Queue sera sera

Housemaid's knee, the only ailment which the 19th-century hypochondriac turned humorist Jerome K Jerome found he had not contracted after skimming through an encyclopedia of diseases in the British Museum, may have just got aggravated in today's Bangalore.
The other day, my housemaid Mary, who mops and sweeps various apartments including mine for a living, told me that she and her friends had, instead of putting their feet up for a well-earned rest after completing their chores, stood in a lengthy queue to collect their UIDAI Aadhaar card from the neighbourhood post office.However, when those standing in the queue finally reached the counter, they were told to come back the next day since the official tasked with identifying the would-be recipient and handing over the Aadhaar card had not turned up for work.
''We spent the morning standing in a queue to collect our Aadhaar cards but only to be told when we reached the counter that we should queue up again tomorrow,'' Mary grumbled. Eyes are the window of the soul, the legendary Hindi movie director Guru Dutt once said. Eyes are also what you glare through when you stand in a lengthy queue and are told only after you reach the counter that you have to return the next day since a particular official is on leave. And so what if the iris of the eye is one of the unique identification points which differ from individual to individual. Unless, of course, one is a Tom Cruise who gets his eyes replaced in the movie Minority Report just so he can deceive the scanner.
The other way of looking at it is that Indian officials (especially those missing from counters in front of which there are lengthy queues) may be arrogant but that standing in a queue inculcates much-needed virtues like discipline. Time was when the national character or the lack of it would be assessed on the basis of how orderly the people were when it came to standing in queues.
If this school of thought is to be believed, it was this lifelong disciplined habit of falling in line and standing in queues which enabled the British to transform their island nation into a global empire on which the sun would never set. Queuing up day in and day out also helped the British to reconcile themselves to the subsequent transition from an empire to a welfare state where every citizen was assured of proper medical care under a national health scheme as long as she or he queued up.
The British still queue up even if it is to watch a royal kiss of the kind shared by the just-then-married William and Catherine on the afternoon of April 29, 2011. It was estimated that a 5,00,000-strong crowd watched from The Mall as William and Kate kissed on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. The TV footage had earlier shown the very orderly crowd walking along The Mall in one measured step after the other so as to arrive on time to watch William and Kate kiss not once but twice — with the first one at 1.26 pm London time, followed by an encore lasting 1.25 seconds at 1.29 pm, as estimated by the tabloids who like to get every kissing detail right.
If people could queue up for a kiss in London and that too somebody else's, why crib about having to queue up not once but twice for an Aadhaar card entitling the recipient to more material benefits like cash transfers, i tried telling the maid Mary when she complained about how the poor in India were being harassed by the postal authorities. And then i realised that i would also have to queue up outside the same post office unless i wanted to kiss my Aadhaar card goodbye, and along with it the subsidised nine LPG cooking cylinders a year.