November 2016, so, he was quite sure that every TTE had a POS machine. As it turns out, that wasn't the case, but the lady TTE told us that the train would reach Kanpur after 12am, i.e. the next day, so we could withdraw cash there and board the train. Turns out the station ATMs didn't have cash. We returned back and now we had two options to get to Patna.

On the adjacent PF, Sampoorna Kranti was ready to depart. My father suggested to board it since it reached earlier. Looking at the crowd in it's GS, and deciding that we didn't want to disappoint another TTE by not making them able to extort money from us, we decided to board the GS of Poorva. I'd say that I've made decisions and regretted later, but this decision still sits somewhere in the top-10. And that's why it sits here, in my travelogue diary.

The coach was fully packed, we made people to adjust and make enough room to sit one of us. Then, I asked my father for the phone to call my mother. And voila, he didn't have it. The station of thieves lived upto it's name. We searched nearby areas and asked our co-passangers with no luck. By this time, the commotion got bigger and someone told us they saw a similar phone with some other passenger, my father interrogated every sketchy person with no avail. Finally, we accepted that the phone was now gone.

Not only it was a brand new Samsung flagship phone, it also had the copy of all my documents, which at this time were present in another college in Patna. Along with my next journey ticket to Pune, soft-copies of a few documents required on that trip were also there. Nothing that couldn't be recovered, but I was teary-eyed by then, my father also seemed a bit disappointed. Looking at us, people shifted and gave us both a place to sit, someone gave us a phone to make a call home. Exhausted and having no appetite left, I hung my polybag full of bananas below my seat, and dozed off.

I finally woke up fully after Mughalsarai, by this time the bananas had been mushed to a puree, and my hands and clothes felt like I had been through a colliery. Turns out, no one came to hand us cash at Mughalsarai, instead my family members in Bihar had already reached Patna. It was raining heavily by the time we reached Patna. Having witnessed a string of bad experience with trains and tickets in the last few hours, we deboarded at the extreme end to get out through what I recall was the parcel office gate, which was submerged in water like half of the city.

Fortunately, no TCs were present and we found everyone as soon as we got out. We lodged a complaint at Patna GRP, who initially were not interested and tried to push us away, perhaps you need an MP for that. Needless to say, I didn't stay in Patna after that, someone else took care of the matters. I came home and fell ill, being bedridden for almost a week, I couldn't go anywhere else. The phone was tracked by Chandauli police in Kolkata after few months, and recovered by Varanasi GRP in 2022, as good as a bar of soap, pristine looking but couldn't work as a phone.

Interestingly, my next two journeys to my college were in Marudhar Express, and even they're worth writing them down, but that's for sometime else.

Thank you for reading.

Kumud.