Fall into line. But not in India, or at McDonald's :)

Thanks go out to a friend (you know who you are!) who emailed about a NY Times piece on how "In India, waiting in line is not for the soft-elbowed." I loved the following description in that piece, because I have experienced that so many times during my growing up days in India:

Certain parts of the man behind you — you don’t know which — brush against you in a kind of public square spooning, the better to repel cutters. (Women do less touching.) Still, this is no deterrent to cutters. They hover near the line’s middle, holding papers, looking lost in a practiced way, then slip in somewhere close to the front. When confronted, their refrain is predictable: “Oh, I didn’t see the line.”

I hated the "lines" in India because any moment it could morph into the line going nowhere because what might have seemed like a minor queue suddenly took the lead!  Or, lining up in front of one service window only to find out that it is closed, when two windows down the customer service (?) agent arrives. ...

I have often wondered why the British didn't teach us Indians the concept of queuing during the decades they ruled over India.  They ought to have done this the day after they banned the custom of "sati."  It would have done the country a lot of good.  It is more than annoying when I return to India, to find, for instance, quite a few fellow-passengers who were all well-behaved at Frankfurt revert to their line-jumping traditions the moment the plane door opens :(

But, at least, I have never witnessed anything comparable to the one in this video (ht) :)