On the eve of the Deepavali festival, I had to urgently send a couple of DVD copies of a film of mine to a Film Festival. At the government post office that I normally frequent, out of the two multi purpose counters where one could register posts, only one was operational. The second one was infested by a lazy not so middle aged man who refused to entertain customers as he stared at his computer; seemingly immersed in some work. 

Despite the advent of the internet, people in India still depend greatly on the Indian Postal Services to exchange festival greetings among themselves. The only counter that worked had a very long queue, maybe around ten to fifteen men and women waiting for their turn, most of them holding large chunks of mails with them. I thanked my stars when I saw the girl at the counter for she was generally fast, not like the other chips munching specs wearing lady who occasionally handled the counter and took great pride in making people wait. 

A fidgety man standing a little bit in front of me had around thirty posts with him. When his turn came, the lady at the counter insisted that she would take only three at a time for other people standing in the queue would get agitated. The man grumbled that he has been running around the post office with these letters for around an hour now. But the girl refused to budge. I was thrilled, for it meant that my time would be saved. 

The fidgety man then gave two of his posts to the boy standing behind him because the boy had just one post. I was standing behind the boy and had two posts with me. The fidgety man looked at me for a second and after encountering my grumpy face he somehow decided not to hand over his posts to me. I was thrilled again. Some more of my time was just saved. 

But when the boy’s turn came, the girl at the counter recognized the bluff and refused to entertain the two posts of the fidgety man. My glee knew no bounds for a little more of my time got saved. And then, what happened next was totally beyond my comprehension. 

The fidgety man gave a sigh and looked at the queue. None reacted. And as if accepting the fact that he had failed to get better of the system, he took back his two letters from the boy and made his way to the fag end of the queue to begin all over again. He would wait for his turn, register three more posts and then go back to the end of the queue to repeat the process till he was done with all his posts. To handle excessive postal traffic, this was the unwritten system adopted at this office. 

Greetings… Governance for you, in our country…