Bangalore airport. 9:20 am. They make a departure call for the flight to Pune. Passengers walk towards the gate. A healthy queue is formed, and I get lucky to be 5th from the departure gate.
2 minutes later, I see a tall young chap, must be in his late twenties, rushing towards the same gate. Our man notices a long queue is already in place, and is thoroughly disappointed. So he comes and stands right ahead of me, trying to “ghees” (ghees = sneak. IIT lingo) in.
“Do you see the queue”, I ask him. Little annoyed, the guy walks back a few steps. Only to ghees in, though a good 5 guys behind me.
Fast-forward, 10 minutes. Our bus stops near the A-320. We all get down, and form another queue to board the plane. I am about 5th or 6th once again. Yet again, this young chap tries to ghees in a bit ahead of me. And yet again, I object. He walks past me, only to sneak in the queue right behind me.
Fast-forward, 80 minutes. A-320 has landed. The seat-belt sign is yet to be turned off. And I see this same young chap jump up and rush towards the exit! This time, I stop him and ask, “What exactly is the rush? Didn’t we all reach Pune at exactly the same time despite all your sneaky runs”.
“Just mind your own business” came a polite answer. An explanation followed, “You were not happy each time I jumped ahead of you. And I moved back. But as long as guys behind me don’t object to me jumping in, what is the problem?”.
“Yes”, I had to buy that, “I should mind only my own business”. And everything will be just fine.
/India/Bangalore/things 
Sometimes you have to follow the philosophy of you can’t change the world and just grin and adjust. At other times, one has to take a stand.
Hiren, the bigger question is this. Why is it that most people don’t mind someone jumping ahead of them in a queue. Isn’t this the reason we see queue indiscipline everywhere around us?
I wonder if bringing it to the notice of the flight attendants would help. In any case, this is a typical ‘metrobrash’ attitude which is a ‘delhite’ trademark (no offence to good delhites– many of whom i know personally know and can vouch for). The worse part is that they dont know or care (or both) for society etiquettes. hope they suffer later…..amen.
Bhaskar, may be that some cities are slightly worse off than the rest (let Delhi-ites defend themselves here). But, all our cities have this ‘brash’ and unruly culture. I posted this story to ask a question. Isn’t our individual indifferences (to these acts of misbehavior – many call it our “tolerance”) the real reason for bad manners visible everywhere?
i was just wondering if this silkboard is in reference to the silkboard near bommanahalli ?
ha i just check the abut page and got my ans … hurry hurry has no blessings :-) …
I had a similar experience last year when I was in India. I was waiting in the queue to get my check-in luggage scanned. This young stylish girl-lady of around 24 comes in front of the queue and stands next to the guy whos second in the queue – Another chap , her friend or brother, comes and stands behind her. I ask them to fo (not those exact words) and she says to me “Dont worry, I am not trying to jump the queue”. Fair enough, I think. They keep standing next to me until I get my bag scanned and then push their way in the queue. No one behind me said anything and it felt a bit weird. As expected, got a nasty look from her but I gave a damn.
Ankur. Hurry hurry is worry worry. And were you the guy I ran into I mention above !? How do you compare Mumbai and Bangalore?
TGND – exactly! Most of us just tolerate and dont care. Extrapolate this small but frequent incident to bigger things. This explains why we let those neta/babus shape our destinies the way they want. We just dont want to participate in governance activities around us. {edited – took out the word rustic}.
If Rustics are doing it now do we want a bunch of URBAN (Not urbanE) goons to do it!?And how?!!
hotgal, yes. not the best word used there. Didn’t mean to imply rural as such. Meant to refer to some rude and crude politicians (refer recent fist fight in Parliament). mistake made and admitted.
But the question is, why are we so passive about poor state of things around us? Especially in cities that are full of educated and supposedly aware people. Either we are all happy the way we are. Or we are just too selfish and self indulgent to spare a minute or two to take panga with the likes of this indisciplened guy.
I am losing the plot a bit, calls for a separate post.
[…] Over in Indian we find out what the queues are like at a check-in in Delhi, and there is also a great post here about a queue jumper in Bangalore airport with some interesting comments about the responsibility of a society to prevent such bad manners. If you think, after reading this, that India to frightful a place to visit, hopefully this blogger’s comments on the unregulated queues at Mambalam railway station and how important it is to apply this to market forces. […]
Yes, I think we should protest everytime and everyone of us – only then we can hope to unghees these people!