jEDI blogs

Day 10 and the strenuous Indian lifestyle is catching up with me. All I needed was to buy a bunch of tickets. The amount of hassle it involved was amazing. For all the “progress” people keeping harping on about, the common man's day to day life is as tedious as it has always been for as long as I can remember.

My destination is about 600 km from Delhi. First I chose to fly by air. Methinks with Jet and Sahara operating in so many cities and a million other economy airlines, that have suddenly sprung up overnight like wild mushrooms, it'll be easy as hell. Right? Wrong! It seems the only way I could have taken any advantage of this economy airline business was if I booked months in advance. If you only try the week you are flying they are much more expensive than your regular airline. Not to mention that a) they fly at odd times b) they are never on time and c) they could cancel the flight at the drop of a hat. So, there I was in the offices of Jet and Sahara, who are planning to merge soon btw, trying to get a ticket for a flight scheduled 3 days later. Praise the Lord! Their offices are worse than the Chinese fish bazaar. Among other people in the queue were travel agents of course.. the kind that buys 30 odd tickets in one go. This could have taken all day and I was having none of it. Of course, that was only part of it. What irked me even more was the attitude of their staff. India is a country of a billion people, and the number of people opting for air travel must have increased a 1000 fold in the recent years. Bunch of lousy airline companies won't solve this problem. We deserve something better, and more cost effective. In fact, money though important, is not the ultimate issue here - quality of service and availability is.

Anyway, in this utter madness that engulfed me I gave up on airplanes and decided to use “Bharat ki rail”. And why not? One of the biggest train networks in the world, if not the biggest. Millions of people use it everyday. Did you know that Indian Railways is the biggest employer in the whole world? It employs around a million people. Regardless of that, did you think it would be any easier buying a railway ticket? Think again. Even if they employed another million it would still take you a few hours. Now yes, I know that these days you can reserve tickets online but again.. there are different conditions regarding who could buy, how well in advance, and so on. Not to mention the darn thing becomes unresponsive or is down for maintenance every now and then. Certainly this is one area there has been an improvement in, but sadly not sufficient enough.

Ok enough cribbing. It wasn't really my intention when I started writing this post but I guess my frustration took over. Incidentally, once I had the tickets, my travel plans got cancelled, which meant I had to return them. It was a scary thought but I somehow compelled myself to go ahead with it. Guess how long it took me to simply cancel them?

Anyhow, regardless of all this I must say it was a fun filled exercise. The people you meet, the arguments you have and your huge relief upon getting the job done. Who thought buying a pair of tickets could be so satisfying?

jEDI