I remember queues outside "fair-price shops", streetside taps, cinema houses and electricity offices. People lined up to buy cheap food and fuel, store up water, go to the cinema and pay bills.
Mailing a letter from the post office could involve several queues: one for buying stamps, another for weighing the letter. Even the dead queued up, waiting to be cremated.
India was an economy blighted by shortages - even the well-to-do had to "virtually" queue up for a car and telephone for years - and queues were linked to lack of supplies. When you booked a long-distance call on the creaky state-run telephone network, an automated voice reminded you that: "You are in the queue."
But, on the whole, the physical queues reminded many of us of Vladimir Sorokin's novel The Queue, a slyly funny tale about the chokehold of interminably long lines on the lives of people during Stalin's rule which, he wrote, had turned the Soviet Union into a gigantic "line of lines". Full story...
Related posts:
Mailing a letter from the post office could involve several queues: one for buying stamps, another for weighing the letter. Even the dead queued up, waiting to be cremated.
India was an economy blighted by shortages - even the well-to-do had to "virtually" queue up for a car and telephone for years - and queues were linked to lack of supplies. When you booked a long-distance call on the creaky state-run telephone network, an automated voice reminded you that: "You are in the queue."
But, on the whole, the physical queues reminded many of us of Vladimir Sorokin's novel The Queue, a slyly funny tale about the chokehold of interminably long lines on the lives of people during Stalin's rule which, he wrote, had turned the Soviet Union into a gigantic "line of lines". Full story...
Related posts:
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- Indian economy grinds to a halt after cash-ban
- For the first time in India, the rich beg the poor to help them...
- The ugly face of India's demonetization: Dozens of deaths...
- Baby dies after Indian hospital refuses to accept parents' money...
- Decision on note ban like 'kadak chai'; bad taste for rich, poor love...
- India's great bank note switch appears to be working...
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