The Lucky Haves

The journalist not only buys his ticket with less hassle, he also often manages to get a reservation out of one of those special quotas that the Indian elite reserves for itself. Access to the quota is not restricted to strictly those journalists travelling on work at short notice. Journalists travelling on holiday with their families or friends of journalists also benefit from this special privilege. Of course, a journalist is not automatically entitled to this privilege. That would make the system transparent. Those correspondents covering the railways naturally are the most pampered. But the real VIPs are the journalists who know nothing about the railways but are simply powerful. All doors are automatically opened for them.

The system generally works well, that is around predictable lines, until a maverick arrives on the scene, like the present railway minister. He is wreaking havoc with the existing system. So many people are commandeering the special quotas with a little squiggle on the reservation form from the ministers office, from the third assistant to the second PS upwards, that the rest of the beneficiaries of the present system are getting left out. I found this out at my cost. Not having much faith in my status as a journalist, I have of late got hold of school or college friends in the bureaucracy to make sure that my family is able to be take off on their summer vacation. But to my friends acute embarrassment, the ministers office had taken away all the goodies.

Returning from the railway station with depressed children after fruitlessly scanning the waiting list in the afternoon heat is no fun. So I decided to do what I try to avoid, called the publicity chief and sought his help. The professional that he was, he promptly promised to do the needful the next morning and, almost as an aside, wondered if we were covering the function at the Old Delhi railway station where the minister was inaugurating a new drive in. The stars were on my side and I was able to nonchalantly recite: a story maybe not but a picture most probably, because at the mornings news meeting we had decided to record this coming of age of Delhi.

The next morning a kindly publicity inspector accompanied me to the same reservation office but there was a great difference. While the janata stood in the general counter queues and the janata among the journalists before the special counter, I respectfully stood behind the booking clerks at the computer terminals for my ticket. The sea of faces in front were too tired or too sensible to protest against this queue jumping. The family was on the train the next day but I kept wondering what I would have done if I was unable to say that the picture would be in the paper the next day. The kindly publicity chief would have done me the favour all right but how would I face him the next time I needed a favour.