Today my husband and I were at an auditor's office. It wasn't crowded nor the work we had was something that required plenty of time. It should have been done in a couple of minutes. But no. We were made to wait for a very long time. It was then that this post struck me. Being made to wait is a sign of power. The longer a person is made to wait, the more important the person on the other side is. In India (I can't speak for any other country. If you have similar experience, please do share) everywhere one is made to wait. The person-in-charge will never commit to an exact time and if she/her does so, then invariably the time is delayed. An appointment is given only to prolong it. If one is asked to come on a particular day for getting some official papers, the papers aren't given until two days pass. Laziness? Power? I don't know. I am unable to put my finger on any one particular reason. But like the shit, dirt and squalor that you read about in the
last post, we the citizens of India have grown accustomed to waiting and being denied the luxury of having everything done on time. So when we visit other countries, we are almost bedazzled!
My dear friend
K, exclaims, "But the wait is part of India's epistolary tradition . . ." when we discuss our letters reaching each other at the earliest. We endlessly wait and perhaps that waiting has added that extra dash of pleasure for receiving hand-written letters. But can someone trust our postal system and write a love-letter to her/his friend? Who knows by the time the letter reaches the person, she or he might have fallen in love with someone else and even married him or her. Well, that's the waiting for letters.
Now, the waiting that many young ones profess to be doing:
Waiting for Mr or Ms. Right! I hate to be the one to throw cold water on this belief like Sharmila Tagore did to Rajesh Khanna in the film
Aradhana! The rights never exist, it only depends on us to settle down for someone who is an assortment of rights/lefts/wrongs and humour! Tell me, who is the right one after all. If the looks are good, the thoughts are creepy, if the thoughts are good, then the education is not okay. Finally if everything is good, the person is already taken! Well, the wait is not actually a wait, it is foolishness.
So, in India, we end up waiting for many things and if one calculates the time that we have waited for everything, it would be a good number and in that time we would have done many other wonderful things - like
wasting spending time on Facebook,
repinning inspirational quotes and smiling buddhas, checking what blog posts have appeared in the dashboard and so on.
Sometimes even the internet booting makes you wait. Well, one can always check stuff in the mobile until then.
So, dear reader what have you waited for?
Image:
Internet