Showing posts with label indian railways. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indian railways. Show all posts

Thursday, March 10, 2016

WYSIWIWA argument

What our present government is doing is an argument I'm not getting into. It wastes a lot of time. Just to step out and see, it is a lot easier to explain yourself, and indeed win the argument. This organism stays indoors most of the time these days, but a single visit to the unfolding "vision" of India, that exists and (tries to) function outside is enough to have me push my thoughts out with certitude.

WYSIWIWS - What You See Is What I Wanted To Argue

The night before, almost a coupla hours were spent with O, holding strongly opposing viewpoint of what my favorite state-controlled industry, the Indian Railways, is doing. I want those back. If I had a quality called "vehemency" (strongly protesting wrong perceptions and beliefs), and were less lazy, then those coupla hours could've been better argued with a visit to the Old Delhi Railway Station, where I happened to be last night.

Anything I write about it here would be an understatement. The experience was a crass one. Soon as I stepped out from the Metro Station (that directly connects), there was a large waterbody to skirt around - more like a body of piss than a body of water, in reality. It looked like they still can't get the damn public urinals functioning - earlier people were urinating on the walls and the stench was the first thing to hit one on the way out of the Metro Station, followed by trails of urine to hop over. Now, there is a public urinal in place, whose mismanagement has consolidated all the human excreta and put it for an even more real experience with bad hygiene. Who knew so many diseases were for the taking, besides the promised travel, by our Railways. Travelers converged into a single-person channel that skirted around the water body. Ones in rush, and the valiant ones, splash through the pool, affecting even ones who thought they stayed outta it.

Then, the long queues. Despite anticipating large traveler traffic, - which is to increase in numbers, as the festival of Holi comes close (it falls on 24th of March) - there is no preparation to handle the menace. It already felt a menace. Mismanaged queues, barring the throughfare on one side, and the water body on the other. It adds greatly to the traveler discomfort, and yet authorities turn a blind eye to it.

If you wonder what "Vision" this conveys, and what all has been done in budget spending in the last coupla years, then there is one clear answer to all your questions - the ATMs (automated ticketing machines) that have been setup around the complex. Who doesn't like the BSOD errors on display terminals! Two were seen working. There were a three that said they didn't work - a simple BSOD message. There were five or six more (in the far background), that were just dead, no display, and assured us that they won't ever work. And to fire our imagination about setting up infrastructure for Magleav trains... either shows how lying is at work, or how our existing infrastructre (that I'm sure won't be taken out of service anytime soon) will suffer stagnation and people will come to eschew train travel.

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Yesterday I didn't miss


Balloon hearts whirling in motion against the station fence in foreground

Old man playing temple run standing in local

Kru at the station by the sunset


Train cruising into and past the platforms 

A train engine named Arjun rolling in, breakneck, dragging the bogeys of [12922] "Flying Ranee", a double decker express train between Surat and Mumbai. Underlying thought: "Arjun's bitch (note: girlfriend, coloquially, pejorative) trail is too long"

A taklu boy at the train window with the lights temporarily out into the sunset

Train horn porn - one train chirps in high tone, the other booms in a low tone, and a third one rolls in screaming to shut both of em up.

Friday, April 12, 2013

A Train Journey log


xx:xx - Running out of the office in haste. Didn’t even check the time.
xx:xx – Auto to my GF apartment… I have comfy time now.
xx:xx – Almirah locked. Where are the keys? Gotta iron my clothes, too.
18:15 - Still have time
18:30 - Clothes done. Hurry.
18:45 – Bags packed, all set for Indore. I’ll be making a straight-to-office re-entry in this city.
18:50 – Onboard a rick to Jogeshwari Stn
19:00 – A mere 100 mts covered in 10 minutes… nervous
19:10 – @Jogeshwari. My proposed shortcut worked. Cost 20 bucks.
19:15 – I miss the Mumbai “local” by a few seconds. Damn.
19:20 – The next one arrives, crammed. Jostling, fighting, nostrils, squeaks. What are these people rushing for?
19:30 - @Goregaon… the fella in front of me has been punched twice in the periodic commuter stampede.
19:35 - @Kandivali; the guy in front finally got down, just hope it wasn’t coz he was repeatedly getting punched in the face. Now it’s my turn to face the punches. I shield my face as everything around me suddenly compresses which is a sign of more people jostling at the door to get in.
19:40 - @Borivali! I wonder if the train’s left… As a policeman tells me, it hasn’t. Goto PF4.
19:55 – Train arrives. I’m already standing next to the right coach, S3.
20:00 – Some guy needlessly fighting with me over the seat. I’ve held my camp.
20:10 – General chitchat. The train should be in Jaipur by tomorrow morning. I’m off to Indore! Wait, what?
20:15 – It is confirmed; I’m on the wrong train!! See me in Jaipur by tomorrow morning. Surprise bvttseks.
20:20 – I consul my neighbors…  Surat, which comes next, in a coupla hours, is a common junction for both - my wrong train and my right train. Some relief.
20:25 – The ticket inspector arrives. I sneak away, to idle time near the toilet. New skill: “Evade” unlocked! I notice that the faucet is broken and want to complain, but can’t.
20:30 – My cabin is taken over by 3 drunk men. They open up their canteen, peel cucumbers right there, pour out mutton and some veg dish, and whiskey. Looks like the Army.
20:40 – I befriend a young Indian Army officer. He seems most sensible of these guys. Affable, actually.
21:00 – The drunk officers had a great feast, and even forced their dinner upon a father and son duo. The officers disperse into the respective cabins, but for one.
22:00 – The drunk officer in our cabin starts to masturbate. He think he’s invisible.
22:10 – His organ still plays hide-and-seek with the innocent occupants of our bogey. There’s a Muslim couple as well, the lady in traditional Burqa, and I wonder how much of a shock fest this makes for em.
22:15 – Fondle, smell, spit, fondle, switch position.
22:16 – The officer seems bothered by my observation, and asks me, pointing to the lights that were just turned off, “Won’t you sleep, too?”
22:20 – Anubha calling me, but I can’t pick up. I’m on a rattling train passing through sleepy Gujarat villages, among sleepy people in the bogey, and that is when she calls! Bad coincidence.
22:45 – Surat now. The station is built on an elevated patch, so you alight staring into shiny hoardings.
23:00 – My train has come; the right one this time. Getting in.
23:15 – The ticket inspector was generous to find me a replacement seat. I’m on S2/8. His scribble on my ticket: “Pass boarded from ST allotted B.No. 7”
23:18 – Getting through any night – good or bad – comes as a beautiful experience. I’m a traveler to the core. Good.

