Indian Railways – One hell of a ride! : Blog #261

Indian Railways – One hell of a ride!

India has the world’s third largest rail network in the world. To know how great this organization is, you also need to know that we are the second most populated country in the world. A whopping 1.25 Billion Indians use this network to commute.

Now usually, large transport networks around the world make a booklet available to help passengers. We do not under estimate our passengers that way. We know they will learn things on the fly. Come on! what is life without some adventure and adrenalin rush? There are a lot of things you need to know if you were to use this mammoth of a service. There are some hidden tacit knowledge which Google might not be able to tell you. There might be some interesting questions that come to your mind like “Who is that guy in black blazer in the train and which disco is he going to? Is he Barney?” This blog is an attempt to answer such questions.

How do I get started on a train journey? – Well if you are among those who believe in travelling with dignity, you will need to have a ticket. You may book it either through a railway station or through the website – www.irctc.co.in .Now, if you are trying to book it through website, get some Chinese bamboos, a laughing Buddha, arrange your table as per feng shui - all that will bring luck to you because you need a hell lot of luck to book a ticket through this website. Am I being too harsh on them? Yes! Ok then, it works wonderfully well during normal hours. The problem occurs when you want to book a ticket on short notice. But isn’t most of our travel on short notice? So I am not being too harsh on them, am I?

How to book tickets on short notice? – Through an option called ‘Tatkal’ for booking tickets a day before your travel. So if you are travelling tomorrow, you can book a ticket today under ‘Tatkal’ option for a higher price. Timeslots are allotted on the website to book Tatkal tickets depending on the class of travel you choose. For AC (Air Conditioned) classes, booking is from 10:00 – 11:00 AM and for Non – AC classes, it is from 11:00 AM.

There are classes of travel? – Yes, in AC compartments, there are three types – 1^st AC, 2^nd AC and 3^rd AC. They are also known as 1 tier, 2 tier and 3 tier AC compartments. The tier is indicative of how many berths are present in a coupe. If there are 3 berths on one side of a coupe, it is a 3 tier compartment. If there are 2 berths, it is a 2 tier compartment. You get the drift, right?

Now coming to the Non AC compartments. This is interesting. Take a notepad and pay close attention. There is a first class,sleeper class, a sitting class and a general class. A first class is one where you have the privacy of a closed room and it is luxurious .A sleeper class will have berths on which you can lie down. This is essentially a 3^rd AC compartment with the AC taken away and the glass windows replaced by iron grills.

The sitting class as the name implies is to sit and travel. You won’t be able to lie down. This has 2 variations – CC and 2 S which stands for Chair Car and Second sitting respectively. Chair car will have AC and 2S will not have AC.

The general class is one when you travel without reservation. If you are one of those who love to travel on an impulse, this is the class for you. You take a ticket from the counter at the railway station, hop on and travel. Statutory warning – This class will be extremely crowded and travel will not be a very pleasant experience.

How do I spot my train at the station? - Each train has a 5 digit number and a name to it.

Names will be mostly with the cities between which the train commutes like the one is picture here is Chennai Express. The name will be written on a board on the first and last compartment of the train. If you are lucky, there will be an electronic display of name on all compartments. At the station, it will be mentioned as to on which platform does each train arrive. You need to look for 'coach position' chart which indicates where exactly on the platform does each compartment arrive. Many a time, this chart will be missing at the station. How do you figure then? Ask the shopkeepers on the platform. They will be more than happy to tell you.

Ok I have found my train. Now, how do I know which is my seat? – There is a train attendant for each compartment who will guide you to your seats. Yeah right! Are you kidding me? It is a complex set of codes which one needs to decrypt to understand where your seat is located among the 1000+ seats in a train. All we will tell you is S11, SU 64. Now you know why all the Indian kids are great at coding & decoding? ;). The meaning of this alpha numeric string is as below:

S11 -  Sleeper coach number 11. If is it B2, it means Third AC coach number 2. If it is A1, it means second AC coach number 1. If it is CC4, it means Chair car coach number 4. If it is D5, it means second sitting coach number 5. FC stands for First class.

SU is Side Upper. It has other variations – SL is Side Lower, LB is Lower Berth, MB is Middle Berth and UB is Upper Berth.

64 is your seat number. If you are 6 feet and above in height, pray and hope that your seat number is not a multiple of 8. If it is a multiple of 8, it would mean that your seat is side upper which is shorter than other berths and you will find it difficult to sleep.

Why do other people come and claim my seat? - There is a PNR number which you can use to check the status of your ticket. The status of your ticket will be any of these three – CNF (Confirmed ticket), RAC (Reservation against cancellation) and WL (Waiting List).  

