Travails of travelling

Travails of travelling


As i left National Capital by Goa express, hope was all i could float with given the fast-changing permutations and combinations of travelling in a state where some had reached a stage of expression beyond comprehension and some were miffed to the point of bearing no emotions Apart from the bro-sis duo hoping to catch a manufactured wedding in Agra, there was one another manufactured entity who could not prevent from disclosing the location he was headed for umpteen time. Not less than 40 in all , he thundered on his cell that he was headed for a place near Ahmednagar.
Conversations he had with not so near ones through cell and direct verbal bell to those adjacent to his seat any boundary he refused to accept and more prone to narrate the misfortune he suffered at the hands of a videshi lady given the losses the garment business had suffered. i was made familiar by his conduct when he suggested that beyond a certain station in Madhya Pradesh he has his wait listed ticket for Kopargaon in sleeper and for the two tickets he had to ferret out more than the sum mentioned in the ticket in Nizamuddin station counter. That was hard to believe since i had collected the Gwalior ticket from the same counter and if his version was true then he is to be blamed for getting access to services by paying more. And here i was apprehensive that if similar outlook is maintained i would stand the least chance of extending the journey beyond Gwalior. And that actually happenned. That is just one of the many tales as far as travails of travelling is concerned.

Lost count of the number of times one has had to leave the national capital and different modes of transport that has been tried including trains, buses (ST is preferable given the haughty airs that private volvowallahs are swimming with) where on occasions either the man at the wheels or the conductor begins to feel the pulse of the state the commuters are in by getting abrasive, shared autos( any day better for the commute they deliver and the checked tariff they work under), chakdas (both covered and uncovered variants) and other such modes.

First sign of hostility emerge from the mode of transport you engage in and if it happens to be a train the source of trouble is the wait listed status. One has lost count of the number of occasions when one is at the mercy of TTE/TTI; some could be accommodating and some could be haughty. Though the railways has come to the rescue of passengers by getting the new methodology at work on tatkal tickets, there are still some gaps in it and in the coming period the media would be able to highlight that. Still, the new version is comfortable. Once the confirmed ticket comes to your rescue for which you have to shell out hefty fare if upgraded category is sought as other classes show the waitlisted status, this reality one has to live with since a confirmed ticket would be a better bet than a waitlisted one.