More on train…

Trains have changed too. 3AC coaches are now named as B1, B2 etc. Then, there are those indicators on the platforms for where a coach would stop. One of my colleagues at Google had told me about it, but I had dismissed it as an old thing that did not work. They used to have those static boards with coach numbers, which did not mean anything. And you best bet for guessing the location of a coach was a vendor or your coolie. But no, it wasn’t that old thing. This was an electronic indicator. And the coaches stopped pretty close to those indicators even though not at the exact place. I am wondering if this is a more wide-spread thing or whether it was only New Delhi Railway Station.

The ticket. I was traveling with an e-ticket for the first time, although it has been in existence for a while now. For the uninitiated, e-Ticket is different from the i-Ticket, where you get the actual ticket through courier. In e-Ticket, you just take a printout of the ticket and carry an id-proof with you while traveling. Now, in a series of goof-ups that have happened till now in this journey to IITK (starting with the rescheduling of my flight to Delhi by 3.5 hours, making me fear that I am going to miss my train), after boarding the train I lost that printout. I had the soft-copy on the laptop (hence I wanted to save that little bit of battery), but I wasn’t sure that would work. As it turned out that since I was carrying my id-proof, it won’t be considered a ticket-less travel. For the lack of a printout of the ticket, I would only have to pay Rs. 50. What a relief it was. If you lost a regular ticket like that, there is no proof they’ll accept and you’ll have to pay the fine for ticket-less travel. Hail e-Ticketing!

Anyway, finally I am at IITK. At the Old GH - the GH of our first year. Now, called GH-2. Ironic, isn’t it? Well - it was converted to a boys’ hostel after we moved to the new GH. But after the female student population outgrew the new GH, it was reclaimed as the Girls’ Hostel and called GH-2. This reclamation happened after I had left. It feels good to see it back as GH

More in coming posts.