buying things

Shopping in India is amazing. Apart from Thums Up, admission to several historic Delhi sites, Time Out Delhi magazine and a copy of the Love Delhi guide, I hadn’t bought much of anything until today. The hardest part about shopping in India is that there is just so much incredible stuff. Here’s what I managed to acquire today:

- 2 kurtas
- 2 dupattas
- Fabric for 2 salwaar kameez (currently with the tailor getting stitched)
- 10 packs of hand-printed notecards
- 4 packs of little wee hand-printed gift tags
- 3 jars of Kashmir honey
- 1 copy of the Love Delhi guide (present for Thaba)
- Delhi – Jaipur return rail tickets

I share this list as a point of reference: it took longer to get the two train tickets than it did to get all of the other things combined. It took an hour. Maybe longer. Why does it take so long to buy train tickets in India? As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the great mysteries of our time. Tata Motors can create a car that’s going to sell for about $2,000 Cdn, but you can’ t just walk in to the station and buy tickets without investing an hour of your life.

First, you need to get a slip of paper and write down which train you want to take, the specific day, your name, circle your sex and list your age. Why does the Indian National Railway need to know how old I am? I suspect that somewhere there is a team of civil servants gathering important statistical data from these forms. Average age of the person traveling to Jaipur, average age of the person who takes the overnight train from Hyderabad to Chennai during the rainy season, seat preferences for ladies traveling alone, etc. Either that, or these forms are gathered, shipped someplace (Nagpur?) and never looked at again, though filed for years to come just in case someone might decide to mine them for important data.

Once you have this form, if you don’t know which train you need, the next step is to stand in line at the Enquiry wicket. There, a person will tell you when the trains run and if you can get a seat on the train you want. Right. This is good. Now, if you’re thinking that you could just buy your ticket right there, well, you’ve obviously never purchased a train ticket in India.

So what happens next? You must go to another wicket. Of course. Then you will stand in line for an ungodly amount of time. No less than 20 minutes, no maximum time. For me it was about an hour. Other people seemed to be getting tickets, things seemed to be happening in front of me but for about half an hour, the line didn’t seem to move at all. Eventually, an hour later, I made it to the ticket agent. Amazingly, I was able to get the tickets quite easily at that point. Thankfully, I’ll soon be on my way to Jaipur. The funny thing is that it wouldn’t have surprised me if I’d been told to go to another wicket. I’ve had this happen before.

One more interesting thing about the wickets. They have special ones. I was in the queue for the “Ladies” wicket. Next to it, there was another wicket for seniors (60+) and the handicapped. It was nice to see this special wicket for seniors and the handicapped. I liked the sign on the window that stated, “Handicapped and blind (self only).” I had a lot of time to think about it, but I’m still not sure how the blind are supposed to read this sign to know that they have to stand in line to buy their own tickets. Another great mystery.

Ah well, one hour is better than two and we still made it in time for Ji Hong’s soccer practice.

[On the road-16-March-2009]