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I
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was a bit conceited at my feat of securing
tickets to travel to Mumbai from Udupi, that too at short notice. This when people were making many attempts in
vain to get a ticket in the peak season of May –June.
Though the city of dreams is well-connected
to Mangalore through road, rail and air, travelling by train is the most
preferred mode of journey.
But my
pride was like a bubble in the water. It did not last long. My journey turned out to be rather a
misadventure. After trying
unsuccessfully to book tickets from Udupi to Mumbai through the net, I had to
approach an agent. He assured me that somehow he would pack me off to
Mumbai. I was not sure whether I would
get tickets and which class we would be travelling by.
In his
office, he handed me a photocopy of the ticket booked for five persons. My name
was supposed to be Nalini and my 11-year-old daughter was 18-year-old Ravi, and
for my son there wasn’t any ticket. But he extracted almost full fare of the
five tickets.
His
explanation was that he had to pay to those certain Nalini, Ravi, Shankar,
Geetha … to buy tickets from them.
Though I was not so naïve to believe his story, I was obliged to keep my mouth
shut, as I had “begged” him for tickets. And this beggar was fleeced
royally. All the tickets were booked for
adults. Not even a single ticket was
booked in the name of a child or a senior citizen. The railways gained!
For
the original copy of the ticket I was told to phone a person. Mind you, all this was happening just
half-an-hour before the arrival of the train. I was anxious a bit. First thing
I did was making my children and myself comfortable on the platform and called
the number given to me.
My
heart skipped a beat, when the person at the other end told me that he was in Bangalore.
Following my explanation he said, “I have never been to that place.” I hung up, though he wished to continue the
conversation trying to find a solution for my problem.
Again
I called the agent asking for the number.
I got the number with the digits at their right places. Somehow I could
meet the said person who was to give us the original ticket and the other three
passengers, a couple and a student, all memorising their newfound identities.
So much for the mafia. You have to book the ticket months in advance
if you are doing so online. But if you approach an agent even at the eleventh
hour, you will get a ticket. But the price for doing so is, twice the actual
fare or sometimes three times! Make hay
while the sun shines.
Many a time, my tickets were confirmed
only on the morning of my journey that too at the last minute. Till then the
agents wait for the gullible passengers. The commissioning of the Konkan
railway about two decades back was expected to free the people from the
clutches of bus mafia, but , alas,
now they are being fleeced
by another tribe.
Our
second class compartment reminded me of Shashi Tharoor’s “cattle class”. The
noisy compartment was brimming with people of all sorts. The people returning after spending a long
vacation with their nearests and dearests. The people who have attended the
annual family poojas. Those who attended
weddings of their nephews, nieces and other relatives. You got to see the
haggard faces of the men caught between the traditional matriarchal
responsibilities and a family called theirs.
Poverty
cutting short their dream for education,
these men who migrated to Mumbai, have seen to it that their siblings
and nephews are taken care of and their nieces well settled after paying hefty
dowries. True, Mumbai is the one-stop-solution for all their financial
problems. Mumbai did not belie the dreams of these enterprising people.
Sacks
of coconut were stacked under the seats.
These very people who spend a fortune during their visit, take back a
few coconuts worth a couple of hundred bucks. So much for their sentiment. The smell of jackfruit wafted through the
compartment. Perhaps the luggage outweighed the passengers. A stark contrast to the journey etiquette.
And there were people accommodating themselves near the toilet. There were
people begging the TTE for a berth and some even trying to bribe him.
When the TTE came, I sent my children to
another end of the compartment. Fortunately, he was not insisting to see the
passenger. Most of the children eligible for ticket in my compartment, I felt,
were, like my son, ticketless. Then it
struck to me that the TTEs are hand in glove with the agents in their
misdeeds. That was why the agent was
confident when I repeatedly asked him whether I would have any problem.
My son and I were lying together in a
single berth. People slept on the
floor. When I woke up in the night, I
could see a person staring at me sitting on the floor. He looked decent but was made to travel in
that manner for want of ticket. Even then, startled in the middle of the night,
I could not help but checking my neck once.
The early morning ensued a clamour to
alight. A large family hurriedly
alighted in Panvel. Their luggage was like a mound. When I reached my destination, it was
drizzling. I was relieved to see my
husband waiting for us.
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