The Question of ‘Q’

Indians and Q's: The worst contradictory matches that you can ever have. Rightly though the first word that comes to one's mind is the ever lurking disturbing word, "QUESTION", and Indians have had a long and illustrious relationship with it, the details of which would merit a longer blog some other day. But the Q that I am so very interested in presenting to the beloved (though rare and few) readers is the famous "QUEUE", the one that we have always seen and lived with everywhere we went and yet had been so adapt at breaking, twisting, deforming and skipping from our very early childhood, and for which we have been proudly applauded by our own selves or friends or family that have benefitted from the so-called daring act.

Well, I'm no saint, and I openly confess my share of achievements in this field. And no wonder I had always readily accepted the applause of the group of friends (which Indian lad wouldn't want to look a hero in the eyes of a couple of beautiful girls who get their desired seats to ogle at their favourite hero because of your daring act) that were benefitted by my act to get movie tickets, or my family who could secure seats on the train to travel to some godforsaken place for some equally unimportant work. They say, "Life comes a full circle", and so in an airport thousands of miles away from India that I witnessed an incident that opened my eyes (Not that the doctors hadn't seen my flaps to be closed at birth and hadn't worked on them till then).

Now to the incident!! I was returning from Europe after a not so enthusiastically describable trip, and just like when you are so very offended at your own non-performance that you tend to take pains to notice even the smallest of details of inconspicuous events occurring around you in order to fill your thought with them so that the thoughts of failure just doesn't have enough space to settle. So, there I was, waiting impatiently (we Indians are real bad at the action of waiting) in the lounge of Istanbul's not so famous Ataturk airport waiting for my flight to Mumbai, my adopted living place. From the various well-equipped and beautiful glass and steel gates, lots of blondes, red heads and black hairs vanished, well not literally, just that they walked off to their respective flights. While sitting over there and pondering over my disastrous 3 weeks, I noticed a strangely beautiful pattern. Whenever a flight was announced, people casually got up and stood in a slightly meandering queue that can always be defined as a geometrically perfect straight line as compared to the queues that I have been used to for me entire life. There was no jostling, no multiple lines, no overtaking, no hurrying or harrying others to hurry, just about none of the spices that made our Indian daily life so spicilicious ^*. There was no one to reign in order since the order was natural. And everyone was so relaxed and comfortable boarding the plane (except for the perpetually difficult guys who do not like the air travel)

And suddenly my flight was announced, the one that was supposed to take me to Mumbai. Suddenly all Hell broke loose. The perfectly sleepy region in front of Gate D32 suddenly erupted as if Mt. Vesuvius had shifted its head by a few thousand miles and had decided on erupting that very moment. About a hundred (I didn't feel like counting, but the number's sound felt good) Men, Women and children suddenly became actively interested in boarding the flight at the very same moment as if their existence depended on it. In a short period (that lasted for at least 7 minutes) order was restored; well if what came next can be called order. In a gate through which only 2 people can pass at a time, agitated passengers (ethnic definitions unnecessary as their actions speak) came in 4 different queues to squeeze in through that space. Where most gates had just 2 airline personnel, this gate demanded a minimum of 6, with 2 resembling bouncers of any common disco. Their voices started from a beautifully cultured "All passengers are requested to make 2 queues for convenience" to a loud "Please make 2 rows" to a hoarse rendition of "Just make 2 lines". And still the educated and the uneducated, the literate and the illiterate masses of our culturally endowed country so blatantly rubbished the name of our country in a foreign land that I felt ashamed of calling myself their brethren. By the time I passed through the gates, the Indian population had dwindled to a dozen or so and there were only two queues in existence. I'll never forget the dirty look that the Beautiful face of the harried airline employee gave the moment we were passing through giving me a general perception that our beloved citizens have created in the minds of the more developed countries' citizens.

And it does end there. Every time since then whether at the airport, or the railway station, the Bank counter or the KFC food counter, I have meticulously noticed the infallible Indians consistently maintaining their record of breaking queues (unless off course the management of MacD puts in those queue making bands) beating Usain Bolt's habit of breaking records. Being the optimist that I am, I sincerely hope that someday we will learn that a more relaxed and disciplined approach to such things in life, will lead to success and not failure. After all, the plane's never gonna fly off without you even if you are standing at the very end of the straight queue in front of the boarding gate !!!

 

* Don't try finding this word in the dictionary. I invented it. Equation: Spicy + delicious = Spicilicious. This word solves the usual dilemma since spiciness and deliciousness might not occur at the same time and for the same person.