Major Gulati's train journey - an anecdote

[Bobby Shivyana]

Moderator's note: 

Our friend, Major Gulati, Chairman, PRCI, Hyderabad Chapter has sent in his anecdote based on his experience during his recent trip to Tirupati. Here, he explains his travel travails by train. He titled it 'Propriety vs Impropriety. He posted this anecdote into the group twice, but some how it missed the moderation queue, just as those two claimants of his berths annoyed him. Hence, I posted it. Please read and comment. Many of our members might have penned this kind of experiences. They can share them in this group.

[I too have one, written long ago titled 'the art of not speaking']

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Dear all,

Propriety Vs Impropriety

The succeeding lines are a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of people gifted with the ostensible, uncanny art of propriety display with certitude, making even the wisest feel ignoramus at times.

This happened in a train while we were traveling from Hyderabad to Tirupati along with our Co-brother’s family, during May 2010 on our yearly holy sojourn. It was one of the very few occasions when we had planned the holy trip much in advance, including train reservation, to avoid the usual discomfiture. Since we were all quite used to last minute arrivals, inordinate delays, boarding running trains, missing flights, missing complimentary hotel breakfasts, this well planned journey seemed a little out of place. It actually turned out to be one. This is how.

After a bit of the usual altercation with the coolie, when we were trying to get into our AC 2 Tier compartment No.2A, the onslaught of the detraining passengers threw us out twice, before the much stronger onslaught of the boarding passengers put us inside safely without the slightest effort of our own. Once inside the compartment we were tossed around by the two way traffic, like a soft ball from one end to the other. To add to our woes, the belligerent coolie with whom we had an altercation over his labor charges a few minutes earlier, intentionally put us on the opposite side of the compartment to avenge the ignominy of being under paid.

The struggle to reach our side of the compartment was woefully Herculean, but the belief that ‘all is well, that ends well’, kept us going undeterred. Tattered and battered when we reached our berths, a middle aged man occupying one of our berths greeted us with a notorious grin. I too slammed a grin on him but a return of much terser grin by the occupant put my modest grin to shame. However my co-brother, who is made of much tougher stuff than I am, silenced the barbarian by muttering a few invectives from above my shoulder.

After exchanging the pleasantries we got down to the business of debating ‘which berth belongs to whom’. When we flashed our miniscule confirmed rail tickets with certitude to stake our claim for the berths that the man and his family members were royally occupying, the man tossed a much bigger paper that had the names of all the passengers, obviously less any of ours. Until now we believed that ‘small was beautiful’ but now realized that ‘big was authoritative’ and thus nearly conceded that they were the rightful owners of the berths. It is only when the man proclaimed with a loud chuckle that their RAC tickets were confirmed a little while ago, put us in a bit of quandary. We wondered how could his RAC tickets get precedence over our tickets confirmed one month in advance, but the ominous authority with which the man was flashing the paper, subdued our ebullience and made us feel silly.

While we were flabbergasted and to overcome the consternation were muttering between ourselves, another man walked into our compartment holding a similar confirmed ticket as ours. He was also treated as contemptuously by the older occupant, as us. The loud chuckle with a louder sardonic proclamation ‘Here’s another one’, sapped the last traces of our drought hit confidence. The new entrant was obviously taken off his feet and looked at us poignantly with lots of hope. With not even the slightest gesture of reassurance from our side, the new entrant was left dejected, that was clearly palpable.

While the commotion on our side of the compartment was in a state of frenzy, a young man of around 25 years, from the adjacent compartment, sensing brouhaha slipped from his berth to seek the help of the ticket collector. He came back after a while with a piece of paper and slammed it on our man who had sought centre stage until now. While scanning the papers thoroughly, the change of expression on the face of the petulant man from being an exalted Emperor who had fallen from grace, to a tormented king, was visibly perceptible. By now the reality had dawned on the tormented king that he mistook the ‘third’ sheet of paper as compartment No.‘2A’. He realized that his fortress was fallen and of course we had the last laugh when he packed his luggage and left the compartment without saying a word.

 

Major Rakesh Gulati (Retd.)
Director, Centum Advtg and Marketing Pvt. Ltd.

