One of the biggest Face palm movements.

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It happened few months ago. I had to travel from New Delhi to Ludhiana (a city in Punjab State of India) and had to return after two days of official work. I decided to travel by train. Before I elaborate further, here is a little background - while getting my online reservation done I noticed that there were two superfast trains with the same name viz. Rajdhani Express from New Delhi to Amristsar and one train was in the morning and one was in the evening from New Delhi. Parallel trains concurrently run from Amritsar to New Delhi, one in the morning (departs Amritsar at 6.00 am) and one in the evening (departs Amritsar at 6.00 pm). These trains touch Ludhiana. In my mind I thought that I would travel to Ludhiana by New Delhi – Amritsar morning train on Monday and would return on Wednesday by evening train. I got my reservation done from New Delhi to Ludhiana by Rajdhani train which had to leave on Monday morning and got the reservation done by evening Rajdhani Express train from Amritsar (which leaves Amritsar at 6.00 pm). After getting the reservation done, I did not check the tickets. Here I may add that Railway authorities follow 24 hours clock, instead of using am or pm. For example 1300 hours is 1.00 pm. I reached Ludhiana along with one of my colleagues on Monday. I attended the official work on Monday to Wednesday and we came to Railway station in the evening to catch our return train. However, when we reached at the station, we noticed that the time of arrival of train at Ludhiana was 6.53 p.m. in our ticket but the time of arrival by Railway screen board was showing 6.51 p.m. I did not suspect anything and I thought that 2 minutes difference is a minor thing, although I told this difference to my colleague but he also did not pay any attention. I may also add here that the train stops only for 2 minutes at Ludhiana Railway station. The Rajdhani Express train which started from Amritsar at 6.00 p.m. arrived at 6.51 at Ludhiana Railway station, as scheduled, we had already taken our positions and immediately boarded the marked train coach and headed towards our reserved seats. We had booked our tickets in AC Chair Car. To our astonishment, two gentlemen were already there who had occupied our seats. Our seat numbers were 49-50. When we asked those gentlemen to get up, as these were our seats, they showed their tickets and said that seat numbers 49-50 were allotted to them. I wondered how Railway authorities could make such a silly mistake and felt perturbed. We immediately called Train Ticket Examiner to sort out the matter. He saw my tickets and their tickets and started staring at me, as if I am biggest fool on this earth. He said – “Sir, your tickets were meant for morning Rajdhani Express train (which had earlier left on the same morning) and not for evening, so you just cannot travel by this train.” When I closely checked my tickets that train timing were mentioned as 6.53 a.m not as 6.51 p.m. and I felt so bad and embarrassed. Remember this happened within two minutes and we had to take our call, we literally jumped from the train with our handbags, as we had no other option. When we become normal, we tried to analyse our mistake. We realized that instead of booking 6.00 p.m. train which actually departs at 1800 hours from Amritsar, we had got our tickets booked in the train which leaves at 6.00 a.m. from Amritsar. We did not think that 6.00 p.m. means 1800 hours, as per Railway timings. It was a silly mistake but what to do, damage had already been done. It was one of the biggest face palm movement of my life. Have you faced any such experiences in your life? Image Courtesy - Google