Maitree Express: মৈত্রী এক্সপ্রেস - দুই বাংলার সংস্কৃতি ও ভাতৃত্বের মেলবন্ধন - Joydeep Roy

Here is my unbelievable and unique experience with respect to Gitanjali Express.
And I belong to the days of the dinosaurs and this story obviously can only be from those days.
Believe it or not, those days you had to stand in separate queues to buy tickets for different trains. If you didn't get ticket for Howrah Mail via Nagpur for example, you had to stand at the end of the line for Gitanjali all over again to try your luck for that train.
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felt very lucky to have in hand sleeper reservations for outgoing as well as the return journey for which they had a quota of tickets ex Howrah that VT could sell.
After about 15-20 days, I received a post card from one Mr V.B. Patil, the Chief Commercial Manager at VT telling me that my tickets had some issues and I needed to urgently meet him in that regard.
I spent that evening wondering about what mistake I might have committed.
The next day when I went to VT, Mr Patil gave a warm friendly welcome and offered me tea, snacks,sweets and all. I found the entire thing a bit surprising.
Then finally I was told that Gitanjali didn't run on all 7 days but only 4 times a week and the return ticket from Howrah was wrongly issued for a date when the train was not going to be there.
I was told that if I agreed to hand over the return ticket he would replace it with whichever date's ticket that I may choose, all done in a matter of minutes.
It appears that a young clerk who had recently joined opened a wrong folio for a date when the train would not run and issued me the ticket erroneously. And that he was faced with a severe punishment if this could not be rectified.
I happily agreed for the replacement, they were all happy and Mr Patil thanked me profusely and gave me a blank cheque that if ever I needed any ticket in an emergency I could always get in touch with him for a personal help.
Thus runs the story of my mid-morning high tea with Railway people at VT.