TAT(tough)KAL!!

Recently, I had been to Chennai by train. Since it was a last minute travel, we could book tickets only by Tatkal.  The rules for the same are changed now. We can book tickets only 24hrs in advance.

 So I decided to book my ticket and was ready at 7.45 am because booking starts only by 8 am IST. When I typed in irctc.co.in, it took quite sometime to load the page. The next challenge was the city codes! And the number of tickets available by Tatkal to Chennai from Hyderabad are 32 in 2 trains and 16 in the third train. I entered all the details sincerely and now they ask for Identity card like driving license or passport or pan card and you should specify the card details. By the time, I gave all this and clicked on “Go“ button, there came a message stating my session has expired!

 Logged in again. This time, I could go to “Make payment” page, the list of banks showed up. I selected my bank and waited, waited and finally it loaded the bank’s page! Given all the details, and hit the make payment button, it took such a long time as if someone from Railways went up to my bank by walk and checked my authenticity and finally said that there was some authorization error from my bank!

 Without losing hope, I logged in again and checked the availability and thank god, it showed 2 in one train. Without losing time, I clicked on ‘book’, gave all the details(its really great that auto filling of forms worked!) and after going through the entire process, the communication between the bank and railways took such a long time as if I am waiting for my exam results! I finally got a message “Congratulations! You have successfully booked a ticket!” I was so happy that I passed my exam but when I scrolled down to check my coach/berth, my happiness didn’t last long! Guess what? The ticket was waitlisted! Oops! I just cancelled the ticket, logged off and postponed my travel by one day!

Suprabath!

Here I was, again ready by 7.45 am but with more gyan now. So I opened 2 different browsers and logged in with 2 different login credentials. In both the browsers, I gave my details as if am booking a ticket by general quota so that when I do the actual booking, the auto filling of forms should happen at the first time itself. Everything was ready and I was determined that I should get it right the first time!

 The clock on my laptop showed 8 am and now I have entered the city codes which I had learnt the previous day! Clicked on ‘book’ button, waited and auto fill worked! In ‘Make payment’ page, I chose a different bank today (lesson learnt na, authorization error!) and gave in the details and hit on ‘Make payment’. Waited, waited, waited (could have had a cup of tea!) and finally at 8.13 am it gave the message that I was successful in booking a ticket. I was not still happy! Remembered the waitlist, so scrolled down the page and finally saw that I had a confirmed ticket in coach B1 though it’s a side upper! I was actually scared to give the option that ‘Book my ticket only if atleast one lower berth is allotted.’  And so instead selected ‘None’ from the berth preferences!

 What a feat that was! I was actually elated and had a good time in train. Unbelievable, yet true, my train was actually scheduled to reach Chennai Egmore at 7.15 am but it had reached by 6.45 am!!

 Actually, Railways say that they want to reduce the cheating by the booking agents and hence Tatkal is brought into use. Why then, the booking has to be done only 24hrs in advance?

 Not every time, our travel can be planned well in advance and sometimes, we do have to travel in the last minute! Anyways, we are paying more by Tatkal and what is wrong if I book my ticket in advance? Actually, we don’t get money back if we cancel the confirmed Tatkal tickets and there are different set of rules for Tatkal!

 What happens actually is number of tickets by Tatkal has got increased since it’s on a daily basis, railways could generate more income and we, passengers are exploited by paying more money!