The great Indian queue trick

3rd November 2009

A queue in India is no one is willing to stand it. In Bombay you will see people queuing up for buses, at ticket counters and some unlikely places like ATM machines. They will stand in a queue but will look for a reason to jump the queue. Then you have people not in the queue but just hanging there that causes even more confusion and creating more split ends, just like you have in hair which makes people argue over which is the original queue.

One place people never queue up is to board a train. There is mayhem when a train arrives. To get a seat you have to do something called "udi maar ke chadna" which means jumping in the train before it comes to a halt and yes, if you are wondering, you can do that in Bombay because the doors of our trains are always open.

One place where people queue up unnecessarily is the airport. People queue up at the airport gates even before it is open and after landing they start queuing up at doors of the plane even before the plane comes to a halt.