The Good Indian's Guide to Queue-jumping

Lessons in Getting Ahead

A wise man once said that half of life is showing up -- and the other half is waiting in line. In a nation of a billion people, there's no escaping queues.

We find ourselves in one every day -- whether to board a flight, for a darshan at Tirupati or, if we are less fortunate, to fetch water from municipal taps. We no longer wait for years for a Fiat car or a rotary-dial phone, but there are still queues that may last days, like those for school admissions.

And then there are the virtual ones at call centres in which there's no knowing when we will make contact with a human. So if you can't escape 'em, can you beat 'em?

Mercifully, yes. And, if so, how can you jump queues better?

Which excuse works like a charm? How should you backtrack if someone objects?

Does it help to make eye contact? Are we generally accommodating of queue-jumpers and why?

More importantly, what does queue-jumping say about us as a people? Does it mean we lack a sense of fairness and basic concern for others?

These are questions of everyday survival that bestselling author V. Raghunathan first threw up in Games Indians Play and now takes up at length in The Good Indian's Guide to Queue-jumping.

Raghu is an academic, corporate executive, author, columnist and a hobbyist. He taught finance at IIM, Ahmedabad, for nearly two decades before turning a banker as the president of ING Vysya Bank in Bengaluru. He is currently the CEO of GMR Varalakshmi Foundation. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Bocconi, Milan, Italy, and Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada. Raghu has probably the largest collection of antique locks in the country, has played chess at all-India level, and was briefly a cartoonist for a national daily. He has been writing extensively for leading newspapers and magazines and currently blogs for the Times of India. His books include Locks, Mahabharata and Mathematics; Ganesha on the Dashboard; Corruption Conundrum; Don't Sprint the Marathon and Games Indians Play. Visit him online at www.vraghunathan.com.