If it is CNF, rejoice and revel; you can travel with a berth/seat allotted to you. If it is RAC, you are sharing a berth with a fellow passenger. This is when another person comes and claims that it is their seat. Calmly and patiently, tell him/her that it is RAC. If there are any other seats vacant, then the TTR will come and allot the free seat to either one of you and the berth becomes yours. If there are no free berths available, you will need to sit and travel.

Who is that guy in the black blazer? – Good question. He/She is the Ticket Examiner(TTR). If you see a person in a dashing black suit and a crisp white shirt, don’t ask him which disco he is going to. Because, he is not! He is just doing his job of the ticket examiner and that is his uniform.

How will you know that you have reached the station that you want to get down? – Other rail networks around the world might be resorting to usual methods like announcements or electronic displays. But not Indian Railways! We do things in Swag! What the passenger needs to do is to ask people sitting next to you, pray and hope that they were keeping a watchful eye on the stations passing by. If this doesn’t work, look outside. There will be one yellow board somewhere with the station’s name on it, like the one here. So if it is night time, how do you know which station it is? Follow the same process except asking the person sleeping in the next berth.

            Is this blog an exhaustive description of the wonder that is Indian Railways? Absolutely not! These are some of the many queries that occur to a first time traveler. Inspite of all its foibles, Indian Railways have kept our vast country connected and on the move and continues to do so. We are mighty proud of our railways!

Other useful railway sites :

A one stop shop - http://www.indianrail.gov.in/

Site for passenger trains' information - http://erail.in/

1942, A Love Story : Blog # 260

1942 , A Love Story

Having got some quiet time amidst my travel, I was listening to this Hindi song, ‘Ek ladki ko dekha to…’.It is composed by R.D.Burman for the film, 1942 a love story. The Lyrics are by Javed Akhtar and the voice is lent by Kumar Sanu.Adding to the beauty of the song is the effervescent presence of Manisha Koirala & Anil Kapoor.  

Being someone who is striving to become a writer, what amazed me is the depth of Javed Akhtar’s vocabulary. I must say it a vast ocean of priceless pearls. I mean how on earth can a person describe a girl so beautifully!!! The similies used here are hold your breath, 24 in number. And the beauty of it is that it is written in the simplest of words.

Javed Akhtar goes on to write that he saw a girl who is like

A blossoming rose,

A poet’s dream,

A rising sun’s ray,

A doe in a forest,

A moonlit night,

A sweet conversation and

A divine lamp……

 If you thought that is it; it is just the first stanza.

The song goes on to compare the girl to a wonderful morning, a winter's sunlight , playful waves, the musical pleasantness of Veena, a dash of all colors come together and  to the fragrance that a cool breeze brings along.

We are not done yet! The final stanza of the song talks about the girl who is like a beautiful dancing peacock, a thread of silk, a fairy’s song, a sandalwood flame, an ornate beauty, an unblemished mist and a slow and gradual engulfment of intoxication!!!

Javed Akhtar went on to create many more master pieces. But none else has managed to create as much wonder and admiration in me about the creative magnificence of this artist than this particular song.

Many a time, we set boundaries for what we think we can achieve. All one needs to look at is brilliant creations like these to know of the boundless power of our blessed minds. All we need to do is to set the imagination free,

Like a drifting cloud,

Like a gliding feather,

Like a rising fume,

Like a hovering eagle,

                      Like a twisting whirlwind,

                        Like a mid-summer rain,

                                    Like a child’s prayer,

                                                Like a mother’s love,

                                                            Like a lover’s gaze…

Arun Babu

Alumni Meet? Go! : Blog # 259

Alumni Meet? Go!

I read somewhere that every generation thinks they are smarter than the previous one. And the very same generation thinks they are wiser than the next one. There are very few places where this plays out with utmost affection than at an alumni meet without losing even as much as an ounce of fondness for each other.

Those of you who would have revisited your childhood home at a time when your bygone childhood feels too distant, would know how exactly going back to one's alma mater feels like. There is an abundance of fondness and gratitude towards that place for the sweetest of memories that it has gifted you. There is a sense of familiarity with the people and the environment around which makes one wonder how oneself has changed in many ways and how we all are still the same in as many ways.

An alumni meet somehow plays out to be a windshield and a rear view mirror all at once. Seniors from earlier batches with the wisdom that life has given them shows us what lies ahead. Their success inspires us to aspire beyond boundaries set by one’s own juvenile mind and their failures reassure it is OK to try and fail .It tells us that the beauty of life is in its resilience. The juniors remind one so much of one's recent past. At times, it reminds one how exactly similar oneself was or rarely, how completely different the current set of people are.

