Column

After Effects

‘What’s the hurry?’ I often ask people this question and they accuse me of being laidback or getting old. For some strange reason everyone seems to have taken to heart the old adage that time and tide waits for none and hence there’s a need for speed.

I guess that’s the reason the gentleman in the seat next to me on the flight from Goa sprung to his feet barely a second after the aircraft had touched down and opened the overhead luggage compartment and started pulling out his bag.

The cabin crew kept requesting him to stay in his seat till the flight had come to a complete halt. “What’s the hurry, dude?” I wanted to ask him. “Do you plan to jump out of a moving aircraft?”

In the end, he left IC 164 with the rest of us, despite the breathtaking stunt of unfastening his seatbelt and swaying as he stood in the aisle to get hold of his luggage before all of us!

I wonder if he shows the same need for speed in his work. But I am sure he’s just as much in a hurry in a multiplex where he’s bounding down the aisle towards the exit even as the climax unfolds on the screen - and in the process blocking your view as he gets up from his seat and steps on a few toes on his way through the darkness from his seat to the aisle.

And that’s the beauty of the Indian moviegoer, who spends a fortune on the tickets but can’t wait for the movie to get over!

But the fact is that we all seem to be in a rush to go nowhere. Because, whether we get out of an airplane or a movie hall, we finally end up joining seemingly endless queues for almost everything in this city.

So there we’re at wedding receptions, queuing up to wish the bride and the groom and then joining the buffet line. At temples, we’ve to wait for our turn for a split-second tęte-ŕ-tęte with God. In your car, queuing up behind a dozen other vehicles in traffic jam.

As for me, the only time I feel the need for speed is during lunchtime! That apart, I am willing to queue up with the rest of the city with a paperback edition of Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’. But I wonder why he was in a hurry to be so brief!