Torture RACk

I’ll never leave my travel unplanned till all hell freezes around my a***
I’ll never leave my travel unplanned till all hell freezes around my a***
I’ll never leave my travel unplanned till all hell freezes around my a***
I’ll never leave my travel unplanned till all hell freezes around my a***
I’ll never leave my travel unplanned till all hell freezes around my a***
I’ll never leave my travel unplanned till all hell freezes around my a***
I’ll never leave my travel unplanned till all hell freezes around my a***
I’ll never leave my travel unplanned till all hell freezes around my a***
I’ll never leave my travel unplanned till all hell freezes around my a***
I’ll never leave my travel unplanned till all hell freezes around my a***
No I didn’t copy paste that. I deserve typing down every letter of that self induced punishment. It started off pretty innocuously. Just another train trip. Usually it’s from Coimbatore to Chennai but this time it was to Bangalore. Same distance, night train, fair enough. Little did I know what RAC was gonna throw at me. I’ve had one bad experience of travelling in trains that reach Coimbatore after travelling thru ‘ God’s Own Country ’. If that was er... interesting then this was friggin mad. RAC’s a bloody torture RACk!
I tell my Dad late that my travel will have to be postponed by a day. Tickets: unavailable of course! Strike one.
I’m RAC number 13 on Island Express. 4 weeks of nerve-wracking wait later Didi’s department confirms my ticket. S9/16.
Now, 16, what does that mean? Side upper. What does that mean to a 6’1” guy? Friggin pain in the a***. And knee and neck and ankle as I’m starting to learn slowly. Strike two.
Thanks to Nitish and Laloo over the last 10 years, my train arrives on time! I get in and what do I find in S9/16? Sleeping-like-a-log incarnate of Swami Ayyappa on his way to God-Knows-Where in Karnataka from Shabarimala.
Swami, that’s my berth.
Show me your ticket.
Here. it’s S9/16. Get off my berth.
The roughneck in Dad, whose eruption times I’m yet to decipher after 21 long years, gets all aggressive and noisy outta nowhere.
Dad, wait! Let him get off!
Swami descends from S9/Shabarimala slowly. Outta thin air, more Swamis emerge to surround the TTR who has arrived as well. The black shirts, ear-wax-like stink and hair like the strands on a mopper used to clean Shabarimala, I could identify them by the little islands they had formed for themselves on the floor of island Express. Apparently, none of them had bothered to bother Didi’s reservation Dept. before boarding the train. After all, God has His privileges. And so do His minions. One of them proceeds to try n slip a Rs. 50 note into the TTR’s hands.
50? Fifty bucks?? Has God driven you that insane mate?? This guy’s a TTR! The guy who cleans the drain in front of my place takes more than 50 bucks!
Quite unsurprisingly, the TTR boots them out n finally summit S9/16 is mine. But Swami won’t take his things off my berth. He wants more time to go find some place where he can form an island for himself. I’ve already talked to the guy in S9/15 to swap berths with me so that I can avoid the misery of spending the whole night shifting around in the elf-sized berth. The guy looked like a Goblin so 16 was perfect for him.
Now things get nasty. All the Swamis converge on the TTR and ask him for berths. He tries - first diplomatically and then literally – to ask them to f*** off. The Swamis decide that any train from God’s Own Country is their own (They’re God’s minions, see?) and presto! Within 5 minutes, S9 has about 15 Swami islands impeding one and all from moving. Strike Three.
Mr. Benevolent Goblin and Your’s Truly are the only guys awake apart from the Swamis and the thoroughly frustrated TTR. Swamis start ranting about the TTR to us
Third Class TTR... 300 rupees vaangeeetu vezhiya poga solludhu... No one responsibility (Say what???)... [Some tosh in a language I can’t understand]... I have ticket sir... [More tosh in that language I can’t understand]...
Awright, my summit may be pint-sized but it was safe, so thanks Mr. Goblin but I guess I’ll prefer a sleepless miserable night over a watch-over-my-a***-every-other-minute miserable night. So up I go. After all the drama, S9/16 it is.
16! What is it with me and 16! Screwin around with my head ever since coll!
I so hoped the night was over. Then we reached Erode. What’s it with this li’l town? Is it the people or a Tom Roddle like jinx that keeps it’s fetish for trouble so fresh and insatiable?
TTR arrives and decides enough is enough. Yeah, this guy is the exception that proves that rule that every Govt. employee is shite.
Call the RPF. Get out now or I’m getting ur a*** whipped by RPF. Get up all of u! Off to unreserved! Now!!
No divine intervention struck down the TTR as His minions marched off to the Unreserved compartment. Enough... was finally enough!
I got back to my cramped berth and aforementioned sleepless, miserable night.
So why am I going on and on about it? I’ve got 72 more minutes to waste before GoAir takes pity on me and opens the check-in counter. And BIAL’s been benevolent enough to provide me with free internet. But the main reason...? What the hell I’m just plain jobless! :D