The ones who are luckiest are the present batch. They are blissfully clueless about being in the best time of their life. And rightfully so. Else nostalgia will lose all its romantic aura, isn't it? Their big worries which you have been through and have realized over time, aren't really big enough to fret about. How the mysterious ways of life don't let them see how little the worries in fact are; may be so that they can laugh about those little worries later on.

The most surprising will be one’s own batch mates. Many make you wonder how some people doesn't change at all and you are glad that they didn't and then there are others who makes you think that even change doesn't affect them ;).Then there are others who evolve beautifully which reminds you of that saying by Buckminster Fuller, " There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it is going to be a butterfly".

The dear professors, whom you look up to and with affection that grows with time, just the way it is with parents. One realizes how kind they were to put up with one’s childishness. How they also played along, not because they didn't know any better but just to humor and indulge our young minds dying to be seen, heard and touched.

If you are lucky, the college won't have changed much after you left. There will still be corners where you can see an earlier self of you walking from. There will still be a courtyard that used to resonate with your laughter. There will still be a canteen and a lawn where you had the best of times with your friends .The class rooms which made you think, act, laugh, learn, sleep (at times ;)) and grow. The sights that we have seen, the sounds we have heard, the people we have met, the memories we have made are what makes the place so special. To know that there are more such people who share these experiences with you across very many years makes them all the more special.

One can't stop wondering how humbling and cathartic an experience it is to just be in a place which has helped you grow and evolve. How beautiful and selfless the relations formed there are. How the jokes which had us in splits continues to be so across years. How certain things always remain the same and how certain others always undergo change. How some of the juniors have grown and how your seniors say you have too.

All that it leaves you with is the people whom you met, the stories that they told, the laughs you shared and the longing to get back to the reassuring familiarity with eternal fondness.

More blogs on Amrita School of Business, My Alma Mater ~ The Gate pass ~ For those in the know ;) ~ http://praisesnbrickbats.blogspot.in/2012/04/pink-slip.html 

Arun Babu

Stand-up Comedians of India : Blog # 258

Stand-up Comedians of India

          For the uninitiated, stand-up comedy is that art form where a person converses with the audience. As the name suggests, it is largely to evoke a laughter, and spread some humor among the audience. I am not going in to the definition of the art form for Google is still alive.

          What I would want to tell you though is about some young Indian artists who are taking the stand up comedy scene by storm. They are abundantly talented, well read, well-traveled and young enough to be open to new ideas and thoughts. Most of them make us laugh, some of them make us think and a fewer still make us act and speak up too. Now why should you listen to them? To begin with, just to LOL – to Laugh Out Loud J. If you are not a fan of reading newspapers, watching their shows can be a way of being in touch with the happenings around you. The plurality of their thinking minds will enrich your perspectives. If you are interested in public speaking, I can’t think of a more fun way than this to learn some tricks of the trade to get your audiences’ attention.

Kanan Gill & Biswa Kalyan : If you love Bollywood movies, you must watch ‘Pretentious movie reviews’ by these two. This very unconventional, refreshingly new movie reviews will leave you in splits. Their individual stand up acts are largely a fun take on the Indian society and people around us.

Kenny Sebastian : This Kerala born, brought up all over India , Army kid uses voice modulation to his advantage. His at times - self depreciating – straight from the heart – comedy has won him many fans. The fact that he can sing and play a guitar does give him an extra edge during his performances.

Daniel Fernandes : If you are among those who gets a kick from intellectual jokes, you must watch this guy. It is not that his shows aren’t light hearted. They are. But many a time, they will have a small message en wrapped in it, of course without being preachy.

All India Bakchod : This is the Yash Chopra ensemble of stand-up comedies. A group of artists namely Gursimran Khamba, Tanmay Bhat, Rohan Joshi and Ashish Shakya make up this group. Their AIB Roast had become quite famous or notorious depending on which side of the getting-offended-fast scale you are on. Their take on current affairs is richly creative and widely different from what we are used to seeing. They also have a TV show titled ‘On Air with AIB’

Aditi Mittal : Now she belongs to a very exclusive club – of  female stand-up comedians in India. Along with being a successful stand-up comedian in her own right, she also lends the much needed female voice and thought on stage like the feminine gaze we talk about in movies.

Virdas : This hugely popular stand-up comedian can be considered a pioneer in stand-up comedy who became popular among the youth in India. He is an actor too. His take on current affairs is astute, brave and irreverent.

         

          In this time and age of social media, many of us are forgetting to indulge in conversations or at least have a long enough talk. Watch these folks and you might end up getting some talking points that will help you look intelligent – not essentially intelligent though ;)

Infosys breaks walls ~ of Brick & Fire! : Blog # 257

Infosys breaks walls ~ of Brick & Fire!

