The other day, while booking a train ticket online in the comfort of home, my thoughts went back to January 1965 when I had my first experience of booking one. It was for my elder brother who had to go to Delhi for an interview.
There was a long row of ticket counters at the Madras Central Station, and the entire process was done manually. For booking a ticket for a particular train, you had to approach a particular window. Behind these windows sat the booking clerks on stilted chairs. They would write down particulars such as name, age and sex of the passenger in a heavy ledger. Then they would pull out the ticket from a slot in the shelf in front of them and start scrawling once again in the limited space available the details recorded in the ledger. If a clerk takes a break, your wait prolongs.
Every day, the windows opened at 6 a.m., but people would queue up from 4 a.m. Nomads who stayed in tents on a ground near the Central Station area made good money by selling positions in queues.
Even if you succeed in getting your ticket booked, only on seeing your name on the passenger list pasted on the coach could you be sure of a berth. I had witnessed fights between passengers as the booking clerk had mistakenly allotted one berth to two. Ultimately, one would get the berth, and the other would share the floor of the coach with cockroaches and mice.
The one question people those days often asked was, “Do you know anyone in railway reservation?” A friend of mine got a job in a big private concern just because he mentioned in the interview that his father was a railway booking clerk. Members on the interview panel exchanged meaningful glances and declared in unison, “You are selected.”
mr.m.r.anand@gmail.com
