I concede that escaping a queue is more a matter of privilege than preference. I can sit in my sea-facing Colaba apartment and pontificate about the virtues of not buying into the kind of capitalism that makes me wait outside the Loewe store at Bicester Village. But for most in our country of 1.4 billion people, the stakes are higher than copping the latest Puzzle bag. Water timings, grocery rations, train tickets, bank work—an entire world of basic needs that is accessible to them only when they physically show up for it.
My gripe is with the ‘haves’, those in the top 1 per cent who—on the rare occasions that they have to queue—do incomprehensible things like shoot out of their seats before the flight has even landed to form a PG-13 version of the human centipede. I imagine them on their deathbeds in the distant future, recounting their best memories with their children and grandchildren by their side: “Holding you in my arms was a great feeling, but breathing down my fellow passenger’s neck before the plane door could open was better.” In a letter he sent to French scientist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy in 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “…In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” And yet, I am certain that even death will not free us from a queue, that Saint Peter will demand that we form a single infinite file at the Pearly Gates.
Only once in my life has standing in a queue served me well. My mum and I were at an artisanal cheese shop in Amsterdam years ago, holding five wheels of cheese between us to lug back to India. It was freezing outside, and the thin hoodie I had worn over my T-shirt—despite my mother’s repeated warnings to layer better—was doing nothing to silence my rattling bones. To tune out her reprimands, I began looking around the store. In the line next to ours, two girls stood next to each other, closer than I’d ever seen two girls stand next to each other. One of them said something and the other laughed, kissing her mid-giggle. “Look away!” my devout mom hissed, worried that her impressionable teenage daughter would be swayed by the scene unfolding in front of her. The girls heard her, but they looked at me instead and smiled. Suddenly, the room was flooded with warmth.
This story about standing in a queue appears in Vogue India’s July-August 2026 issue. Subscribe here.