Dummies guide to IRCTC

It is never easy to get a railway ticket in India. Remember those days when you had to wake up early, hurriedly brush your teeth and be at the Railway station before 8 am, only to find a long single queue split into four and converging at a tiny window . You endure sweaty people cramming for space,people who borrow your pen and sneak it away conveniently(Even if you gave them the pen without the lid),people who create a brawl claiming they were there in the queue and went away for a pissbreak.You endure all the arguments,make small talk on how bad Indian Railway service is and listen to people suggesting how Sachin should have played the previous night.And finally the moment arrives, you reach the tiny counter to find a worked up,depressed lady clad in dull coloured saree, who looked like she had never smiled since she joined duty. The tiny windows counter is only enough for 3 fingers, and you croon your neck to make sure you are able to speak to the lady whilst you endure loathesome strangers giving you shoulder push from the sides. After all that, you come out and find out that your ticket is in waiting list 220.

Now you can forget all that. Because here comes,wait...hold your breath....IRCTC. So for beginners ,here is the dummies guide to IRCTC.

What is IRCTC?

IRCTC offers a genuine Indian ticket booking experience. There is waiting, there is more waiting, then there is frustration,there is scratching yourself,there is hope and then there is dismay at the end when you find that you are not able to book tickets. Altogether a great emulation of real life ticket booking scenario.

Great. Lets get started!

Ok, Here are the starting steps

1. Open your browser and type irctc in the address bar.

2. If you do not know what a browser means , open another browser and google "What is a browser?". Do not get distracted when google gives you intriguing suggestions like"What is a blouse?". You may end up having a delightful time,in turn forgetting your ticket conquest you set out for

Anyway, the site responds with utmost speed and pukes this.

Nothing to feel disheartened about. Press Refresh from your browser. Now you will get this .

This is as per design and intention. Now keep doing this and after some 2 x 10^20 attempts,during which you might develop arthritis and or become a leper, the page finally loads.

It takes a humongous amount of time for the page to load. What should I do in the meantime?
Ok, Here are some of the things you could do while you are waiting for IRCTC to load.

• Look out for traces of beer in Mars and make sure human life is possible there.


• Listen to Atal Bihari Vajpayee speak.


• Contemplate doing a pHD.


• Repeat Gayathri mantra 10000008 times even though it may not be avani avittam.


• Sue IRCTC in Indian High court and wait for the verdict.


• Watch Jodha Akbar twice.


• Write Sri Rama Jayam on paper. When the website is loaded, you have enough pages written to reply to a show cause notice.



• Take up sanyaas and sit under a a coconut tree for enlightenment. Atleast you may end up rediscovering gravity if a coconut falls on your head.


• Or you could disconnect and get a life and a girlfriend.

The page has loaded now.Finally!
Great! you are getting lucky today. Now you will see something like this.

And another set of options like this.

*Note Clicking on the "Get Laid at Egmore" popup shows this

This lady has single handedly installed malware in several male PCs. By the way, if you thought you could find Jennifer Aniston at Egmore , well, you deserve the virus.

How do I book the tickets?
Ah, yes. Click on 'Plan my travel' now. Until the page loads, go empty your bowels and come back. Now that your intestine is unloaded and the page is loaded, you will find this on the screen.

Here select the source and destination of travel, your gothra, ,ticket type and class.

If you are a mallu, please note that Gelf is not in India and IRCTC does not provide train services there. Also note, if you choose Thackerey express to reach Mumbai, both from and to have to be 'Mumbai'. Thackerey express safeguards Marathi culture and prevents outsiders into Mumbai. The train nimbly takes a U turn from platform 1 of Mumbai CST and reaches platform 6 in 5 minutes. The train timings can be found on Samna .

Whats next?

Select your passengers list now. You can enter only six people in the list .So in case you have a large joint family, daughter in laws are requested to create a rift amongst family members and seperate and then proceed to book tickets. Consult Ekta Kapoor for suggestions.

Note :

Filling up the passengers list as

"Name: Dhanno 22 litres, age 13, sex female " and bringing a cow onto the compartment is strictly prohibited(unless you are one amongst Laloo's nine children or Laloo himself.)

Regarding the choice of berth IRCTC takes care that tall people get Side upper berth, senior citizens get upper berth and infants get rooftop berth. Then,the TTR does a massive swap operation which is as difficult to understand as a Thermodynamics IIT problem.

Right,How do I pay the money and finish it off?
Now that you have got everything right , click on Go and then Make Payment.

You have multitudes of payment options like net banking, phone banking,iPod banking, debit card,credit card, ,sodexho coupons etc. The option "Pluck and debit from my garland" can only be availed by Mayawati.

Now select your bank ,click confirm Payment and select finish. You will see this on your screen.

Make sure you don't press anything or touch anywhere . IRCTC now takes you to a page with sumptuous information and this page stands out as the epitome of end user friendliness.

Confused?? Obviously yes, you do not know what happened to your transaction from the blank page. IRCTC has been diligently designed as a foolproof system,by a team comprising of experienced fools, where the status of the transaction is not visible to the naked eye. There are cryptic codes in the document which are invisible . We consulted noted cryptologist Van Drown who said this on seeing the page

"I have seen this page and have conducted quite a lot of insightful research on it. This page seems to have hidden dots which connect the text "Mama Biscothu" and "govinda govinda". I believe this is a startling revelation and will lead to new discoveries of certain hindu gods being gay. More on that in my next book "Dalda Vinci told".

-Van Drown.

What can I do next?

You could take the author's lead and do this.

Now you are good to go and face the ruthless portal.

*THE END*

P.S:

This post is intended as a mild satire and does not intend to malign IRCTC. As a reader pointed out, IRCTC is the best thing that Indian Railways has done and does work smoothly except at non peak times.