What a morning with Tatkal reservation!!

It's a friday morning - yayyy the weekend is about to arrive...but again, what's so yayyy about it??? I was not feeling well since the past two days. I was super tired and I had planned to go to office a bit late today and sleep for a longer time than usual. But then, there was this job I had been assigned. I was supposed to book two tickets for my friend (a friend who was a bit close to me - so I couldn't say NO!) who was travelling, in Tatkal quota.

God knows what goes inside me when I hear that one word. My whole sleep buzzes off , my body shivers, the shrill runs throughout my nerves and all the symptoms of anxiety, fear come to me at once.

For those, who don't know, Tatkal quota is where you reserve tickets in a train two days before the scheduled date of departure. It generally opens for reservation to public at 8:00 A.M. With a huge population in India, with most of them preferring to travel by train, everybody sits ready at their systems by 7.30 with all the details entered, just ready to click the damn rat (read: mouse) as soon as it turns 8. But it just so happens that, at 8 o'clock, the servers go down, the site being unable to handle such a high load. If after trying for half an hour or so, the site opens, its so slow that the javascripts don't work. Damn! That used to happen to me when the board results were supposed to be out. At that time too, I used to leave it on its own, and tried after half an hour and used to peacefully get the result. But, as the statistics goes, the number of people who sat in the board exams and are waiting for the results is so small that it can be neglected in front of the number of people who are trying to book the tickets in tatkal quota.

Had it been my own case, I would have just gone to a travel agent a few days back, given him 20-30 bucks in the name of his fees, got the tickets booked, and just on this Friday morning when I was super-tired, would have been sleeping peacefully and a mail would have been lying in my mailbox somewhere waiting to appear before me and tell me that my tickets have been reserved successfully. But NO, dear Mr. God had some other plans for me. And because it was my friend, I couldn't say anything. He knew my weakness and took advantage of it. OK - so the score is 1-each now. Pheww. A tough competition it is, I tell you!

Tatkal reservation is a spooky experience for me - an adventure which obviously, I never want to take up. I feel that whenever I want to book tickets in tatkal, a ghost turns up around me - which will never let me do things. Something or the other ghostly will happen - and it will do everything - every darn thing to stop me from booking the tickets. Or maybe, another possiblity just striked me, my computer just turns into a ghost.

Till now, I am just refreshing the page, because one or the other func..cc..uncc....helllpppppp!! Ghossssssstttttttttttt!!!! AAaaaaaahhhhhhh...I saw it I saw it...runnnn..!!!

~PeAcE oUt~