Skewed Queues

Whenever I look at a white collared professional, I always wonder if education could have changed my life. I started to work at an age when I should have ideally been carrying a school bag instead of the cement bag and bricks. I started with an income of Rs.10 per month. For the first few years of my professional life, I carried cement and other amenities at the construction site. Then I learnt to mix the cement and sand in the right proportions. Soon I learnt how to lay the bricks and patch up the walls too. Today, I am sixty years old, an age when the government wants you to retire. It is only after so many years, that I can decipher the layout plan of a building whose bricks were laid by me.

The man who instructed us and got all the work done was a white collared professional. He visited the site once in two weeks and used to make some drawings which I never understood. All that I knew was that he was an educated man, and education had power. The power that distinguished the white collared people from blue collared people like me. The power to change the unchanged, the power to create and the power to destroy. I was determined to bestow the best education to my children, so that they could take on the world and accomplish the things I had never been able to. I wanted to give them all that was denied to me. I worked untiringly and sometimes, I worked for two shifts just to make ends meet. Supporting both a sick wife on one hand and a school going child on the other was no easy task. I have no regrets for the sacrifices I've made over the years, for today, my son is a white collared professional. He works in a fully air conditioned building. He wears ironed clothes to office and even his feet don't touch the sand.

Last week, my son had forgotten his Tiffin box at home. My wife was feeling terrible about it. So I decided to make her happy and I went to deliver it to him at his office. His office is located at the outskirts of the city and has not one, but 5 high raised buildings inside o
ne place. I wondered inside which building my son was working. Travel to his office is quite complicated. I had to travel by a van till the gate. While I was waiting for a van, I saw many other white collared professionals like my son who were waiting for the van. The moment the van arrived, all of them huddled at the entrance of the van and pushed their way inside. I found it a bit hard to make my way into the van. I was the last man to get in and I wasn't surprised about not finding myself a place to sit. I stood at the rear end of the van because I was afraid of standing near the door. The moment the van reached the destination, it was the same scene that was at the entrance. Everyone huddled and was racing to get out. I wonder how a fifty second delay in getting out of the van would affect them.

I called up my son to find out where I had to deliver his Tiffin box. He told me to come to a place called the cafeteria. I couldn't even pronounce the word properly. I finally discovered that it was a common gathering where everyone ate. At the construction site, the huge mountains of sand was our cafeteria. The only difference was that, here food was sold and at the construction site we brought our food. I saw a huge line of young men and women standing close together like a chain. They were waiting to get a small chit of paper from a man who was selling it from a computerized machine.

Soon my son arrived.I gave him his lunch, and he asked me to sit with him till he finished. I told him about how people were pushing one another in the van and right in front of our eyes at the cafeteria. He told me "Dad this is not some school or military to stand in attention in straight lines. How would you understand? All your life you were just a blue collared worker."

Yes I was a blue collared worker all my life. I never went to school to learn to stand in a line. I've never attended republic day and Independence Day parades to learn that I must maintain a two feet distance from the person standing in front of me. In the construction site, the only important thing was to follow a line. Hell would break loose if we didn't, and no one pushed or fell over one another. Every evening, we stood one behind another to collect our daily wages. There were women and children in the queue and hence, we maintained the two feet distance between each other. There were women who had to go home and feed hungry kids, fathers who had to go home just to give their family the money so that they could buy their dinner, but no one pushed or huddled or raced to get what was due to them . We knew there was no point in running a race that had no medals.

On my way back home, I struggled my way into the van and got a place to sit. Education sometimes can get your life into the right line. I think it requires more than just education to stand in a straight line.