Viral, Queues and Queen

On Friday, I took an off. Not because it was the release of Singh Is Kinng and I wanted to watch the first day first show. I told you, I m not those types. I took the off because I had viral fever. Waiting at an old doctors’ old styled clinic, I smsed all my friends and M a message, here it goes:

Puri Botal na sahi, Kam se kam ek jam toh ho jaye,
Milna na sahi, dua salaam toh ho jaye,
Jinki yaad mein hum bimaar padey hain,
Kam se kam unhe zukhaam toh ho jaye.
.
.
Oye haal ta puch lo….

And in the purest spirit of responding to the chappal chor shayar’s shers, my dear friends sent me sms’es and M called. The two hour wait, yes the whole two hours of wait at the doctor’s even in this 21st century, became a little tolerable amid a sweating session, rising body temperature and tiresome body ache. Finally two benign patients saw my yellowing eyes and deteriorating condition, and requested me to skip their turns in the queue purely on compassionate grounds. Taking cognisance of their insistent enthusiasm in letting me reach the doctor’s altar, I complied. The doc saw me, declared I was a gone case of viral fever, told me strictly to stay away from work, prescribed the meds , charged his fee and sent me home.

So what is the big deal, you would ask. You were sick, you were told to rest.

No, here lies the twist.

Only I didn’t go home. I consumed the first dose of meds and headed to the WestEnd Mall in response to my little family’s enthusiasm to watch Singh is King this weekend. I thought, abhi nahi toh kabhi nahi. To the utter dismay of my driver, in about 15 minutes of taking the medicine, we were cruising through multiple traffic jams in blistering heat. Yes, we reached the Waves Cinemas to buy tickets. Never seen such an adarsh patni, adarsh maa even in the K serials, right? Such a sacrifice !!! So mushy?? Okay okay, leave out the crying part for later.

For the first time in my life, I saw Punjab’s essentially male - crowd civilized and queued-up even in the sun. I wanted to click a discreet picture for you to prove my point, but I didn’t have enough energy to argue in case someone chose to exercise their right to object. So I let my phone remain in my handbag. And exercised my privilege of going in a separate queue meant for women (which had only me) and went in. Oh boy, inside was a different story. At 12: 30 pm any given day in such a mall, you won’t see such a crowd. What I was looking at was a motley crowd of rustic, first time visitors to the Westend Mall. They were everywhere, in the corridors, in the elevators, on the escalators. And my brilliant brain immediately told me that Singh was again going to be King, this time in theatres. I was so proud of my Kurta-Payajama clad non-turbanated pendu’s.

I reached the Box office and there was a queue, and actually people standing in a queue. I stood in one too. No, I didn’t exercise my right of being a woman this time. There was this guy who first analysed my queue from his own from the left side, crawled towards ours and then sheepishly tried to fit into ours. I was secretly wary of anyone with any mal-intentions trying to sneak into our queue. The moment he tried to poke his pathetic existence into our queue, I knocked (in the spirit of knocking on a door) with my cell phone on his shoulder. I actually wanted to prick his conscience with a pin, but I did not have a pin and his conscience was not too visible. Surprised, he looked back and I said, "Excuse me, but there is a queue here.” He said, “Yeah, I just have to enquire.” I said, “Yeah, so come in a queue.” He didn’t know, of course, that the lady was running a fever. He again said, “Madam, ticket nahi lena hai; enquire karna hai.” I said, “Yeah, so come in a queue.” I was reminded of my dear friend and colleague N’s words, “Once a bhenji, always a bhenji.” I think he heard my brain tick with these words. Shrugging his shoulders in an I GIVE UP BHENJI tone, he went back. My turn came and I bought tickets to Singh is King. Oh, I forgot to add that by now, I was sweating even in the strong AC due to the medicines as well as exertion. I still had 101 fever if not more. Such Devotion. Akshey Kumar, Are you reading??