The Great Indian Line Trick

You can find queues (henceforth called lines) everywhere in India. There is a line outside shops, inside shops, for using washrooms, banks, atms, bus stops, railway stations, restaurants, for buying movie tickets, entering a mall, exiting a mall, for eating pani puri, pan shop - everywhere . Think of any place and the first thing that comes to mind is a big line. Worse part is that the line never looks like a line. Its curved / distorted and cluttered around at the origin – near the counter (and / or destination) with one person at the centre and two at the left side, two at the right side - reminds me of a crooked – not so straight - ‘trishul’ - like the ones in Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan.

Not only is the line big, people stink in these lines. You can smell all kinds of hair oils, perfumes, deodarants, hair gels – these are supposed to smell good, but don’t smell so good when mixed with sweat and body odour – believe me. Mobile phones keep ringing in these lines, people keep talking on phones or with each other – which allows smell of gutkhas or cigarettes or onions or bhajiyas coming sweetly out of their big mouths and spreading all over.

I have not come to the worst part yet. People just keep pushing and leaning over each other, touching you from behind and allowing you to be touched from the front side. I just hate this. So you have these fat people with bulging tummies touching your back and people with fat asses touching your front. Believe me it’s a royal &#$%, if you know what I mean. I think that people have just started enjoying all this touching each other business. I mean this gives them a feeling of satisfaction, makes them feel as if they are doing something and helps in removing boredom of standing in a line with increased expectations of reaching the counter faster and quenches their curiousity of whats happening at the counter – more closely you stand in the line, faster your work gets done – that’s the mentality.

Recently, I found out a way of dealing with the line problem. What you need to do is fold your hands so that your elbows are extended backwards. This way the person who is standing just behind you is sure to get hurt, so he/she will maintain a distance. You can of course maintain a distance with the person standing in front of you. I tried this and was successful w.r.t. the person standing behind me. The only problem that cropped up was that other people who are not part of the line start crossing sides since you have provided for a way to them by maintaining distance w.r.t. the person standing in front of you ! So my elbows went down and now I think that I will carry a big rod on my sides, which will create a distance between me and the people ahead of me and behind me. Let me try, will get back to you with results.