Dube's

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Do we dislike queues?

Ever been to a post office, a movie hall in India? Or for that matter, ever been a part of a queue? Have you realised how the queue really resembles the delta of the river right before the sea? I realised this again yesterday when I had gone to send two speed posts. One was a deposit to the MBA program I am enrolling in, and other was a denial letter to the second program I had got an admission to. For the time I was there, people kept coming and telling the counter clerk to do their work first because mine was going to take some time. What kind of bs is that? Mine was going to take time, so I had come early and waited patiently. Now it was the turn of others to wait, wasnt it? People kept coming from all sides of the counter to ask for little stuff like stamps, moneyorder forms and the likes. Why cant we wait for our turn? Its even more of a problem with high society types, because they believe that since they know a union minister throught third cousin of their wifes cousin sisters grandpa, they have a kind of right to break all the rules. When would be grow up? At all queues in India, at least in Delhi, there will be at least one guy standing smugly because he is at the head of the queue, and at least five of six standing parallel to him to see if they can get their work done and they dont have to get in the queue. It will always be a kind of pyramidal queue at the start. It seems we have total disregard to any kind of civic behaviour. All we care about is if we can get our work done in the least amount of time. We dont care how much time of others we waste as long as ours is not being wasted. Some poor folks feel guilty, some try to remain oblivious to this, but surprisingly NO ONE protests. Have we become so spineless to not be bothered by our lack of civic sense? This behaviour manifests itself everywhere. If we have a traffic jam on one side, some enterprising being would definitely jump the gun and go on the wrong side of the road so as to beat the dumb folks in the jam. Soon enough, many more will follow, clog the road and then everyone will wait endlessly. The cost benefit analyses will show that we wasted more time collectively, but who cares? It will be good if we start analysing such stuff and have at least our younger generation adhere to norms, or else we will end up as a developed but uncivilised society.

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