Indian Stretchable Time

The ticket purchase process is phenomenally inefficient and time consuming, and is a prime example of inefficient bureaucracy. But I was also struck by how well the Indians accepted the wait. They were fine with it. Perhaps not happy about it, but they had clearly internalized that waiting was a part of train tickets, and so chose not to dwell on such things. There was a little talking, but most of the people did not seem to know each other, so there was the studied silence of strangers forced to be in close proximity. Kinda like at the DMV or on metro trains.

This ability to wait seems to permeate a huge swath of Indian culture. Indians are constantly waiting. Be it for train tickets. Or for the train. I’ve only seen one Indian run to try to catch a bus; they’ll wait for the next one. Taxi drivers think nothing of waiting for hours for a client to return. Construction workers will just lay down and nap until their equipment comes. Indians don’t mind being bored.

Americans would rage against such tedium, I think. We hate waiting. We hate wasted time. Although shortened attention spans due to modern media might be a partial explanation, I think the main reason is because we think of our time as our own, and so feel umbrage when someone is squandering it, almost as it they are stealing from us. And in a way they are, if you take seriously the notion that “Time is Money.”

Indians seem to feel very differently about the matter. I can’t explain the mind set, only what I’ve seen them doing. But they certainly do not seem to mind if someone takes their time but does not fill it.