The queue conundrum

I live in the NCR — where traffic crawls, tempers rise and queues coil like stubborn serpents refusing to slither away. At my age, I’ve accepted that my life’s background score is the rhythmic shuffle of feet inching forward — sometimes towards progress, sometimes simply towards the counter.

Queues have followed me like loyal, unwanted shadows: crowded cinema halls in college, metro token counters that tested my Zen, Aadhaar updation camps designed by a mischievous deity, and now airport check-ins where the line seems determined to outlive humanity itself. For reasons unknown to science, I always land behind that one person clutching five forms, 50 questions and endless time.

One afternoon at the railway reservation office, wedged between irritation and dehydration, I discovered an odd philosophy. A gentleman ahead was vigorously debating the moral superiority of lower berth versus upper, side upper versus side lower, and possibly a private rooftop seat atop the engine. My patience, already perforated by NCR pollution, threatened to evaporate.

As I turned around, a sea of perspiring passengers stretched behind me — faces fanning themselves with fraying tickets and tempers. And suddenly, I wasn’t the last carriage of this human locomotive. Dozens waited behind me, hoping I would move ahead so they could too. That realisation brought a smug serenity.

Life in the NCR is no different. Someone is always ahead: the colleague climbing quicker, the neighbour flaunting fancier wheels, the batchmate booking for Bali while I book for broadband. The line of life feels forever unfair. But peace trickles in when we look back and notice those who think we’re already ahead.

My grandmother once told me: “Beta, patience is the passport in life’s journey.” I rolled my eyes — Enid Blyton’s adventures were clearly superior. But adulthood converts clichés into commandments. Her voice returns like a WhatsApp notification — frequent, sometimes irritating and occasionally profound.

Even Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost didn’t mention queues — yet if he had survived a single visit to a government office, he would have devoted a full canto to “Waiting Forever Without Wi-Fi.” And now we have digital queues mocking us from screens. You think you’ve escaped the heat and the hive until a website declares: “You are number 5,432 in the queue.” By the time the OTP arrives, the opportunity has aged, retired and vanished.

Yet humour hides here — like Wi-Fi signals in basements. Once in a lethargic post office line, a hopeful man asked, “How long will it take?” The clerk replied, “Depends — today’s batch or next week’s?” We laughed together, united by shared suffering and slowness.

In the NCR, even waiting has weather — summers that melt resolve, winters that freeze progress and monsoons that turn lines into puddles of shared misery. Yet the queue continues, a constant companion through every season of survival and victories. Life isn’t about breaking the line, barging ahead or brooding over those before us. It’s about keeping cool while we crawl — patient, hopeful and human.