Sunday, April 21, 2013

[A-Z Challenge] You are in Queue

 Quirks of Life starting with Q is queue. Somehow we are placed in one of the many queues of the world knowingly or unknowingly. This is part of April A-Z challenge details of which is present here.

We are put in various queues even before we know about it.  The lady at the hospital when we were born would put us in one of her queues based on her priorities. During the kinder-garden days, you are put to queues so that the teachers can manage a group of bawling and screaming kids. 

As you grow up you see your parents being put in various queues and you realize that by staying in queue, you attract order and civility in life unless you are in India. Queues are one of those things in India whose meaning gets so much distorted that only people living in India can understand. 

For centuries, India had followed a caste system. So when the concept of queue was introduced by British, the caste-system manifested into this queue as well. The whole point of staying in queue waiting for your turn was lost.

The main objective became find ways to beat the queue. People use their wealth, connections and sometimes even a small bribe to the peon who is looking after the queue to beat the queue. After all with a population of India, it may cost you a lifetime if you diligently wait for your turn. 

Moreover, even the sperm that reached the egg first would have jumped the queue. So jumping the queue can be blamed on our genes. But then there is a silver lining to this dark cloud as well. 

There is special community in Kerala that follow the queue religiously.These are the regular consumers of alcohol who form a queue in front of a wine shop. This queue is followed religiously as breaking this queue here getting more than a single bone broken.There is also a mark of respect here as people acknowledge that their need is as strong as other person's  and so let us respect this strong need and stay put.

With the advent of technology, system-generated queues came into picture and now there is whole branch of study to optimize the service time and reduce the lengths of the queues. However, even the laptop you are using is putting your requests on a queue from time to time.

The processor happily puts your innumerable requests such as playing a song, browsing a website, opening document into a queue and services at its own convenience. Even the websites that you visit put you in different sets of queues that you can hardly imagine.

So even if you think you are not in queue, the environment around you has been designed in such a way that eventually you are in queue perpetually!

8 comments:

  1. Such an interesting blogpost, love the word. It's true everywhere and all the time we are in queue for one thing or the other, but a famous fellow once said, "Good things happen to those who stand and wait," so I guess it's beneficial after all.

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    1. It depends on person to person. Some stand and wait and good things happen while others simply run after and make things happen. Although running and making things happen is celebrated across the world, waiting too has its benefits! :)

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  2. Well there's some interesting food for thought...nice post!

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  3. Interesting perspective... never seen a queue outside an alcohol shop, though... always seen a crowd... may be 'drunkards' in our city are not that thoughtful :D

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    1. hehe... maybe the number of people in our city is far less outside the alcohol shop than in Kerala :)

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  4. Queue.. in india its more of chaos than queue :P

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