Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Mission Railways

I left Pune on 3rd of the April, booked a "tatkal" ticket, for a Holiday Special Train, which couldn't be booked first hand, but I booked it again, as I knew that "IRCTC+ICICI" is a deadly combination and nothing will happen to your money, so I booked another ticket and got the money back for the previously "unbooked" ticket within 2 days. I had always heard about trains running late in INDIA, by 2-3-4-5 hours and sometimes by a whole day but never experienced it, so I never trusted it.That day while leaving Pune, I don't know how and why, but I was thinking about the "on time" experience of mine with IRCTC. I reached Pune station at 12 afternoon, roamed around for one hour and then to my surprise/experience an announcement was made which said,"The Pune-Nizammudin train has been rescheduled and now will depart at 7:50 p.m" :D
This proves the theory of you conspiring and universe approving or whatever it is...:D

Moral of this short story is,"Don't expect/want the bad things to happen if they are not happening because if you do then they will"

At 7:50 I landed on the upper berth and slept like a relieved dog after many-many days.Next morning when I woke I asked the tea-boy for a tea. He charged me 5 rupees :) Later on I asked him about the lunch price which he said was 50/- only.
Then asked him to show me the menu card provided by IRCTC to every vendor, he asked me to talk to the Manager. Initially I was bit reluctant/frightened to go and talk to the manager, anyways who wants to be beaten up by the tea and samosa boys in the running train, but another fellow passenger joined hands with my anti-corruption organization and went to the manager and there "we" found that the tea without tea bag was for 3(5), with tea bag was for 5(6), ordinary lunch for 32(Not available), paneer lunch was for 50 and mineral water bottle was for 12(15) Rupees. I calculated instantaneously that for 810(10 coaches*81 people) people if they drink 3 tea cups a day then in a day the tea~samosa boys were pocketing 5000 rupees for the tea only. A perfect business :D
After talking, I came back from there, ordered another tea, now see the conversation:
ME: 1 tea please.
Boy: (Gave me the tea)
Me:How much??
Boy: 5 Rupees
Me: But the manager/IRCTC says 3 rupees
Boy:I don't know, 5 rupees.
Me: Lets go and talk to the manager, what is your name? Haan-Sanjay, lets go
Boy: Why??its 5 rupees, or you can pay whatever you want to [:D]
ME:What does that mean?I don't want to pay anything
Boy: Thats fine with me, enjoy the tea.
Me: Gave him three rupees.
Boy: Ran away as fast as he could.

After that I went to each and every coach, starting from S1-S10 and told everyone in every compartment regarding this low~scale~mass~scam and asked them to pay the right price for the right thing, and you won't believe it the tea~samosa boys were themselves returning the change without having asked to do so :D. I did not went to the AC coaches as I did not know how do they react on such issues, so In case you are an AC traveler pay attention and act accordingly :)
So next time you travel, mind that you are not paying more and paying the right price, after all its our right :)

P.S: Please don't be adventurous in case you are traveling through U.P/Bihar/Jharkhand because Indian Railways has reported a lot of cases of people being thrown out of the running trains :D. After all life is important than Rights and Wrongs :)

The second brief part is on the way :) which tells "me"about the importance of food and money in Life when you are not accessible to both of them :D

14 comments:

Smita said...

Shucks!!!

This indeed is a scam....

I have always paid these buggers without questioning them.

Am so proud of you that you went ahead and enquired about and took these buggers to task....

DataDab said...

I appreciate that you took an initiative for this 'low-scale-mass-scam' of which most of us unaware.
But you know, sometimes exposing such small time frauds turn into big-time accidents..quite ugly at times..I personally know of few incidents of such kind.
Its my sincere advice to be careful next time doing some unveiling act. :-)

Nautankey said...

clap clap clap great work man.And yeah make sure u have enuf man power incase u are doing this :)

Tarun Goel said...

Yeah thats why I specified, in case the region of your traveling is Bihar/Jharkhand/U.P then it could be fatal :D

Madhuri Kunisetty said...

hahaha...IS that U??who went from S1-S10??? unbelievable :D...

Once u step out frm the company..started goin after those poor guys kya??? mind ur own business and let them go to hell yaar....don disturb those poor chaps... :)

abhishek gupta said...

tum to train me bhi tabahi la diye dost...
tum sahi me tabahi ho...:)
ab samajsewa bhi karne lage..

waise nice work....

nd most important ..it was really good to know ki train me ye sab ghaple bhi hote hai..

jago grahak jago..:p

Bhargavi said...

cool !! .. dont think i wud have bothered to do that .. ! nice of u to tell everyone abt the scam !

Anonymous said...

Hahaha...Good job!
If only I known this sooner, I'd have saved so much more from all the train journeys in the last 4 years!!

Maya said...

i use trains a lot, i never thought it could be possible, 5 rupees sounded reasonable to me for a tea on board so i never thought of it.

what u did is kind of revolutionary in its own small way.. but i wudnt have done tht, i wudnt have cared..

Tarun Goel said...

It sounded reasonable because u always had 5 rupees wid you :)
Mine is a different story altogether

Anonymous said...

This is too much! You did the right thing! We simply must protest!!

And I agree the most about not trying all this in some parts of India!!

The Holy Lama said...

We back off paying the chaiwala Rs 5 but end up wearing a T shirt that costs only 300 but can be had at 800 reason - it has puma emblazoned on it:)

Topi pahanao, tarah tarah ki

arundhati said...

bravo !!
all we need is more people like you :)

Anonymous said...

BRAVO!BRAVO!!BRAVO!!!