After their previous venture of trying to check the average height above mean sea level of the Chepauk pitch, Ramudu and Shyamudu got really busy with their work. So busy that did not feature in any of this blog’s post till today and this post happened because they finally got some time off. So they sat down, having Kaju Kathli from Dadu’s, and started chatting around like how two young men with nothing else to worry about, do(You dirty fellows).

The conversation started with, of course the Kaju Kathli from Dadu’s and how it tasted so much better than the lots that they had been recently chancing upon at many unsuspecting friends places. Then they started discussing about different sweet shops in Hyderabad & Secunderabad. Ramudu swore by the Balaji Mithai Bhandar opposite Uppal Bus Stand and their fresh plain Kalakhand. It so happened that he had gone to school with the shop owner’s son and that always meant discounts and free rasmalai samplers. Shyamudu was more of the adventurous kind in the sweet testing and tasting business, known very well  to drop by randomly at unknown sweet shops to sample every sweet on display and then finally say, " Pau kilo peda pack kardo bhai". He also wondered why almost all the sweet shops owned by Marwadis in the twin cities were named Sri Balaji Mithai Bhandar.With an ever increasing database,  Shyamudu was the to-go man for all his friends and family for spontaneous sweet purchases in unfamiliar localities. Some friends of his had suggested for him to post his views online for those who might be in need of such help. So he started frequenting restaurant review websites and posted reviews of sweet shops. He was now mentioning the same to Ramudu as how convenient it has become to access even such specific information  through the power of internet and continued on by talking of all the various avenues of social networking aka blogs, facebook, twitter and what not.

As we have already seen in the previous story, Ramudu is a bit old fashioned. So all the talk about online social networking wasn’t really going down well with him. He started to talk of the paradox that is today’s social structure where there is loss of personal contact due to all these contraptions and at the same time those very things now have other stuff that let you connect with people with whom you lost touch in the first place because of these things. He also detested the in-your-face 24-hour updates that all of these services seem to be encouraging. Why was there a need for everyone to know everything about everyone, he felt. Why the need to get enrolled in so many websites for almost the same thing, when plain e-mail is more than enough. This was his line of thought and got a bit hyper, while explaining this to his friend.

Shyamudu went on the defensive saying that the user is free to choose what he chooses to show of himself and see of others. He also suggested of the upcoming service chi.mp which allowed for you to gather all your online presence as a single entity and then from there choose what to show to whom.

Ramudu at this point said something which made no sense and it went something like this. - " Let’s say there is someone, who shares my feelings. Let’s say that he does not like this idea of every third service provider seeking my details from another service provider albeit with my supposed intent and permission after verifying my credentials. Let’s say he wants his thoughts on this known to everyone and decides to play an insider joke kinda thing. Let’s say he creates a simple website that in effect does nothing but uses your credentials to a commonly used service to let everyone else know that there exists a portal that will let you see what you can do by logging in to your commonly used service. May be people will know then, how vulnerable they really are to all this." Shyamudu thought that though it was a pretty naive way to look at things, especially with so much to gain with all the flexibility provided such integration , it would really be nice to see how people react if such a thing did happen. At this point, they moved on to the Ariselu and back to the sweets.

( This is my take on the ViddyHo.com phishing running around since morning)

Today I intend to tell you the story of Ramudu and Shyamudu.

Ramudu had to travel to Chennai from Hyderabad, to check the average height above mean sea level of the Chepauk pitch. Considering the Iraq war, the oil crisis, the recent air-fare hike and the relocation of the Hyderabad airport to Shamshabad, he decides that traveling by Indian Railways is a far cheaper and more comfortable option. So one fine morning, he goes early to the Railway Reservation Counter at Secunderabad. The office is yet to be opened, yet he reaches early in time. He is joined by many others most of whom, who weren’t like him. Ramudu was there to book a ticket , well ahead of his scheduled departure, whereas most of these people were there to book tickets under Tatkal quota.

Fools, Ramudu thought of these people, because he saw the Tatkal quota in a totally different light. It was similar to what he saw at Anand theatre in Begumpet. The management would open the advance booking counter for the evening and night shows in the afternoon and close it early. Later in the evening, before the respective shows, they would put up House-Full boards and then sell a significant chunk of the tickets for these shows, in black. Ramudu saw Tatkal quota as a front put up by the Indian Railways to sell tickets in black. If only the government could do the same by legalizing ( illicit ) drugs, betting and the related what nots and earn heavily and do away with the multiple taxation structure and Ramudu, with his enhanced savings, could travel to Chennai by a flight, in spite of the higher airfares. But then again, this was the stuff dreams were made of. Ramudu realized he was still standing in line for the Railway Reservation Office to open.

Open it did finally at 745AM and he rushed to the inquiry counter, picked up a reservation form and rushed to one of the many counters. Since Ramudu was a regular to this ordeal, he knew one thing very clearly. One might be at the end of the line before the office is opened, but with so many counters, one can still be in the first 5 persons in a line at any one of those counters. It so happened that he was the fifth person at one such counter. But there is a sense of uncertainty about these counters at the start of the day. In front of every counter, there is a display board, showing the availability, train no., fare and related details of the booking they are making, assisting the customer to get the exact change ready as the Booking Executive (B.E. if one may call them that ) goes about booking the ticket.

