A train journey from Bangalore to Delhi by Rajdhani takes close to 32-34 hrs with an entire one day thrown in. Naturally it becomes boring, sometimes especially if you are traveling alone, so the only place you seek refuge in is either books or some music.
Well this time around in search of company, I happened to go the Pantry car to grab an extra cup of tea and there I sat down to chat with the TCs (Ticket Checkers as they are popularly known). Chatting with three of these TCs for around an hour gave me a good insight into the behavior and way of living of people who travel across different classes in the Indian railways, this was from the perspective of those TCs but nevertheless a very good one, something which took my thoughts back to the STP lessons in my MBA Marketing classes.
A typical Indian railways train is a long serpent making its way through the various terrains of our country, the wagons or bogies as they are more typically known number close to 20, add and subtract a few numbers on either side depending on the booking schedule and festive seasons. The segmentation is done on the basis of various categories of classes it has and they are five in number:
- General category
- Sleeper
- 3rd AC
- 2nd AC
- 1st AC
Till here you all too know the same facts, now for some change from the eyes of TCs.
General Category: Utter chaos, everyone talking to everyone else present, total mayhem in place.. Try hard to decipher the common thread of conversation and you wouldn’t find any. Privacy, space for the other person all are alien words here. Travel in this class if you want to get a first hand experience of how to travel with the masses(I believe the campus recruits at HLL each year have to travel in this section too as a part of their initial trainings, they do travel with truck drivers in their zones that’s for certain) You want find unruly young guys here because they don’t have any space to show their antics.
Sleeper: Some order here, people would still be talking around to everyone present but the action would now be restricted to the same coupe, eight people or less engaged in conversation at the same time. There is some common thread, with the vagaries of nature pouring in too to add more action. Here you would find young guys eager for some action, they include the unreserved category people trying to find an inch of space here and there adding to the chaos. Two or three Antakshari sessions in progress in the same bogie is not something unusual.
3rd AC: Ah, the cooling effect is in now.. The vagaries of nature are no longer there as you are shielded by tinted windows on both ends. Conversation between fellow passengers becomes less frequent here as people talk in toned down voices, action is very much restricted to the same coupe and as compared to earlier where one or two were outside the conversation, here at a time only 2-3 people would be engaged in at the same time. One more interesting parameter comes into play here, in the earlier two classes you would find large gatherings of people playing Antakshari or discussing loudly over certain topics , in short enjoying life as it is. That phenomenon is absent here because people pay that lot extra money to get some solace, silence and privacy. Loud talking or chaos here results in TC coming in and reining you in.
2nd AC: The last but one runk of the ladder. Privacy is re-inforced this time by the presence of curtains. On one side you have four people behind the curtain and on other side two people. This class is popular with newly married couples as they find the side which has two seats to be very romantic and private too. Here people hardly talk to each other, nevertheless you would still find some exceptions here and there. An interesting feature of this class is that the TCs have to take extra care here of the passengers and their whims… why? Its because during night time the passengers draw in the curtains and sleep, now if any passerby accidentally hits someone sleeping with his hand or elbow, people raise a din over here because they want that the curtains provide total disturbance free zone, this is not the problem in other classes as none of them have curtains and in the first ac its closed compartments as a whole.
1st AC: Isolated islands in the wagon. Four people each in each isolated island. If people inside the coupe know each other then they talk else there is no point of talking. Each person is lost in his/her thoughts and wants total mental solitude as well. Loud talking, group talking etc etc is out of the question here. Welcome to the elite class.
