I don’t see what’s so difficult to understand. This is my spot in the line and you need to stand behind me.. Not beside me. Not to the right nor to the left, but behind me in the line

A smart lady (in looks and brains) shouted out in exasperation at the slightly overweight man trying to sneak up beside her in the line. Lazywiz almost fell in love with this sensible lady, and I was pretty smitten too. We were horribly late, stuck in queue at an airport. The said queue wasn’t the one outside the gate where the policeman in charge checks your identification and neither was this at the airlines’ counter or the security check. This was a weird in-between never ending line to have your luggage scanned.

While this guy unsuccessfully tried the standard maneuver to move closer and ultimately sneak past the person in front, another extremely loud women with 4 massive suitcases, 4 crying children and a thin harassed porter, stormed to the front of our line and started to throw her luggage onto the conveyor belt. Ironically, there was a group of Buddhist monks whose turn it would have been next, but this woman cut right through, and unlike our idol lady the monks didn’t fight for their rightful place.

You know, I really thought it would get better with time, only sadly, it didn’t.

So, the next airport while we were right at the boarding gate of a different plane and Lazywiz was leaning against a barricade, this really smart couple behind me whispered between themselves. “Maybe, we should just cut across. Obviously that guy doesn’t want to board the plane“.

Right! We were right in the middle of the line that was waiting to board the plane that had landed seconds before, and just because there was more than a 1 feet distance between us and the honeymooning couple in front of us, the people behind us made the highly informed decision of our motives on our behalf. No, if we weren’t practically towering over the people in front of us (in what was an absolutely staionary line at this point) then obviously we didn’t have any intention of getting onto the plane. Maybe they thought we wanted to waste everyones time, or preferred strolling at crowded airports, standing stuck at boarding gates. But, no, we didn’t really want to take that flight, because we weren’t literally standing alongside the person before us in the queue.

The story progressively got more exciting.

This time we were in another queue ,at another airport, trying to get ourselves boarding tickets. Lazywiz was busy making friends with the little girl sipping a Frooti behind us while I was staring moodily out in space. It had been a long day. Out of nowhere materialized this guy with a young mother and her child and parked the stroller right beside us. You didn’t just misread. The preposition (if that is what it is) is correct. Beside, not behind.

So now, the mother behind me (who was expecting herself) started to reason out with the young mother beside me. She wanted the new arrivals to move behind her, instead of having the line fork out into two. The guy claimed the line would still work first in first out, only the young mother and her kid would stand next to me and Lazywiz as they had more room there. Things got messy when more people came and decided which place they wanted to stand, but I’ll skip some pain of recollection and spare you the details.

Finally, I thought to myself, maybe this is an airport phenomenon. Like India has a democratic system, a pretty rigid caste system, an extensive postal system, similarly there is this whole concept of a unique queue system. The one behind you in line, would just basically stand next to you.

So, I told myself, there are more serious things to worry about if worry is what I wanted to do. Or I could distract myself and just don’t care. To distract ourselves we went to this huge mall. A multiplex theatre that had pricey tickets. We picked a movie which we sort of ended up liking (Tamasha.. in case you were curious).

Lazywiz went and stood at the ticket counter in order to get us tickets.

A boy, with his girlfriend in tow, came up and leaned against the counter to the right. Inspired by the smart lady from anecdote number 1, Lazywiz tried to get the boy to take a few steps back. He just shrugged and gestured towards Lazywiz’s left side. There a group of guys were hovering trying to get a space to Lazywiz’s  left. Lazywiz was quite sandwiched by this point. The only positive being, obviously, there was no one actually behind Lazywiz at this point, only beside.

Flanked on both the sides, by people who probably knew what a queue means in theory, but not in practice, I watched Lazywiz purchase our movie tickets and decided that it was time to come home and write a post about this.

Maybe this will now make me feel better.

 

AARWEN’S INDEX