I work at Infosys. I went to office today. I logged in to Facebook. Enough said! I can end this blog here and you will get the message. But then, this being a blog, let me be more generous with my words.

Infosys is emerging as the quintessential ~to borrow the expression from a Gen Z youngster ~ ‘cool’ company these days. First it was the tie that went out of the window. The dress code was decrypted and employees can wear anything they deem smart, these days. This includes a round neck t-shirt and a jeans and NOT the business casuals (All those firms who advocate business casuals, that’s like Henry Ford providing choice of any color of car so long as it is black!).

Then came the announcement that employees at all positions can avail work from home. Yes, you read that right and that too, a very generous 9 days a month! For a company of this size and scale as regards number of employees, that is a policy move the size of a mammoth.

Now the mother of all announcements! Employees can access various social media channels on the company’s network. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and many more. You might be thinking “Oh they could have given YouTube too!” Well, that wish is also granted. You know what, let’s make this deal a sweet heart one. So let’s add blogs, Tumblr and the other blogging sites too. Did I mention personal emails? Oh Sorry! my fault, they are there in the accessible list too.

Now you might wonder when you have a smart phone, does the social media access really matter? May be not for you. But for the youngsters, mobile data is a precious commodity. But at the heart of it, it is not about even that. For them, it is about breaking away, from norms, from conventions and from boring familiarity. And what’s in it for the once young crowd? This is your best chance to reach out to the Gen Z. Poke, Like, Comment, Share, Post, Ping and reach out! Two walls are being broken here – the obvious fire walls and the one between a generation from brick & mortar and the one from now.

 If you look at the larger picture, It is about autonomy! It is about liberating the employees from the dungeons of firewalls. It is about trusting the employees with an absence of confinement. I think it is self-fulfilling prophecy at its best. You liberate your employees and they will live up to the freedom that they are gifted with.

For those of you who wonder if these changes are too simplistic, Let me borrow a quote from Clare Boothe Luce ~ “Simplicity is the ultimate Sophistication”.

p.s ~ Has a new meaning at Infy. Post Sikka :) or is it Post Serendipity?

Follow Infosys on Social Media to stay updated:

Infosys Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Infosys/ 

Infosys Twitter handle: https://twitter.com/infosyscareers 

Infosys Instagram handle: https://www.instagram.com/infosyscareers/ 

Infosys Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Infosys 

Infosys LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/1283/ 

I f I could…Letter from a Soldier : Blog # 256

I f I could…Letter from a Soldier

            I am not one of those who always wanted to join the forces. I had my own reservations. I knew that my mind did not have the discipline to blindly follow orders of another person. My thoughts were always that of one who wondered. More often than not, my mind had a ‘why’ or a ‘what if’ that remained unanswered when I thought it had come to a stillness.

Then I realized it is the brightest of minds that join armed forces. Is it that all of them were blindly following propaganda? That couldn’t be. They were all thinking minds. Somewhere ,our life itself is living through propaganda, isn’t it? ; a culmination of what our family, society and immediate surroundings tell us or make us go through in our early lives. We mistake the outcomes of those situations for our ‘individuality’ or even ‘conscious choices’.

            Initially, I found it a bit difficult to cope with the discipline that academy enforced. Later on, I realized that it is not the body that is being taught. It was the mind that was being reigned in! Senior officers told us that if we could make our mind listen to us, then nothing will remain unattainable. I remember one of the officers telling me that one will reach a stage where the mind and the person become so much in harmony that it will cease resisting us. When one of us asked as to when that time will come, he smiled and said, “The day when you realize the reason why you chose this path”.

            It was a day like any other. The ordinariness about it belied the impending eventuality. Bidding goodbye to my wife and little girl, I set out to the air force camp. And then came the message, “We are being attacked”. I fought along with my team. And then, everything came to a standstill. I was shot at.

            Am I proud of having undertaken the supreme sacrifice for my nation? I do not know. I was just doing my duty. Is there regret? Yes, not about the path that I chose. I do not doubt that one bit.

But I regret not having spent enough time with family. I wanted to tell my little girl the stories which I listened to while growing up. I have oft imagined what it would be like to tell her the experiences that I have been through once she grows up. I was waiting to get home to tell my wife what I went through today. She usually makes fun of me for telling such experiences. But I know she is secretly proud when she hears me out. I wish if I got a chance to tell her that I will be gone and that she should take care of herself. I wanted to call my parents in the morning and tell them that I will be visiting them soon. I wanted them to know that they are as much in my thoughts as I am in theirs.

I regret not having lived through my life.  I wish if I could meet more people, if I could read more, if I could travel more, if I could learn more, if I could grow more, If I could love more and be loved more, if I could  grow old, if life had been a bit more patient with me, if I could just be…

~A Soldier