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Finally heading back

"Chalo, shukar hai, iss baar to hua" is the general phrase used in my geography, when something reasonably simple has been unreasonably out of reach. Sadly I, too, have been affected by this reason of unreason - thanks to our rail booking system, I had been held captive in Hyd since the past few days. That I now sit with a confirmed ticket to Delhi in hand makes the general phrase a personal one. It has been a relief for twofold reasons: I screwed up in the first place, and got away cheap ("should a single mistake cost this much," I kept asking myself until this day); I held on stubbornly to my love for train travel, and got what I wanted without making this a total farce (note: "total").

I will return back with a feeling of having lost three days in Delhi. But I could take it as having ffffound three days of curtained seclusion in this unfamiliar land.
More to follow up soon.

PS: even though irctc site makes for a subject of poison and ridicule, the recent changes of blocking multiple logins (enter Captain Obvious) is FTW

Monday, April 02, 2012

prosaic third sleeper again

A silly rabbit might be horsing in my LKO-bound Lucknow Mail's headlights, but that doesn't distract me. I, thankfully, found myself distracted only a few minutes short of missing this train (that, as its reputation, rolled out from NDLS on time). Had I dallied about anymore - which was very possible seeing the last-minute first-time conversation with Arun about the Kangra trip, or how I was reliant on the slow grind of a rickshaw until a coincidental bump into the singer next door leaving out on his bike and volunteering to drop me to the Metro - I would've shamed myself, and then frantically explored the option of alt. travel i.e. sitting on the floor adjacent to the latrines on some Kanpur-bound train - a remarkable misadventure that I didn't want to repeat with a repeat quantity of the additional baggage.
Anyways, now all is well, and I can channel my worries into other directions; we all just sit and worry most the time, the only difference in lives being the issues we pick to worry about.

The Mail halts at GZB now. The "temporaries" have alighted - guys with tiny briefcases or daypacks, who try keeping inconspicuous, and stare back with tired, antagonistic eyes, and rush into a quick sleep for the short journey before you could even share a word with them. Mute, writing songs in their heads that they'll never share, conveying a sad emotion that openly conveys the nature of the unremarkable journey they undertake each day. In these minutes of company of these tired mechanical instruments, even the ones onboard (the train) for more significant reasons enter a strange suspended state of rumination. No words shared, inconspicuous stares, inconspicuous body motions.

The confirmed-reservation guys dot the landscape now. Soon, we'll find everybody sleepy. Soon the lights would be out - a hard tick of the old lever switches that have stood the test of time. The fat laptop (Keane) guy has turned his laptop off and now munches on biscuits before his nap. A group of 3 in the same car as mine try making a conversation, until interrupted by a tired middle-aged middle-berth guy to sentence everybody to sleep.
"इसको अन्दर कर दो, चप्पल को" would be his last words in case the train crashes somewhere on this night. This falls into the same FAIL set as "I just... blued myself". Even a demure "Goodnight" or "Paachhay hatt jaa" would've done better.
I wonder what my last words were... I haven't spoken at all since climbing aboard, only a call back home to update on my boarding status, which, too, lacked any gems of inspiration. Nothing unintentionally noteworthy to go down history; I could wait to see another day.

Friday, October 07, 2011

Gorakhdham Express

Being slim(mer) - not as paunch-ridden as the average humanity - brings its own advantages to travel. Firstly, I can (figuratively) lounge on my modest berth, with all my paraphernalia in the vicinity - to stand a testimony to that is this present moment of me scribbling away on my upper berth in the train at 1240 AM under the dim glow of berth locator lamplight that peeks through the curtained wall (yes, some elite philosophy, this, to have curtains in all A/C coaches). Let me not get into my inability to catch sleep either coz of a creeping insomnia (as of late) or due to a light stomach.

Much of the past couple of hours of sleepless restlessness have gone into imagining shallow-DoF scenes of me doing random awesomeness, and of Grecian love tragedies.

Am involuntarily exercising my olfactory senses into identifying several puzzling and a few right unpleasant human smells in this A/C coach - unclean railway linen, stomachs stuffed with aloo-gobhi-bhindi-palak-roti about me, and my own need of a bath, round up the possible causes. Aurally, there's the occasional muffle of my own head scratching against the railways-provided towelette that makes something like a beatbox effect, ruffle of some surrounding passenger's sheets, a tinkle of bangles as some married woman twists in her un-husbanded sleep, whirring of overhead fan 2ft from my head, rattling of panes, hooks, and bottle holders. There's also the great metal fatigue of the rolling trains that we have adapted to relegating as background noise. Gorakhdham Express shivers through the night and often breaks to stop dead in its track to allow me this moment of cursive writing.

Now things smell of Hydrogen Sulphate. Nostrils hurt.