Railways - Profit

Sharmaji wanted to book a ticket to travel to Gorakhpur from Mumbai. He decided to use the online booking facility provided by Indian Railways for his booking. 

Train booking starts at 8am, 90 days before the date of travel. At 0800 hrs he found that there are 600 odd tickets available on train no 1015 (Kushinagar Express).  Immediately, he keyed in his credit card number to book the ticket. 

After the credit card was validated, when the ticket was issued, it was found that the ticket had a waiting list of over 500!

In the brief period of around a minute, not only were the 600 tickets issued but an extra 500 tickets were sold!

A dejected Sharmaji decided to cancel the ticket. He was charged Rs. 20 for each ticket he cancelled. As he had booked six tickets, he had to shell out Rs.120 for cancelling wait listed tickets.

If we assume that there will be atleast 250 cancellations per train (an estimate on the lower side). Railways make around Rs. 5000 (at Rs. 20/- per cancelled ticket) every day per train for cancellation.

Now the Indian Railways run around 9000 trains per day. This gives us Rs. 45000000 ( Rs. 4.5 Crores).

There are 30 days in a month. The cancellation charges collected will be Rs. 135 crores.

12 months a year should give us Rs. 1620 crores for doing nothing but issuing and cancelling tickets!

Remember these estimates are on the lower side. Actual figures could be lot more than calculated.  Now you know how railways make a profit.

We can understand a cancellation charge being levied on confirmed tickets. But for waitlisted tickets, such a huge charge is criminal. With no competition, railways is indulging in a monopoly practise that the general public may not be aware of.

Need a smell dimension

It is high time that we add another dimension to our film viewing. Films already engage our sense of sight and sound. Why not smell? Won't it feel wonderful to view films with this added dimension?

Imagine watching Slumdog Millionaire or even Dev.D with the smell dimension included. 

Consider Dev.D for that matter. Smell of hay when a mattress is laid down in the fields. Smell of Punjabi dishes at the wedding feast. Lovely perfumes at the reception.  Smell of Ariel when Paro washes Dev's clothes! An obnoxious smell when Dev throws up etc.

Wonder why this has not become a reality.

It will not be practical to have the entire auditorium throw up different fragrances depending on the scene being flashed. There could be a lot of people who are allergic to smell and would prefer to be excused from such experiences.  We need a different solution.

I have seen stamps which retain smell of sandalwood, roses etc even after a year. I have also seen desktop calendar’s which smell of roses etc depending on the picture in the calendar. So it is definitely possible to build long term fragrances into objects.

Personally, I would prefer a device which could be carried in and out of an auditorium. I should be able to either connect it a port on my seat or could be controlled like any other wi-fi device. I should be able to increase/decrease the intensity of the smell being thrown out and it should not disturb any of my neighbors who may not want to enjoy this experience. 

Obviously, I would want to switch it off whenever not required.  Who would want to experience the smell of Dev’s room and ultimately volunteer to clean it up for him!

Hope it becomes realty before I become too old to experience it. We can only get it when we start asking for it.