With population explosion getting out of control day-by- day, the long queues everywhere have become an order of the day. There is hardly any place where a queue is not seen. Whether it is a bus stop; the booking counter at a railway station, a counter to pay your electricity, phone or water bills or a ration-shop or a hospital, waiting in a long queue is unavoidable, indeed!
Wherever you go, whatever work you want to do, you can’t escape queues. We are so accustomed to queues that we are pleasantly surprised, if we don’t see a queue at the bus- stop or a ticket booking-window. At most places, there is even a reminder, prominently displayed: stand in a queue.
Waiting in a long queue can not be avoided at all. On Weekdays, you have to stand in queues for catching your bus or booking a ticket for a railway journey. You lose your temper and curse yourself when, after standing in a queue for hours together, you find that you are in the wrong queue. The ordeal has to start all over again. You are, naturally, annoyed. You ask somebody at the counter about the right queue for you to stand in; but he will point it out in such a way that you will not be able to decide where to go. You are then left with no other alternative but trust your luck.
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On week-ends too, there is no escape from serpentine queues. You stand in long lines for getting your rations or for booking a ticket for a cinema show, or for getting tickets for a bus or a railway journey. At times, the length of a queue and its disorderliness makes you tremble with fear and lose your heart.
There is the story of a man who got so disgusted with queues that he went to the seashore to commit suicide. But even there, he found a long queue of frustrated persons like him, waiting for their turn to get drowned.
Standing in a queue gifts you with the noble quality of patience and toleration. You find it very difficult to pass time. You often become a forced reader of a newspaper or a magazine or start whistling for a while. You even sing to yourself and look at the hawkers and beggars around, or start brooding the solutions to a number of problems of life.
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You try to talk to persons standing in front of, or behind you. But they cut you short. All are in a sullen mood. Nobody is in a mood to talk. You get tired and exhausted. But you cannot afford to lose your patience or temper. The only consolation in such a dismal situation comes from John Milton’s famous line:
‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’