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while we wait...

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Had a brush with death, or less dramatically speaking a brush with a huge bus!! Literally. Driving on Delhi streets or probably any other city-streets in India is a hypertensive experience or an adventure, if you like to look at it that way (which is much preferable). No inch, no quarter is given. No opportunity to squeeze through must be missed. Or you will be left standing where you are while the world rushes (or inches) past you. And I used to wonder at this tearing hurry everyone is in. As if they might all be ambulances rushing to save fatally wounded passengers, while of course the real ambulances are just another set of blaring sirens (or horns) in the sea of sound, pleasantly ignored.


BUT... now I have developed a hypothesis. It is this. Indians have to wait so much, so long, everywhere, that a moment saved on the streets is a moment more you could wait...somewhere more productive.


This of course comes from my (very limited for now) experiences of waiting...
...waiting for the bank manager to appear in his office (the doors of which are thrown open, and customers help themselves to the chairs inside with no invitation)
...waiting for the banking clerk to confer, refer and then eventually prefer to answer your questions
...waiting for 'madam' (I mention no names or contexts because it is universal) to finish her phone conversation about her previous shopping experiences and impending trips and then to notice you, which she does by turning to you and raising a well plucked eyebrow
...waiting for the unidentifiable-but-ubiquitous 'helper' to take the form out of the drawer and present it to you (after of course repeatedly denying that he is in possession of any such forms)


...and thus, now I wait for all IAS and UPSC staff to clear their medical board certification. Because, only then will the 'Standing Medical Board'  test my health and hopefully find me fit to serve this great nation. I live in hope and wait......

Comments

Siva said…
Got reminded of my own banking experience back home before I left the shores.....The rate limiting step in the whole process of account-related paperwork was the need to have 3, maybe 4 signatures by officials of different ranks who sit at different places in the office and the helper boy who would moved the file at his discretion while i 'telpathically' (giving him the looks) implored him to please move my file...
May 23, 2010 at 6:48 PM
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