The Line Solution

A big, largely ignored problem in our country is that we as countrymen, or patriots, or traitors, or no – good – doers have always found it too easy to take things for granted, far too often, than it should be. The condition is so severe that I am sure that even the singular ultra universe species called god, has taken a lot of hell of things granted for us. I had an appointment with the eye doctor the other day, just a routine check up and when we ended a little late at the clinic and I got worried, my dad assured me that the doctor would see us and we won’t have to wait for it. 20 years to life made me understand how and nod.

You see in our country (I am only estimating here, as our country is such that what happens at one place can be overviewed to be happening all over), since the midnight of august 15 1947 when Mr. Nehru’s speech stirred us to feel as independent nationals, there has been a unique technique prevalent, one which you happen to witness everyday in one form or the other. It has been uniquely created, adapted and adopted by and for us. Some call it evil, some call it necessary, and some others call it inevitable in a land of 1.2 billion inhabitants. The top level inhabitants of this wild food chain created it and started to exercise it seamlessly. This was passed down level by level ensured by the trickle down technique – which spreads all social practices created at any level. Finally those below all levels and all the social ‘strata’ – those who populate and hold the entire national system at one single state, which tells the proper truth of how much our national mentality has evolutionalized into nothingness and the books of economists (people who love to ignore their presence to a great extent when India’s ‘bright future’ is predicted) have defined them under one single term – poor, learned about it. After the poor learned about it from the ‘rich’ and spread it deep down through their systems of outside and inside. This infamous and lucrative technique has been – informally – and also lovingly, called as jugaad.

Now you see this great methodology anywhere and everywhere. Your friend just got a great internship. Wow, how did he ace it? Well, jugaad. (I needed to quote this as this is something which I have haplessly seen with every peer around me this time). Of course, when a strategy like this one is used on such a large scale in so many unavoidable situations – variations shape over. Now when I entered the clinic, and my eyes were blinded by the shimmering proof of India’s most famous and constant record statistic (population) glittering in front of me in the form of a single never ending column – my mind was shocked in the sudden acceptance of one of the greatest pains alive today – the pain to wait.

The line was – long. And it was an amazing kind of line, one of the kinds which you might see in any public office today – it had all kinds and types of economic levels being represented there. You might rarely see such a type of line in a hospital today, let alone at an eye doctor’s clinic. But the line was present and also displayed different degrading levels of human patience – you had the Jedi kind (not including the skywalkers here), you had the type with patience just about to reach the tipping point of mental (hopefully only mental) equilibrium, you had the hopeless type, you had the waiting for forever type, you had the type which displayed that their insides were crumbling over, you even had the type, which might be, were even happy to wait and sit on a plastic chair under a fan and a ceiling. Patience is probably the feeling that god invented to test how much you can feel when travelling straight through the sequence of time as he wanted you to – with no single idea or expectation of when your turn is going to come. And falling in line in a country like India which has a draconian number of individuals reaching out for everything put on the frontline, is the most fool proof methods of testing it.

So the technique which we used, a subtle variation of the classic method, which we used here was – the chit method. You see in our country the patience testing technique can end up being giving the most unexpected results. At one time, you go to a railway reservation counter and see such a large line – escalating to different kinds of curves – that shocks you so much that you drop the entire idea of booking a ticket and decide to buzz off. At another time, you wait in a queue in a bank patiently and when your turn comes over, the man at the counter informs you that the system just shut down. Clinics are a well known breeding ground for this queue parasite. And I can say this that the chit method which we use isn’t original. I’ve seen a lot of other family men employ this. In fact (if the past predictions are clear) the chit method was leaked by a doctor himself as an idea to a friend. Well, as proved earlier, in our society an idea (another parasite according to Mr. Nolan) spreads far too quickly. So the doctor had to face the dilemma of multiple chits just a month after he did its inception – well, more on this later.

The method involved writing the name of your contact which implied that you and your doctor were so ‘closely related’ that the doctor would immediately stop whatever treatment he was giving, remove his patient and give you the call, breaking you straight ahead of whoever was standing in the line. You wrote the name on a chit; passed it on to the person sitting at the reception in a sleek and secret way and then whisper to him to give it to the doctor right now with a mystique movement in your eyes in the same way as secret agents may pass around national secrets. Then you go to the line and wait. In clinics, there is an option of sitting down, as they have the facility to provide a number of chairs. You go to the one most behind, might possibly pass a smile to the fellows in your proximity (as they might get a little cross if your name is called out first – so a smile might be an improv). And then - you have to wait. You see 5 minutes pass by; 10 minutes pass by - thinking all the antique shit in the world which you can imagine never and nowhere. As you see another fellow go in, adjusting his shades and his sarkari pants; you decide to make a slow walk to the counter, just confirming if the guy at the reception has passed the little paper secret over, which he always has.

After 15 minutes of chit – passing, you start to feel your patience punctured. But there are always cases way deeper in the pit of patience destruction than you. There was a frustrated old ‘uncle’, who decided to show his smirks and angry coughs, with an announcement of the time sine when he has been waiting (a time which is always closer to eternity) when he sees a family passing over. The family had just appeared in a Lamborgini, with a little kid and an older daughter, and a satisfied wife and husband - and, oh, also his older guy. None of them appear to have any genuine eye problem, but all being in a mood for a family picnic, rather than a routine check up at a clinic. You begin to wonder if the line solution is in the end just a crap and has failed. But what has happened is an inbuilt interference, which can be termed as the time delay.

The doctor inside has been interrupted over and over by the arrival of a number of chits, in a lesser period of time of the check up. So, now as he looked over of ‘secret’ chits, he had to sort them out. But the chit method involved the use of the name. So he couldn’t sort them in the order of arrivals, but in that of the relevance of the name written on. The doctor glances over each chit, tries to remember for a moment about the who the hell was the ‘contact’ used here, and then created another line. Now, you were still in a queue – albeit a far shorter one. So, you did have to wait for a period which has been termed as ‘the time delay’.

Finally your chit runs over and your name gets called - you have now successfully been able to break the line! You hurriedly pass over other fellows who are now giving you the nastiest looks possible, with expressions exaggerated in level by the shift of their inner equilibrium. You can now hear the angry old 'uncle' swearing words and shouting, which is totally out of place for his character. the feelings of the line have now reached a stand point at which they gain requisite abilities to participate in a civilian war. Hence, bringing weapons to a clinic has always been banned. You decide to ignore all of this, even on your way out post check up. this is a nation of short cuts and solutions - and could never have bore to be one of ideals as strong as waiting solidly in a line. And you cannot survive without the former; as everyone has a solution prepared for everything everywhere.