[Narasimha Reddi]

dear mr. babji garu
the train journey anecdote of mr gulati is anice piece of literature with a sense of humour.let us encourage professional  anecdotes as mni case studies.
withkind regards
public relationsly yours

Dr C V Narasimha Reddi
Editor, Public Relations Voice
Mobile: 9246548901

 

---

Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2010 11:14:12 +0530
Subject: [ gfpr ] Major Gulati's train journey - an anecdote
From: bobby.s...@gmail.com
To: gf...@googlegroups.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "[ GFPR ]" group.
To post to this group, send email to gf...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to gfpr+uns...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gfpr?hl=en.

---

Chin music and high voltage T20 action on MSN Sports Sign up now.

[centum advertising]

Thanks a lot Mr. Babji. I have started to receive our friends' comments. It is very encouraging.

 

Rakesh Gulati

 

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "[ GFPR ]" group.
To post to this group, send email to gf...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to gfpr+uns...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gfpr?hl=en.

--
Centum Advertising & Marketing Pvt. Ltd.
G-7, Kochar Apartments, Begumpet,
Hyderabad-16.
Phone:91+040+27760285 / 27762579.
Fax: 91+040+27769173
e-Mail: cen...@rediffmail.com    teamc...@yahoo.com
cent...@gmail.com

[centum advertising]

Thank you Dr CVNR Garu. A word of appreciation from you and Mr. Babji means a lot to me. I have a couple of more anecdotes that i shall post shortly. Being communicators i think we need to nurture this art of communcation as much as possible. Even if we end up making mistakes we should not hesitate to pen down our experiences to share amongst all. Your idea of encouraging such literature is therefore apt and also the need of the hour.  

 

cheers

 

Rakesh Gulati

 

[T.N.Ashok]

major gulati ji's train anectode is absolutely hilarious while packing the punches with the rythmic cadence of words that he has no nicely mastered. he has captured the atmosphere so beautifully, and his piece about getting every thing right and not missing flights etc is the piece-de-resistance.

 

yes, train journeys are still an ordeal in india, so have air journeys become with low cost carriers and airports infratructure not able to cope with them. on air also we get the same class of passengers as on trains these days, and some airports look like railway platforms.

 

Once i travelled with a passenger who was travelling for the first time on air and when he proclaimed that he was out on bail for murdering a man in a drunken brawl in a haryana pub, i fell off my chair and asked the air hostess to change my seat.  

 

hopefully T-3 in delhi will change all that. but i still love train journeys , you can soak the country side, you can read books, listen to music and the trains doesnt land just when you are about to listen to your favourite song. you get to meet so many interesting people. 

the train friends are from every strata of society and there is a certain sense of warmth in them.

 

cheers.

ashok

 

 

 

it

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "[ GFPR ]" group.
To post to this group, send email to gf...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to gfpr+uns...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gfpr?hl=en.

--
TN Ashok                
Consulting Editor,      
Rice India,
Media Advisor,
All India Rice Exporters Association (AIREA)
81/2, Adchini, Sri Aurobindo Marg,
New Delhi 110 017, I N D I A.
Mobile - +91 98101 88700
Office - +91 11 4107 1555 /4107 2555/ 4107 0555Fx
Emails - asho...@gmail.com, / ai...@airtelmail.in

[centum advertising]

dear mr ashok, to receive so good compliments from a person who has
mastered the art of communication is so satiating. Trust me there is
no better recognition than this. I read every piece of your
communiction and am thoroughly impressed every bit. I fully agree with
u that despite all the travails we look forward to travel by train
these days. Cheers. Rakesh gulati

>> *Propriety Vs Impropriety*

>> gfpr+uns...@googlegroups.com <gfpr%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.

>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/gfpr?hl=en.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> TN Ashok
> Consulting Editor,
> Rice India,
> Media Advisor,
> All India Rice Exporters Association (AIREA)
> 81/2, Adchini, Sri Aurobindo Marg,
> New Delhi 110 017, I N D I A.
> Mobile - +91 98101 88700
> Office - +91 11 4107 1555 /4107 2555/ 4107 0555Fx
> Emails - asho...@gmail.com, / ai...@airtelmail.in
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "[
> GFPR ]" group.
> To post to this group, send email to gf...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> gfpr+uns...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/gfpr?hl=en.
>
>

--