Now it was a known fact for Ramudu and others, that the counters which had their display boards powered off, were not going to opened immediately and would be done only if there is a huge rush for reservations. But it also happens that some of these counters, which had their display boards on, are not opened at 8am, but a little later in the morning, say after 30-45 minutes or so. But there are customers at all the counters which have their display board powered on. One by one, the railway staff started occupying their seats at the counters, in a seemingly random order. At this stage all but few ( 2-3 ) lines, were being catered to by the railway staff. Ramudu was in one of those few which weren’t. But he had not wasted time while this simple situation was being obfuscated by a gargantuan description. He had meticulously filled the reservation form and was patiently waiting.

But his patience started to run out, when he saw that he was in one of those lines. He started contemplating moving to another line. At this moment, sanity prevailed as he remembered The Golden Rule of Lines in Railway Reservation Office ( to hell with Queues ), which stated that, the moment you ditch a line on the premise that it is moving slowly and move to another, that line will move so much more faster than the line to which you have moved to. Of course, the rule never alluded to the pace of the line when you showed loyalty to it in the time of a conflict of interest between two lines, but the disincentive proved enough for Ramudu to decide against moving to another line. For this, he was rewarded with a railway staff person immediately taking charge of the counter. Poor fellow got stuck in traffic it seems.

There were a few who shifted lines only to be done in by the Golden Rule. Their counters, got staffed 2 minutes after they had left the line and they created a huge commotion at the Chief Superintendent’s counter. In spite of all this around him, Ramudu was not perturbed one bit. He was in fact, feeling good about himself for having stuck to the line. It moved and it was now his turn. The B.E. , after confirming with Ramudu, entered the details in to the DOS command like package from the previous century, from the reservation form. After a final confirmation about the berth to be allocated, the B.E. pressed a combination of keys and voila, came out the ticket, looking something like this Know Your Ticket dummy ticket.

( Note that the ticket has no details about the passenger’s name or the photo-id that they ought to be carrying )

Since this story was supposed to also include Shyamudu, let me bring him in now. Shyamudu wanted to accompany Ramudu, since it was his barometer that Ramudu was taking for the measurement. Ramudu informed Shyamudu about his travel plans. Shyamudu was not inclined to go to the Reservation Office, stand in line and book the ticket manually. Instead, he preferred to use the Indian Railways online booking service at www.irctc.com. He logged in, searched for the train Ramudu was traveling by, entered his travel details, credit(debit) card details and photo-id details. Everything is done in a flash and a printout of the ticket is ready.For travel, Shyamudu (foolishly) decides to take a photocopy of his passport and not the passport itself, citing ( to himself ) security reasons.

The travel to Chennai went ahead without an incident. Together they found out that a barometre would hardly suffice their cause, and that they needed to invest in a differential GPS to get anywhere close to the accuracy levels they needed to settle their argument on the pitch at Chepauk. After having a nice meal at Murugan Idli Shop, they boarded the train back to Hyderabad. The TTE ( Traveling Ticket Examiner ) arrived a good hour into the journey. Ramudu gave his ticket, following which the TTE did the routine looking back forth into the reservation chart and ticket, ticked the reservation chart across Ramudu’s name and returned the ticket to Ramudu with the most lifeless face. Then he took Shyamudu’s e-ticket, checked with the chart and asked Shyamudu for his photo-id. Shyamudu showed the photocopy of his passport. The TTE refused to accept the photocopy of the passport, which had Shyamudu’s photograph, as a valid proof of identity. He insisted on the passport being present in original for him to verify. Shyamudu was fined for traveling without ticket. What happened after that is beyond the scope of this textbook.

Finally the rant after all that crap.

I do not know whether Shyamudu actually paid the fine. As such he could have just shown another valid photo-id in original and be done with the process. But Shyamudu was a 70 year old lady who at that point of time, did not have any other id on her person. All she could come up with was a <em>this will not happen another time as I was not aware of the details</em>. Probably someone else had booked the ticket for her online.

This whole situation made me finally write what I felt about a situation. The verification of identity, for railway travelers using an e-ticket. It is important to note the premise of this verification; a ticket booked on one person’s name is not transferrable to another person. Verification is needed, that is something I totally agree but what is irksome is the fact that the same verification is not done for Ramudu. Note that Ramudu needn’t always be a manchi baaludu ( good boy ). It could very well be that Bhimudu had booked the ticket on Bhimudu’s name but Ramudu travels ( he got the ticket somehow ) pretending to be Bhimudu.

The two basic ( for my rant ) differences between a normal ticket and an e-ticket is that for the e-ticket you pay a little bit more and that the information is keyed in by a railway employee in one case and the customer in the other. So the railway decides to trust their own info excessively but is totally skeptical about the customer. Fine. But the chances of malpractice are the same in both the cases. In that case they ought to be checking every single passenger’s identity. I know it is not all that viable but that is the only solution that I see that can be termed fair to e-ticket passengers and monetarily beneficial to the Railways. One might say that it ends up being more workload for the TTE’s but for someone whose job is checking every ticket, checking another ID should not be a big deal. But then not everyone has an id, you may say. Then why the insistence on an ID for an e-ticket only?

As I see it now, one gets suspected for using the online portal, paying more to the railways and avoiding the personal contact with the Reservation office whereas you can go scot-free for having a normal ticket, even if you are flouting the most basic of rules.