On one of the jobless sundays, I had gone to cancel a railway ticket of one of my friends. It was a tatkal ticket, and he had not travelled, because it was waitlist...(dont bother about the technicalities that much, it was actually quite complicated).

First I went and stood in the railways reservation queue.... it was quite a long queue, and I was there with a book in my hand..remembering the good old hostel days, when we used to stand in queues to get those concessions. I reached the counter after quite sometime, but Oopss... he said for some reason this cannot be cancelled at the counter, the software did not have any such option, I would have to go to the station master. I could not blame the operator.

Well I went all the way back to platform, went to station master, and he casually asked me to go and meet some railway inspector, again in the reservation building. I nimbled back to the reservation building, this fellow was not there, I had to sit there in his office, my book giving me company. He came after some good half an hour, I was little irritated now, asked him. He asked me to go to Accounts section in main railway administrative building.

I dont know what made me go all the way to the main adminsitrative building, (if you familiar with Bangy, you would know it is about 500 meters from the reservation buidling), I guess the good mood of the morning, or may be wonderful weather prompted me to go there. Reached and there was not a person to be seen. Ofcourse it was closed, it was Sunday.

I was laughing at my folly, all my good mood was turing in to equivalent irritation against that railway inspector, against the station master and against everyone working in railways. Everyone just wanted to sit in the chair and take a nap and skip work.

But as I was leaving, somewhere down those empty desks I found this lone guy working. I was so happy to find him, this was the target to vent out all my frustration of last three hours or running around here and there. And I melted down everything on that poor guy. But that fellow to my surprise turned out to be quite nice. He explained me the relevant rules, he even showed me the website of railways, which explained the rules of various corner cases of reservation and cancellation, and said the final authority was that railway inspector, and I had to go to him.

Yups another direction... I was in no mood to go there again...I wanted to go home and finish rest of the book, I could let go 200 rupees...after all it just means one pizza or two DBCs, I already had wasted so much time. But I guess he read what was on my mind.

He asked 'Did you see RDB?', (RDB is Rang De Basanti ofcourse)

I was surprised at this question, I said 'Yes!'

He said.. 'Either you complain about this, or go home grumbling'

It struck like a sting. I could almost read him, almost hear him say 'this IT poeple of AC offices, cribbing all the time, making comments on how a railway inspector should behave, commenting on his lack of manners, on his ethics and so on'. He had that look in his eyes.

He was a relatively young guy, someone who had perhaps recently got married, and I could feel that in a way he was telling me, 'help me change the system' kind of stuff.

But he had hit me, I could not go back now, I was determined to complain. But I did not have any proof, so what do I do.... So I again decided to go back to the reservation office and back to the reservation inspector, this time around he was there.

This time, I said 'Please write it and give me'. As it turned out, he finally looked carefully at my case, and got my work done, he mumbled something that rules have changed recently and he did not quite understand last time what I wanted to say and so on. I got my 200 rupees.

It is little hard to describe, but that day, that fellows words 'did you see RDB?', did hit me, I did not even take his name, and I dont even remember in which of those infinite corridors of that administrative building that I found him. But I think will remember him for a long time to come.

 

(Originally published on my personal blog, http://nonstopgoli.blogspot.com )