Ethmag: Join the Indian Railways Olympic Academy through the Tatkal Exams

First of all, we would like to thank all our readers for giving us your valuable time and making us so important in the world of web space just after few hours of our launch. Thanks a lot and it would have been impossible without you.

So, after writing some serious hardcore stuff about various issues, we thought about taking it on a lighter note for our readers. We hereby provide you a one-on-one account of one of our Ethmoticans who had the platonic pleasure of travelling in our great Indian Railways' sleeper compartments. So here goes::

Best Books for a healthy mind We Hindustanis have never received any medal at the Olympics for any of the gymnastic categories. I personally think that we have been making the wrong selections of the candidates and it is an absolute and hard lie given by the government that we do not have good training facilities here in India to train our gymnastic athletes. If not, then what are the Indian Railways for? So, here we would like to give our views on saving the precious money for the government as well as getting some medals for our medal-starved nation so that at least once in a century our tricolor is unfurled at the Olympics.

Our Indian Railways has got one of the best infrastructure and training facilities for training athletes - all types and kinds but gymnasts, the most. How? Tell us first - what is the first thing that is required for being a great sportsman - is it strong muscles, hardcore abs, stamina, etc. - NO - it is the will power to succeed and the persistence to stay on despite all suicidal desperation. And you want to test your willpower - try to book any railway ticket from 10 a.m. onward through the IRCTC website - it will take all your willpower in the world to either take a hammer and break your computer or instead break your head. You would think the better option would be to go to the railway reservation counters and book the same. Now, now - to become an athlete is not so easy - you have to be stronger than a rugby player to just get into

A typical view of the railway reservation counter - 10 marks for finding the line!

the line and have the intellect of a Magnus Carlson (World Chess Champion) to first figure out which line to stand in because there will be lines of all shapes and figures ranging from horizontal line (most likely to be seen near the counter wherein people would be pushing each other side to side to just get a single view of the beautiful god called the counter clerk), snake line wherein everybody is thinking that s/he came before the other blokes sitting in his vicinity and that when the time comes to prove his might (i.e. to book the ticket), he is the heir to the throne of counter window and would be booking his ticket before others.

Once after you chose which clan of line to choose in order to get that ticket, you will be tested for your patience and determination - because you will have to stand in the line from morning 4 a.m. at the LEAST just to make sure you have any chance of getting your beloved ticket. Who told that Darwin discovered theory of evolution (survival of the fittest and natural selection) through Galapagos Island - he would have definitely got the first ideas through our railway queues only - sad that he did not mention anything in his book and we have to write about it over here.

Now the time comes for you to reach the counter - the D-Time approaches - the counter queue has around 5-10 people standing before you (as you may be thinking but the others who are in their parallel self-originated queues will be thinking otherwise) and it has struck 10 a.m. Now the real game begins. The counter clerk god will be taking his jolly time to check your application, your identity proofs, and then typing on his Charles Babbage-era computer with only his two fingers and resting the other eight for his next seven lives. Once the data entry is complete, he will again ask you which train to travel to (as if you are moron and have not mentioned the name of the train or train number on the application form) and then tell you coolly that it is a tatkal waiting list of 10. Oh yes - despite the poor clerk being faster than Michael Schumacher, he could not book even one ticket for the hundreds standing in the queue. Then he will shout at you to tell him fast whether you want to book the ticket in waiting list or not. Now comes the second part of athletic training - quick thinking exercise. It is assumed that you have been bitten by the same spider that bite Spiderman and you have its spider instincts to judge whether the ticket you book will be confirmed or not. And finally, just out of boredom and giving up, you tell the clerk god to book the ticket at waiting list with the hopes that it will be confirmed the next day while preparation of the charts. See I told you - this is the test of your persistence - you have nearly 24 hours before travel and you have two choices - either cancel the ticket if it does not get confirmed within 2 hours prior to journey or repeat the entire above-mentioned process for booking the next day - a perfect test of determination. And believe me, when I say that it is easier to crack the UPSC, CAT, Bank exams or for that matter the Railway exams itself, rather than getting your tatkal tickets - it really tests your character and what you are made up of and you will be a changed man after you leave the counters with a confirmed ticket - if at all you get one.

Strength training at the Indian Railways Olympic Academy!

Now considering that somehow you managed to get your tickets after bribing some person in the railways under the VIP, AIDS, cancer quota, etc. Then comes the interesting part - boarding the trains. Believe it or not - it takes the strength of a world champion wrestler and the agility of a rugby player if you want to make sure you are boarded on the train with all your amenities for the ultimate survival (for the next 20 to 24 hours of your journey). There will be only two doors for a compartment and it will somehow seem that the entire train will be getting filled up at your station only and that the train is wastefully stopping on other stations en route because then where will the others sit? But you are wrong - 80% of the people who push, pull, punch, kick, & dhobhi pacchad for entering the compartment are not the passengers - they are the relatives who have come to drop the SINGLE lone passenger since he is going on a mission called Ultimate Railway Survivals and they want to have a last look at their beloved ones before the wretched train departs.

Flexibility training equipment - Indian Railway Olympic Academy

And once you are lucky enough to board the train with all your stuff - here comes the ultimate pleasure and your test of endurance and flexibility - THE SLEEPER COMPARTMENT (or for that matter even the 3rd AC compartment). In this stage of your training, you would be trained on the intricacies of body flexibility including spinal cord flexibility. The coaches of the Indian Railways have a peculiarity - there are normal seats and there are side seats (which are way too smaller, around 1 to 1.5 feet smaller than the normal seats). And I have never been able to see any column in the railway ticket application form wherein you are required to fill in your height in order to allocate a berth you can at least fit in. But that is the challenge - to FIT into the berths. You will have to brush up your yoga or take special Iyengar Yoga Classes and be sure to be a master of Ashtanga Yoga or Hatha Yoga if you are by any chance getting the upper berths because you climbing and reaching the berths is different thing and fitting in there and actually sleeping/sitting is an entirely different odyssey. And all this has to be done while the train is wobbling side-to-side precariously as if reminding you of the fragility of human life and that it CAN end any time. Of course, not to mention, you have to tarzan your way around bhelpuri walas, paani bottle walas, ice-cream walas, and the favorite idli-wada walas - and all this has to be done within a split second so as to avoid your berth being taken away by some local commuter who will not be having any reserved ticket but since the Railways was given as dowry to his father, it becomes his "berth right" to sit or shit on any berth regardless of the fact that there are others who have actually managed to clear the tough "tatkal" exams and managed to get a confirmed berth.

See, that's why I told you that we Hindustanis deserve an Olympic medal - after all, we have some of the finest and toughest warrior athletes in our country with world-class real-life-stimulating infrastructure in our country - only the government needs to do optimal utilization of its resources. Here, I have deliberately not mentioned the literally shitty state of the Indian Railway toilets which are so wonderful that you will also learn to stay on for prolonged periods of time with distended bladders and inflamed abdomens because this discomfort is nothing compared to the torture of pooing or peeing on another unknown persons (didn't matter if it had been known?) poo or pee.

Best Books for a healthy mind Enough of this shitty thoughts now - at last, I only wish to say - we deserve an Olympic medal in gymnastics and the government should concentrate on developing the railway infrastructure, if not for the better, then for the worst, at least for the sake of creating future Olympic champions from our great Indian Railways Olympic Academy.

Happy Ethmos to you all!