IRCTC and my lucky numbers :-(

Does anyone know how IRCTC allocates coach number and berth number, when we book an e-ticket? 

We travel  from Chennai to Trivandrum and back occasionaly.

Inorder to avoid standing up in queues at reservation counter for a long time and avoid the travel to that place, we usually prefer booking through IRCTC. Infact we are one of the valuable customers of IRCTC which might have earned so much of profit from us in the form of cancellation charge of tickets and booking charges.I think like that, but I dont know whether they even know us. 

The transition from the regular system to internet reservation appeared so interesting for me as i could save time as well as my energy otherwise i might have wasted it  at reservation counters. And the very good moment of witnessing the appearance of the 'Congragulations, your ticket has been booked" message on the screen always gave me immense joy.

I used to check the coach number and berth number too, which always appeared as a surprise for me.Sometimes I get  19 or 20 or 34 like that. I have noticed that If I book on ladies quota, I would always get S4 ,19. Safe and cool :-).

 It was on the initial years of my travel to chennai and to trivandrum.After marriage, booking tickets became the duty of my husband.And he used to tell  me that, whenever he books, he would get seats either at the exact beginning  or exact end of the coach. I was a bit surprised and told him, oh i have never faced anything like this. I was lucky to get in middle.So the first time he booked we got seats in the 2nd or 3rd coupe.We were happy and travelled. Later on if we had counted the number of times we got a 'safe and comfortable' seat, it would be some 3/10. :-( :-(. Hence I told my husband, ok next time I will do the booking. I started booking and I dont know, thankfully we were getting  seats away from the begining and end of coach. :-) So happy that we need not have to sit in a place close to the toilet,no light at night from the entrance, no slamming of the doors which would be opened at each station and never be closed, which may pave the way for the chill wind to vade in and always wake me up due to the chillness.

Time passed and once i was booking I got those unlucky seats and i just left it like that. Oh its ok, I am not getting the same always rt? so Why should i be upset. It went on like that for successive bookings too. either at the end or in the beginning.


 I dont know whether irctc's booking software has any function to check if passenger_name='myname' or passenger_name='my husband's name' then
allocate bathroom seats. :-( :-( :-(. Hence now when i book tickets, the thing I am waiting to check is not  the Congragulations message, but the seat number. I always pray before booking, Oh God, plz dont give me seat numbers ranging from 1-9 and 65-72. And to  my dismay the case is not different in 3A also.  


And I am not overstating,  

we had a journey from chennai to trivandrum and back on January and   had to  make tatkal reservation. Both ways we got the "lucky" numbers 3 & 6!!!!. As we usually give preference for upper berth, we got 3 and 6. So on the return journey i thought, ok let me  make a change , i gave middle berth as my preference. No change, I got seat no 5 . I thought so much about the reason and came to the conclusion that, something might have happened to their algorithm, that it might have been rewritten as

if user_id like 'myhusband's name' and passenger_name ='myname' and passenger_name='my husband's name' then allocate seat_no IN( 1--8, 65..72).

I decided. Ok let me create a new id and do the bookings. I made a new id and started the booking process. I checked the ticket availability. Plenty of tickets were available. and no tatkal this time. else i might have concluded that bathroom seats result due to less no of tickets or tatkal.  IRCTC was pretty fast not as usual. My heart was beating fast. Entered the passenger details, Made the payment. Now waiting for the "lucky draw" .The page appeared finally and I  dont know how to explain my feelings.................................................................................................


..........................................................................................................




 $%%^&&*&&&@!#)__+<>:"{})( I felt like 


damaging the software which allocates the seats . Again it was 3 and 6.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After a few minutes of shock, i thought ok , let me do the booking of return tickets. Went through the above process, with heart beating at a faster rate than before. and finally got............................................


Any guess????????????????????????


AS IF IRCTC HAS made a lifelong reservation of seat no 3 and 6 for me and my husband, we got those "beautiful" numbers again.!!!!!!!!!!!


see  in both ways!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.


hmmmmm. My poor heart. It was running as if it was going to get an olympic medal ,but made a drastic reduction in speed on sensing that 3 and 6 has been read by my brain and passed those 'signals' to  my heart.


i think the algo has been framed like the following forever


if passenger_name='myname' or passenger_name='my husband's name' then
allocate bathroom seats. :-( :-( :-(. ALWAYS...........................


