Indian Railways provide services of a remarkable standard. In the air- conditioned comfort of a first class cabin, there is hot food, the ubiquitous chaiwallah (tea seller) who peers over every half-drawn curtain and efficient and courteous service. Contingent, of course, on being able to produce a confirmed ticket for the conductor.
 

The problem would seem to ultimately lie with the indecisiveness of the Indian mind. Compelled by this Hamletesque affliction, the system of the Railways has found it prudent to prepare an extremely long waiting list of travellers over and above confirmed passengers for the actual journey. If any do change their minds at the last moment, there is still a reasonable equivalent of the Mongol Hordes to take their place. This would in turn imply that you could have moved up from position two hundred and thirty four to third on the waiting list but you’d still be without a seat; and as anyone who has had the bad luck to find out, a miss is as good as a mile.

There are some, however, who prefer to circumvent the rules of the land. For whatever reason, travelling even by wait-listed ticket seems to have too high an opportunity cost to be avoided. An almost sure-fire method of having to do so is by relying on someone else to get your ticket confirmed.

It was in such a situation that I found myself, along with three other unfortunate companions. After being struck by a sudden fit of adventure and half a bottle of rum, it was decided to make a journey deep into the heart of the South, to Chennai.

The first hundred kilometers after boarding the train isn’t so bad. There are plenty of empty seats, and one begins to relax a little bit. The tension of finding a berth, or ways of throwing other passengers off the train, a la Indiana Jones, gradually seeps out of you. For uninitiated travellers like me, that is. Seasoned travellers seem to have no hesitation in assuring greenhorns of the boarding of confirmed ticketwallahs from other stations, the intractability of train conductors, and the discomfort of the passageway, to which we’d ultimately be relegated.

It wouldn’t be that bad, I proclaimed. We had one berth, where at least the luggage was safe. And the romance of the Railways was sitting by the open door, watching great plains and dusty railway towns pass by, with grubby little children running alongside.