Yesterday night I had a train to catch for Delhi. Train's departure time was ~10PM and that late, its hard to get autos to the station in Bikaner. So I reached early, almost an hour before. Generally I have a SMS from IRCTC(Indian online railways booking system) as handy reference for seat details and as a ticket. But the system can be unreliable at times and I didn't get the SMS when I booked my tickets. I remembered the coach and seat number, so I reached in front of my coach and kept goofing around, chatting with friends. The coach was still locked from inside, ground staff generally opens them around half an hour before the scheduled departure. Roughly around 9:45PM they opened it and I boarded the train to put my luggage. Whole coach was empty. As I took my seat, got comfortable, I thought, lets get ticket SMS, I will need it to show to the Ticket Checker.

I logged into the IRCTC, went to my "Booked tickets History" section, to the ticket, "GET SMS", and click. I looked at mobile in the anticipation of notification and soon there was, "Tingggggggggg". I checked message summary on phone and noticed DEE-BKN instead of expected BKN-DEE. I was like, "Hain?". I confirmed, in SMS, on IRCTC platform and I looked around at empty bogy, realising, shit, I booked wrong ticket. Time get a ticket in "Current booking", I was already logged in. I tried to book ticket for train, but system wasn't allowing to book online. I will now have to rush to ticket counter and get a ticket from there. Picked up my luggage, rushed to counter on the platform and person sitting there said, you can't get reservation ticket from here, you can get it only from the counter on first platform and hurry, even that counter closes at 10PM. I rushed, to first platform and one of its counter where the person was playing PubG on his mobile. I said, I want ticket for Delhi and he replied no tickets are available. I confirmed again, in all the classes? He replied seats are available only in 2nd AC. I knew he was lying but I had no choice, I said, please, can you give me one? He handed me a form to fill. I started doing that and I also tried to cajole him to start process to speed things up but he didn't budge. Eventually I gave him the form, money, exact change and he gave me the ticket and I walked out at 9:57 PM with a confirmed ticket for Delhi. Phew.