A Saturday morning visit to the apartment vegetable shop and I am greeted by a queue. Not a very long one, but still 4 people are in front of me. I take the plastic basket from the shopkeeper and quickly run through the list in my mind while picking up the items one by one. Now, we humans are always in hurry these days, so going by that innate behavior I too want to be done in a jiffy and head to the play area where my elder daughter is playing with her friends. It is already 11 and am worried about the sun shining too bright for my comfort when, after buying the vegetables, would be playing a quick basketball game in the court adjacent to the play area.
All I have to do now is wait for the queue to quickly vanish. I calculate the average time before my turn will come which will of course depend on the speed of the grocery seller's wife at the billing counter. She is pretty slow. I keenly observe her actions - slowly typing the code and weight of the vegetables in the billing machine and squinting to see if she has entered everything right and then repeating the whole ritual for the next time. I look around - all of my predecessors have mounds of items in their respective baskets. My heart asks my mind to be patient and my ears start listening to the banter in the vegetable shop.
There is an old lady talking to a young couple - a couple who are planning to fly soon to the states to a new life and new beginnings. The lady who looks like in her sixties starts by explaining how her husband has been unwell for the past ten days and how life has been tough for her. She then switches to more of a general talk which is actually mostly advice of talking care of one self while in US. I notice that there is one couple who is just behind me - impatience and focused - I mean they know they have come to buy groceries and that's it - eyes, ears and the whole body focused at completing the task with utmost efficiency - they must in IT I conclude.
Finally, after a long wait of fifteen minutes I am the one being served. Finally the woman at the counter picks up the fruits that I have handpicked, carefully monitors the quality of each and every item before finally pressing the code in the machine. I take a deep breath. Meanwhile, my ears report that the sixtyish lady has picked up a few bananas and a bread and is hovering next to the queue. I see her hand with these two items slowly approaching the billing woman, followed by a gentle request - "Can you quickly bill these? My husband is very sick and I have left him all alone" I think, the lady quickly realizes that there are at least half a dozen people behind me waiting to pay the money. She promptly adds another request to the focused couple right behind me. The focused IT man is a bit hesitant -"Oh...Hmmm...There are people after us". The sixtyish lady looks a bit confused, may be contemplating to request each one of them.
By now half of my buy is already billed - I feel a sudden surge of pity for the elderly woman. I try to make life easier for her and offer - "Aunty, why don't you get it billed before the rest of my items". The shopkeeper's wife taking the hint, quickly calculates the amount and hands over the two items to the aunty. The aunty is gone in 60 secs of course without any customary thank you.
"If she was in so much of a hurry, she could have avoided chit chatting for the past 15 mins!" - the focused IT woman comments, while her husband is nodding vehemently in full agreement.
This asks for thought on my part - I simply had not given much thought that indeed the old lady was happily gossiping for quite a while.
I feel a bit silly - but still I cant conclude that she shouldn't have chatted. Knowing (which she had very loudly announced in the shop), that her husband was sick for the past so many days, she had all the right to chat around, taking those few minutes off from her tense schedule. Whether she should have barged in the queue - may be not..but what's the big deal! She is above sixty - facing life and the world for the past six decades and may be buying groceries and standing in the grocery queues for the past four decades! It was time she got some leverage from the young people around - a few of them which might be unjustified. If not the Indian government, then we as more physically fit people can make her path obstacle-less. What's the big deal after all - it was just a matter of 60 seconds, I even wait more than that time for my laptop to boot and sometimes for my phone touch screen to respond!!
