Was booked on Train no- 12870 , Howrah - Cstm special , expected to take all of 32 hours on train.
1230 pm, time to head to the
station, tickets not confirmed, RAC, so will get a seat for sure,
A2 – 45, am seated co passenger shitish Jain,
a through gentleman is only 29 years old, but very well behaved and gentle soul
a onion trader by profession, was sharing the seat with me, but having a pal
with him was off, n I had the berth to myself, was a slow journey, I had come
prepared so had a book and a few films to watch, Wolf of wall street was one,
and Seven was another that I wanted to watch, between a egg curry lunch and some
Oreo cookies I was a happy child as the train ate up the miles, next stop that
I walked out of the train was Tatanagar,
Another family sitting
opposite to me included a sharp kid, impaired speech but full of life as was
his little sister, they were great company and not too talkative, the journey
was mostly smooth, the train was delayed by another hour for technical reasons,
occasionally I would check in with the TT about the ticket status and he would
tell me it will get done as and when it was possible, as my co – passenger was
not with me for quiet a while I was sitting / reclining happy in air-conditioned
comfort while outside was baking at 91 degrees.
The day progressed into night
and we were all in bed by 12 ish, at 3 am, I am woken by the Ticket collector,
and he has a passenger with him who he claims is the other occupant of the
berth and I had to share the berth with him, the new passenger some 50 years
old pushes his way and sits down and starts to make himself comfortable, and I
start to come to my senses, fully awake now and know there is a con job going
on, I challenge the Ticket collector, asking him how for the process to lodge a
FIR for falsification of ticket. The TT wary asks me what I am talking about,
and I challenge him to the identity of the man he has just got along with him
as the other occupant of Berth 45, the TT quickly takes out his chart and
passes it below my nose before I could actually see what it had written, I
insist this is not the gentleman who has this berth and I can prove it. Murmur of conversation starts with the TT and
the gentleman he had got along and he makes a pretense of checking his ticket
and the Déjà vu moment happened as he realized that this was no the seat of
this man and it was a MISTAKE on the part of the TT, and the passenger had had
lied to him. Anyway , both are kicked out of my berth and am finally again off
to sleep.
Rest of the journey pans out smooth, a whole bunch of interesting sights and smells later am in Mumbai by 11pm, epic day and a half later ,,, had travelled 1990 KM in this time period.
