I went to Bangalore City Railway Station today, hoping to get a last-minute train ticket to the coast. I’m on a business visa, and while there’s an allotment of tickets to foreign tourists, and while I’m certainly foreign enough, a tourist is by definition someone with a tourist visa. They wouldn’t book a ticket for me, so one of my colleagues and I took an auto-rickshaw over there in the afternoon so I could plead my case at the window in person.
There’s a wicket at the station for “Senior Citizens, Disabled, and Foreign Tourists”, so we stood there. While we waited, the clerk (processing some complex ticket refund transaction) told us to go to the “Block booking” window, where we were second in line. Turned out we were behind a couple of older fellows buying about 100 tickets for a group, and the clerk was typing each person’s particulars into the computer from a sheet. Slowly. Since we were there for a while, sweating in the 35 C heat of the station, one of the gents turned to me and said “You know this is for bulk tickets.” “And I’m not very bulky?” I replied. That got a good laugh. After a while, we found out that we really should have been back at the other window after all.
By now there was quite a mob of Seniors, Disabled, and Tourists waiting. I managed to get behind an Aussie who was obviously travelling on the cheap, because he was trying to get a ticket he’d bought from a travel agent in Goa changed to another ticket, and get the original one refunded. (Based on what I saw today, the clerks spend more time refunding tickets than selling them.) The negotiations were intense, but at the end, he was stuck buying another ticket. The rules are the rules. That’s a bad sign, I thought to myself, because I was next, with another unusual, regulation-defying request. Another official seemed almost willing to do it, but then thought better of it. “NRI?” he asked from out of view. The clerk looked at me again, then said “Um, no.” What I could do is get a ticket to the coast, then once I got there, apply for another ticket back to Bangalore. And what were the chances of that happening, we asked. “Good”. That didn’t inspire a lot of confidence, so I declined that option.
While it wasn’t the most efficient operation, it was certainly a memorable way to spend a couple of hours. Later, back at the office, the company’s travel agent found another option that ought to work instead.