On 10 August 2010 23:37, Thaths <[email protected]> wrote: > > > There is a feline quality to standing in Indian lines. 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.
This is the most horrid feature of Indian lines. I have been unable to figure out if the guy behind me is trying to get ahead, or just wants a feel of my arse. > But the market also changes a culture. A line conceives of people as > citizens, presumed equal, each with an identical 24 hours a day to > spread among the lines around them. A market conceives of people as > consumers, presumed unequal, with those who can pay in front of the > others. It allocates efficiently, but it eliminates a feature of line > culture: the idea that, in line at least, we are no better than > anybody else. Then, there are those that do not view themselves as equal to others, and they adopt devious means to get ahead of the queue. This one time, at Big Bazaar (the great mall of cheapness), there was queue of 20 people at the "less than 10 items" counter. This one guy who was in front of me by two spots had two cans of Coke. When he approached the counter, a hench-woman appeared out of the shadows with a cart full of groceries, and they proceeded to bill it. The surprising bit was, no one spoke up against this behaviour. This is normal. We are no better than anybody else, but if people want to get ahead (by any means necessary) we let them, and learn. We just emulate them the next time around. ~ashwin PS: Yes, I did make huge cry about the guy being billed The management stepped in and asked him to move to another queue. If looks could kill, this response would be from the twilight zone.