LIFE time membership in IRCTC for seat numbers 3 & 6.  


Now painly waiting for the travel..................................

A gentle act

Sometimes I like hanging out alone, walking and walking and watch out the happenings around me. I thought I would go today. I had to post a document also. Hence I went to the post office and  was busy buying the stamp and pasting it on the envelope. At that time a middle aged woman came and asked me, “amma , neenga busy ayirkkiya” ( Are you busy?) I told: ‘No’.  She then asked me “enda form konjam ezhuthi tharingla” (can you just fill this form for me?) and showed me an application form which was for sending a money order. I just looked at her and really felt pity  that in this fast running world where people are on the e-world, doing everything over internet, there are a few who even don’t know how to read or write.

 I took the form from her and went through it. Initially I didn’t understand what was that (which always happens to me) I was suddenly feeling that Oh God, I don’t know what to do. But, I just focused on it and found that it just needed to write the name and address of the remitter as well as the recipient and the amount. I sought the information from her and filled it.  Finally the signature of the remitter was needed. When that part came, I asked her to sign. (Guessing that even if people don’t know how to fill a form, they will know to put their signature). When I gave the form to her, she said “ prachna ella amma, nanga areyum emathathi panam edukkarathillaye. Panam anappa than poren” (There wont be any problem. We are not cheating anyone. We are just sending money). Still I was a bit reluctant to put somebody’s signature. I just thought for a sec, and decided, Ok Let me sign. Nothing big is going to happen if I sign. I finished it and gave her. She said thanks. Then she asked whether I can fill one more form. I said ok, give me and did that also for her. I just looked at her face when she said “Thank You”. I could feel that, that “Thank You” was really deep from heart, not in a casual way where we use the words-  Sorry and thank You a number of times. I really felt proud at that time for helping someone by giving what I have and what she didn’t have. I was happy for being educated and understood that education doesn’t mean merely gaining degrees and degrees, but it has some societal values too. And I was too happy for using it which I was experiencing for the first time in my life.

Movies I watched recently

Recently I got a chance to watch 2 Hindi movies which had the same hero in both of them. 1^st movie happened by a mistake, in which I misunderstood that I was going to watch another movie whose trailer I saw a few days back, showed a comedy scene which was between the hero and a very famous heroine of  bollywood.  My concept about watching movies is that, it is only for entertainment. That is, a movie should take me a way from all the tensions and other thoughts for duration of the movie. I would never prefer to watch an art film (where I may have to break my head by thinking ‘Oh god why this guy is walking so long over the river side, smoking a ’beedi’ - a very common scene in Malayalam art movies) or a drama in which there is a triangle love story, the same soapy stuff which is a trend nowadays. Hence my preference is watching a full length comedy movie, at least 75% comedy, the rest a drama/ fight scene which I can tolerate.

So this time when I went for the 1^st movie, I sat comfortably with the hope that I am going to get some stuff so that I can laugh and enjoy. The convincing thing was the name of the movie ie ‘Wake up Sid’ in which I expected a guy who is so lazy and undisciplined and who may end up in doing foolish things and who may go for all mischievous acts. When the movie started I was happy and things were going as I expected. And in between I was searching for the heroine. As I could not find her on the screen, I asked my husband, where is Katrina!!!!!! . He just looked at me and asked “what?” I replied “I saw the trailer in which Katrina elopes with Ranbir and when he meets his mother he would utter a funny dialogue. And I was expecting to see such situations in the movie”. He gave me a look and replied, “Sorry that scene is in another movie, not this one”. I started watching with my sunken heart. 

The movie was a bit serious one. Yet I liked it even though it was not of ‘my type’ movie. The interesting thing I noticed was that unlike the usual Hindi movies, it had a moral: and thanks a lot to the director, there was not the usual masala where there is the usual hero-heroine love story, a villain, some n number of dances and n number of fight scenes. And the great relieving factor was that female actors were not ‘deprived’ of clothes. The moral of the story was, as long as u are living inside a pool of money and luxuries, you  will never ever realize its value and you will learn that life is not a bed of roses, when you start becoming independent where you have to earn on your own, make decisions yourself etc.

