Trip to college

Today I made a trip to my college VIT for which I had to leave early from my home to catch a train. Since I had already checked up on the internet that seats were available on the Shatabdi Express leaving Bangalore at 6 am and reaching Katpadi at 9 am, so I left my house early intending on catching a BMTC bus or an auto. Funny as it may sound, I kept waiting from 5 am till 5:30 am in search for a BMTC bus or an auto, neither of which were available. The road on which I was waiting is actually having heavy traffic of buses and autos throughout the day. So it looked like my day wasn't starting of well.

Anyways I did get an auto who was charging me 1.5 times the meter. Since it was way before 6 am I accepted, as if I had a choice due to the scarcity of autos (This is were I keep trying to figure out where are the 1 lakh autos in this city disappearing to). I reached the station around 5:45 am and was happy that I will make it. Now when I stood infornt of the current reservation counter, that was it. A large queue of people waiting for booking ticket or cancelling existing ones. There were 3 trains going to leave in the next 45 minutes. Shatabdi at 6 am, Intercity Exp at 6:15 am and Lalbagh at 6:30 am. Now I was hoping to get my tickets by then. The person sitting at the counter said 'stay in a queue and wait for your turn' which I had to do to get a ticket. The only difference is that I got my ticket at 6:15 am that also for Lalbagh as Shatabdi had left the station as I was waiting for the tickets. I kept guessing that the priority for trains should be given at some point but looks like the person behind the counter just cares about doing his job comfortably without any problems or doesn't care if one misses his train or not. Lucky for me I got one of the last seats on Lalbagh Exp. while Shatabdi had a lot of free seats. The system at some point sucks.

I reached my college at 10 am and finished up my work at the student's records and then met up with some of my juniors. They all were busy with there exams or project reviews. The temperature at the college was soring high. Some things had changed at the college since I had last visited like infrastructure. After all this, I planned to return back to Bangalore by the 4 pm bus. The bus was an A/C Volvo run by a private agency group. The buses are always amazing, well maintained and the roads have improved. The road on which we were travelling is part of the 'Golden Quadrilateral' project so the quality is good, not only that I guess it could be due to the newly built roads. Anyways the journey was comfortable, only thing to find was the amount of vehicles moving on the roads. Large quantities of Trucks were travelling and the process of overtaking keeps occuring frequently.

The bus was able to cover the distance until Hosur town without any interruptions as not much traffic on the roads. This town being just 40 kms from Bangalore is very easy to reach in 45 minutes. When travelling from Hosur to Bangalore usually the trip will be 1 hour due to the major checkpoints for vehicles by the Karnataka Transportation check post. After this when we pass the famous Electronic city which can get the roads to a standstill due to traffic problems can get anyone in 1.5 to 2.5 hours. But today being a saturday was comfortable enough to get through to the town without any jams. I was able to get down at the dropping point and then hired an auto after bargining as all were quoting there own price.

This is how a trip can go by. Sometimes the days are worse than all this. One comes to know about it when you see the person cursing or dead sleeping after arriving. What can one do to improve the system and make it more efficient.