The Prologue
It is 7 pm. You reach home after a usual busy day in office,freshen yourselves, dial your parents’ number. After the usual talks, comes the deadly reminder: “Beta aaj toh nahi hua ticket. Kal phir se Tatkal dekhna hoga.” Ohh No !! Not Tatkal, ask for anything else in the world, please.
Tatkal – this six lettered word has, for at least once, instilled fear into the hearts of people who travel by trains mostly in the era of internet where a deadly dragon named IRCTC looms large with its different weapons upon the travelling enthusiasts.
The De-Moralising Effect
You hear about things that give negative vibes and how people advise you to remain away from such things. Well, Tatkal is one such event which can just create a complete negative environment around you. Your first reaction itself will be negative that I won’t get the ticket. That is only 1st level of negativity. The agony doesn’t end there. You will start doubting each and everything of yours: your eyesight (reading the intelligent captchas of IRCTC), your bank accounts, your browsers, your luck (I should have chosen 2nd AC, I would have had better chances) and your patience with money stuck in between transactions (2-3 bad transactions are normal scenarios in Tatkal, refund of which will come back in a week. Just imagining how much Govt. would be earning by the interest of these failed transactions).
The CounterPunch
But we do have to deal with this. We need to be mentally prepared for it. So the counterpunch has to be ready. Prepare all recipes for the counterpunch. Gather your friends(Read as the more consistent friends in booking tatkal), distribute the trains among them(based on friends ranking of success rate) , choose the best browser(Read the lucky browser) and decide on the bank account which will have the least chances of getting stuck at the payment gateway.
Get up with the full focus around the 10 am mega event,ensure your internet connection without a glitch (although that is totally unrelated but the outcome is judged by that basis), do a dry run 5-10 minutes before and just plunge into the War.
The Result
The Result is mostly on the negative side, but by chance if you succeed you are just on top of the world. You have achieved something really great.
Yes it is indeed priceless !!!
The IRCTC
Not sure if anyone has been cursed as much as this centre of Frustration and Irritation. Nothing seems right about the site even though their server names are kept after the names of Gods like Brahma, Vishnu etc.Even divine intervention couldn’t resolve this human mistake.
Talk about logging in itself and you will encounter a captcha in its most gruesome form. L will appear 1, 1 will appear I and letters will be cursively entangled with each other. Rack up your brain, get those dead cells up and running.
From start to end one thing that can keep you in track of your goal is patience. It is the fight of patience with Irctc. The results are not loading, just wait. The buttons are not clickable or you are not sure whether you have clicked them or not, just wait. The form is loaded but the captcha is still sleeping, just wait. The page redirection is taking ages, just wait. Your Login has expired again, just repeat the process. The transaction has failed with the payment being done, don’t panic. Just repeat the process,your money isn’t running anywhere. It will come back sometime or later to your account itself.
The Ironies
Irctc keeps coming up with innovative ideas to resolve its long standing issue of customer frustration in booking tickets. The irony is that these ideas are as brilliant as their existing system.
One of them was mobile wallet to avoid the payment gateway process if you have prepaid wallet. Brilliant idea, but the best part. It won’t be applicable for Tatkal bookings. Wow !!! (in Saif Ali khan tone ) Go ahead,scratch your head or bump it against a nearby wall.
A recent one is Premium Tatkal. Another one of their attempts to loot the general public. First of all, you are reserving around 40% of seats for Tatkal thereby charging more and then create one more sub category where the price rise is upto 3 times the original fare. Great Innovations, one must say !!!
& The Conclusion
Nothing serious. Actually nothing can be done here. Life goes on. There are agents, there are flights and of course if you need to increase your patience limit there are Baba Ramdevs !!!
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