Same thing happened with the movie ‘Rocket Singh – Sales Man of the Year’, where I assumed the movie will be a full time comedy and my assumptions were consolidated when I saw that the genre is “Comedy’. Here I was searching for the song “Pocket Mein Rocket Hein…”which actually gave me the impression that it will be a comedy movie. Like Katrina was missing in the previous movie, here the song was missing L L . But I was happy that the movie was good and the story is exactly what is happening in the life of sales persons. It was actually touching the heart. The interesting thing I noticed was, the standard of both the movies are better compared to the usual movies. At least we can be happy that there are directors who know to make good films too which have some moral. If the film industry tries to follow this, we can again see an era similar to Malayalam movies of 1980s-90s where there were the classic movies which really brought out the talents of ‘our heroes’ who are now unfortunately portrayed as heroes with supernatural powers.

My 'Professional' Water Bottle - Which was not mine

In my office there is a custom of storing water in water bottles and keeping it on our desk so that 'developers' who are busy programming and programming may not have to walk [like Mohanlal says in a famous movie] kilometers and kilometers (actually some 100 meters away from our seats) to drink water. And most of them (including me) don't prefer to buy anywater bottle. so they adjust with used Mirinda/Ma bottles. I was also using one Ma bottle for past 1 year!!!! One day I took it home as my bottle there was missing. Again lazy to buy a new bottle... Hence adjusting with a Ma bottle at home. When I came back to office I rememberd to use the bottle which was orginally made to serve its purpse unlike Ma or Mirinida bottles. That bottle was really good lookingas it has to have some "professional" look. When persons like me use so called Ma/Mirinda bottles,big big 'heads' enjoy the privilege of using 'professional bottles' which are either brown or blue incolor, high quality and could hold 1-2 litres of water. And I noticed that one of the professional bottles was lying 'orphan' in my neighbour's desk. When I asked her whether she is using, she said NO, she is happy with her Mirinda bottle. So I thought of using it.

I became happy about geting a 'professional' bottle and was using it for the past 3 weeks. When all other big heads and small heads use proffesional bottles, I also used the same. But this morning when i came, to my dismay I could see my bottle was not there. Usually it would be there in my neighbours desk, as she may take it if she needs water. I searched all over and it was missing!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was bit sad... The bottle which was serving free of cost for me for past 3 weeks is missing now!!!!!. I searched in all desks. I found one bottle which is a twin brother/sister of my bottle was lying there in admin guy's desk. I suspsected that he stole my bottle, assuming that I am illegaly using office's proffesional bottles.!!!! I couldint go and ask him, because my neighbour told me that she had seen the same bottle there in his desk. I was confused. What to do next??? Today I may have to walk kilometers and kilometers to drink 1 glass of water!!!!!!!!!! How sad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. I went 2 - 3 times for drinking water and I Could see all big heads and small heads were staring at me . The reason may be I was in an unusual costume , unusual in the sense, different from others... wearing a sweater in this Chennai summer!!!!!! Why am I wearing it??? Because I am held up inside a freezer from 9 to 630. My only relief is either going to rest room where cooling is less compared to other places. And the second reason why they stare at me may be because the water cooler is kept at the entrance to rest room. So when I go to that area they may think that I may have some 'problem'. Hmmmm Somehow I managed to go there.... Now my 'orphan bottle' is not there to help me escape from that shame.

I wanted to make an attempt to search for my bottle. So i sent a multicast message to my bay mates which is as follows:-

**>can anyone lend me one water bottle plz.. somebody flicked my water bottle last day

**>botle with water .. most welcome ;-)

I badly wanted to drink some water at that time. and was feeling ashamed to go to take water from cooler. No one gave a positive reply... one girl came and told, it is not ur bottle. It is the profesional bottle which no body was using. Hearing that I modified my message and sent them

**>plz ignore t he previous msge

**>some body robbed my 'adopted water bottle' which was lying as an orphan in rajani's seat. if anyone finds it plz give me a call or send me a msge

again no positive response.................
I am still thinking of a way to find out where my 'bottle which is not mine' is.