The Waiting Game

Its been a while now, and I have been playing one game that I hate playing. Its a killer, and is called the Waiting Game. The rules are simple. You play for something. The opposition, which in this Game can be anything - your impatience, pesky showroom guys, nasty conductors, cramped buses, an unwilling-to-start motorcycle, your fate - anything goes. You have different levels, different rewards/goals to wait for. And I think almost everyone will agree that it is not the best of things to do. There are many reasons why I hate to play the Waiting Game, which I will get to in a while.

This time around, I am playing for a car. The way you play the game is simple. You choose an item to play for. And having chosen it, you hope that you will win. You usually win the goal, that is not what the game is all about. The game is about how many hairs you tear, how many people you yell at, how many glass thingies you break. And its no fun because these items that you break are yours, the hair you tear is yours, and the people you yell and sceram at are also your friends.

I have booked a car. Now I am waiting for delivery. Sounds simple, doesn't it? It is, actually. Until you realize that fate seems to be working against you. First you run around to collect the documentation required. Then the showroom and finance guys get back and tell you that there area few more things that you have missed giving them, which is silly, because they never asked for those damn things in the first place.

Then they say that the model you had asked for is not available now. This after you have done all the running around. They say the standard baniya line - 'last piece, just booked and we didn't know...'. The new one is 'Sir, now you have to get the Euro III version, and we have stopped selling the Euro II', or whatever the earlier version was. Which means that you run around, and then pay extra (the Euro III is obviously more costly, because it sounds more mysterious), and then chew on your fingernails till they fucking well bleed, and then...never mind! Update: The new refrain is - the color you are looking for is out of stock ...GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!@#$@#%*@#@

I think we hate waiting around, simply because it is the one activity we indulge in most of our lives. And many times the results aren't exactly what we would have liked them to be. Think about it. All we do is wait throughout our lives. Wait to grow up when we are small. Wait for the parents to start treating us like adults. Wait to stop drinking the damn milk and start off with coffee/tea, and after about a decade or more maybe graduate to alcohol... Wait to start using the ink pens instead of the stupid childish pencils. Wait for exams to finish and holidays to come. Wait for the class bully to be beaten up by someone, anyone... Wait for the good times to come, and wait for the bad times to pass. Wait for the end-of-the-month days to pass (that is another game I am playing on the side right now...) and moolah to slide into your salary account. Wait, even though we don't like it, for death to take us away. I think you get what I mean.

What makes me hate the Waiting Game more is the unjustness of the reward system. Slog so much, wait so hard, face so many odds. For what? A fleeting moment of satisfaction, a glimpse of hells belles, a flash of happiness in our otherwise monotonous lives. And then its gone, and all we can do is plan for the next level of the game. Don't we ever get tired of playing it? I think we do. But we are like the automatons. We have been programmed to seek, seek, seek...get some...and then seek, seek again. All our lives. It is frightening, but that is what I think we are like to our pet dogs and cats and the Martians. About that, some other time...bah!

Anyways, the game is on. I am getting hammered, as is usually the case. However, I will get that fleeting glimpse of hell's belles soon...I know it, and that is what makes my life so good to me...Moral of the story: better to be stupid and fleetingly happy than to be stupid and forever sad...cheers!