How Close Do You Need to Stand in a Queue?

My “correction” in the last post was genuine.  Seriously.  It was.    I say that because you may not believe me after you read this post.  Actually, this incident isn’t all that bad.  It’s just another example of something that happens quite frequently in India.  Maybe I should start a list of these things!

I went to the bank today.  As I stood in the queue (i.e., a line) for the teller, the guy behind me got right up to me.  There were only three people, I was the second one, it’s not like there was a huge rush to get to the teller.  But there he was.

I noticed him because he was counting his cash deposit while holding a piece of paper.  The paper kept hitting my elbow.  The third time it happened (I wasn’t annoyed, I was in a good mood) I was thinking of his benefit when I asked him to back up a bit.  If he did, the paper wouldn’t hit me and possibly cause him to accidentally drop his cash.

His reply: “Don’t worry, you’re in front of me”.  Now, I hadn’t thought about that at all.  I knew I was in front of him, the place was empty, the situation didn’t require me to think that he could possibly take cuts, there was just no need for that.  I said, “No, that’s not it.  I was…”.  And before I could finish, he said in Hindi, “Yah, right that’s not what it is, don’t worry you’re in front of me”.  I slightly chuckled, realized who I was dealing with, and so tried to change the topic by looking elsewhere.  I can do that very effectively too, the changing of a subject in this type of situation.

This reaction from the guy shouldn’t have surprised me.  I know that is how it is here.  It’s there in my head, it’s not there in my daily thinking.  The reality is that when you stand in line almost anywhere in India, the person behind you will stand so close to you that he will hit your back with his chest quite frequently, the frequency only depending on how busy the place was.  If it was busy, he’d love tap you at least 2-4 times a minute because the person behind him was doing the same to him.  This guy was programmed to stand that close to me.  He wasn’t surveying the fact that there was no one else behind him, that the bank was mostly empty.

In my mind, I was at a bank.  An AC bank (I have to distinguish that because I’ve been to non-AC banks also).  A well-renowned bank.  I mean, it was a place you wouldn’t expect nonsense, you’d expect people to be professional and respectful.  But, here I was, going back to the “profile” issue I ran into when setting up the dinner circles, although it’s an apples to oranges comparison between the two.  This guy was from the working class population, not a servant, but probably making not much more than one.

His automatic response indicating his thinking was a result of two things: a) the situational reality of standing in line in India and having to guard your spot, and b) the kinds of places and things he’s around.  If he was of a different class (I hate using that word but I can’t find a better way to describe him right now), he may have responded differently.  He may not have been even standing so close to me in the first place.

But this is the India of today (and yesterday).  It’s a real mixture of people.  In your day-to-day routine, you run into and deal with everyone, from the rich to the poor, from the highly educated to those who don’t know how to read or write.  This translates into being exposed to professional attitude and behavior one minute to thugging another.  That’s just how it is.

So, how close do you really need to stand to the guy in front of you to protect your position in the queue?  Very close!  That’s also just how it is.

(A question I have – I wonder how different the attitude would be if I was in Mumbai as opposed to Delhi?  Delhi is known to be aggressive and unsophisticated.  Mumbai may not be the land of “please” and “thank you” either but I wonder if it’s better.  The way I see it, life is a matter of degrees, not extremes.  Things can be great, okay/tolerable, or hellish/overbearing with the change of a few degrees.  Okay, so maybe this isn’t the best example to use when trying to figure out how aggressive and unsophisticated a city is.  These kinds of things are an annoyance but they aren’t that big a deal either and these would not be the things I would focus on when determining which city I lived in, they would be a consideration only if the difference in degrees was a lot and one was better suited to me than the other.  Okay, so this is a really bad example, but whatever, I wanted to make that connection anyway.)