Queues.

5 oct ‘14

         I was standing in a queue patiently waiting my turn. The guy behind me was so close that I could feel the moisture of his breath upon my neck. Was he checking out my dandruff? Did he want to know whether I’d wax in my ears? Given a chance, would he’d glance to see whether I’d bhangar inside my nostrils? Was he was squinting to read what I’d marked on my reservation slip? A stalker maybe?  Depraved of mind? Nah. He’s a normal Indian. If it were a woman, she’d be even closer, with a hand on my shoulder, the oil in her hair rubbing off on my sleeve.

 I turned and did the unthinkable: requested him to leave some space between us. Everybody stared at me. He reacted: “Then move ahead.” I was already within a centimeter of the person before me. What did he want me to do, go through the wall? Or do a pyramid balancing act on the shoulders of the guy in front a la Govinda ala re?  

At times like these, I shrink within myself. Used to.

Any and everyone knows you have to join the end of a queue. Which end is a point of debate. Some go straight to the counter and sneak into the cluster of people craning and crowding around the six-inch gap in the metal mesh that divides us from the staff behind the desk. It’s pretty obvious that the guy can issue just one ticket at a time, that until he completes his transaction, he can’t take on another task, but we love to shove our palms through that little window, waving money or reservation slips or chits in front of his face in the futile hope that all work will happen together in a couple of seconds flat.

I once found (really I did) in a Mumbai neighbourhood, people standing in a queue in a disciplined manner to pay electricity bills. I should have video’d that scene. No one believes it happened. Another exception to the queue-rule was at IFFI, Inox, Goa, when ‘delegates’ actually stood one behind the other patiently till the security chap shut the door. Then quarrels broke out.

         At banks and airports there is some semblance of decency. In international flight queues, people actually listen to the security and stand behind the line (which is painted on the floor in front of the counters, I’m told, exclusively for the benefit of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Indians, too.). A chain and a guard hold back the queue which is made to curve several times around banisters and flimsy rope barriers. A simple growl from one of those uniformed fellows and we whimper. The same fellow at a bus-stop would be battered by abuses.

At cafeterias, bus-stands and where things are distributed ‘for free’ (samples at malls) or ‘on sale’, Darwin’s theory rules: survival of the fittest.

         If you think this trait is restricted to the hoi polloi who use buses and trains, you’re wrong. In five-star hotels, at the buffet, even at private functions, high-flying corporate types and well-certified professionals race to eat and serve themselves like they’ve never seen food in their lives. They are no different from the creature that was breathing down my neck, just better dressed.

Ironically, when the queue system is altered for some reason, then Indians are up in arms.  In Casualties of large hospitals where the gravity of a patient’s condition must take priority over who came first, quarrels and fist-fights break out over ‘why did you take that patient first when I was here before him’. The logic that the other guy was bleeding profusely, or in respiratory distress or had severe dehydration or a couple of badly crushed bones doesn’t work. ‘I came first’ reigns supreme. In the past few years, doctors in hospital emergency areas have been beaten up over this issue. Why did I expect that those stranded in the Kashmir floods would allow the weak and vulnerable to get rescued before the able-bodied?

In the land that invented meditation, proclaimed patience to be a virtue, advertises the Art of Living and various kinds of yogas, where most don’t work at optimum speed or potential, we haven’t learnt that we have to wait our turn, that grabbing isn’t the answer.  

The pehle aap culture does exist. In homes. Women allow the men to eat first.  Except where the remnants of the British or Portuguese Raj linger.

Queue kyoon nahi, I wonder.

Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in