The new Amazon MX Player show Waiting Hai could not have arrived at a more appropriate time for anyone who has ever tried booking a Tatkal ticket. If there is one thing Indian Railways has perfected, it is the art of making a simple train ticket feel like a UPSC examination, a video game, and an endurance sport rolled into one.
Tatkal booking is not about buying a train ticket at the last hour. It is about reaching the payment page before the IRCTC website crashes, the seat disappears, the captcha defeats you—but already, an agent with a suspiciously weird jugaad has booked the ticket.
There are few things in life that require a lot of focus, from synchronising my watch, memorising my train’s departure date, charging my phone, checking the internet connectivity, and being ready to pay more. Tatkal booking needs all this.
One day before travelling, at 9:55 am, you are supposed to enter your name and other details. And you cannot log in to the website too early. If you do, you will be automatically thrown out. Five to ten minutes works. At 10 am, AC booking opens and at 11 am, Sleeper starts. Now, it’s fastest fingers first, like the many Reels where a young boy solves the Rubik’s Cube in the blink of an eye.
I have better chances of winning KBC or surviving Roadies than getting a ticket. Just imagine: you take leave from your office, everything looks good, you tried to book the Tatkal ticket, and what you got was just disappointment.
Mission: Impossible
The process is as easy as ordering something from an e-commerce website. But when you are trying to get a Tatkal ticket, every second matters. If everything goes smoothly, the whole thing can be done in under a minute. The problem is that it never goes smoothly.
As you select the train and then 3AC, the website starts fetching the passenger details from the master list. You are almost there. And then, right when you are getting down to booking, it shows up an error: “Unable to load your tickets, higher load time.” This happens to me most of the time.
At this point, I like to imagine that somewhere inside Rail Bhavan, a bunch of government IT officials in safari suits are sitting in front of a giant screen, watching my race and throwing a new hurdle at me every time I clear the previous one.
The problem becomes even more obvious on popular routes. Getting a ticket on the New Delhi-Lucknow route throughout the year is Mission: Impossible. While normal days are also tough, you might as well forget Tatkal during the festive season. Even the 60-day booking window feels like a competition. Which is happening to me right now. Diwali tickets for the whole week are already booked, and here I am, ticketless.
Then there is the vocabulary. There is waiting, which gives hope. There is TQWL, the last hope. And then there is “Regret”, which is an indication that your paid holidays are going to waste.
Sometimes, even when a ticket is technically available, you have another decision to make. IRCTC asks whether you want to continue if your preference for a confirmed berth has not been met. If you don’t select the option to book only when a confirmed berth is allotted, you can proceed to payment, only to discover that you have landed on a Tatkal waiting list, which means you’re just waiting for a miracle to happen.
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Tatkal failures
As I travel every second month to my hometown, I have managed to lose the seat several times.
But my funniest Tatkal failure had nothing to do with IRCTC. I once had an exam and needed to travel the next day. I was completely prepared to book my ticket on the morning of the 18th because I was supposed to reach my destination on the 19th. I had everything ready. I sat down to book, only to see “Not Available”. This time, it was not IRCTC’s fault.
The train had already started its journey from its originating station on the 17th. Even though it was scheduled to reach my station on the 19th, the Tatkal booking window is scheduled by the train’s departure date from its source station.
Booking a Tatkal ticket requires serious mathematics skills. The date you travel is not necessarily the date you book. You have to know when the train started its run, where it originated, and when the Tatkal window actually opens.
There are physical railway counters which, in theory, can actually be one of the best places to get a Tatkal ticket. If you are first, second, or third in line, your chances are better.
But before anyone reaches there, agents are offering to get the ticket for a higher price. You begin wondering whether waking up at 4 am, standing in a queue, and taking the risk of returning empty-handed is really worth it.
These agents book a ticket under someone else’s name and simply tell you, “This is the name on the ticket; just tell the TTE this name.” Sometimes, they use common names, or even book tickets under the names of elderly people to make use of quota.
So you can enter the coach thinking you have finally defeated IRCTC, but when the TTE comes asking why a 25-year-old man is travelling on a ticket booked for someone who is 50, you’ll need some Nirupa Roy acting skills.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)