Soaring heights

The railway booking office was busy with the buzz of a couple of scores of people. All had anxious looks on their faces- even those who were nearest to the counter. The fact was that all those 40 and those who came in moment by moment wanted to book tickets before the counter closed at 6.30 pm. And time was 5.10 pm! Great isn’t it?
Each of them was special ‘characters.’ One tried to sneak into the line stealthily, and had the most tensed anxious look. When people requested him to be in the queue, he shouted back at them. He corrected his reservation form 5 times. Each cime someone left the counter, he prepared to see is someone had intruded the queue. He seemingly was on pins! May be, he wanted to visit the loo soon after the booking?
Another character came to the counter and found out that no berth was available. He tore the form into 0.25 inch pieces and threw them onto the floor. When someone asked him to put them in the waste basket, he annoyingly said ‘sorry’ and left the place leaving those fluttering pieces of paper linger in the room.
In the meanwhile, an old man managed to sneak into the line and reach the counter. Ah! There was an uproar as if a tiger came among them. But corrective measure couldn’t be taken since the old man had already booked his ticket. Another man, angry at this injustice kept on abusing that unruly old man for the next 15 minutes.
Tension was mounting as time was 5.30 pm by then. One hour to go. The one who stealthily sneaked in still vigilantly kept his surveillance open, to see if anyone sneaks in (or to see of there is any possibility of sneaking in?).
The queue kept growing as time elapsed, and tension too grew exponentially. By the way, the queue was a funny one. It had a spiral structure. The beginning of the queue was inside the spiral and end was outside. One had to make a few lucky guesses to join the queue, escaping the abuses of the group.
Ah! Now! A man with face of a British Bulldog kept on pounding in the air. He looked ferociously at everyone around. At one point of time, he stood up and shouted at the reservation clerk and made this statement: “you are taking 5 minutes to book one ticket!” Hearing this phenomenal, specimen utterance, the clerk got wild. He stood up and yelled at the Bulldog. Now the whole crowd rose to the occasion and pulled the Bulldog down- imagine if the clerk leaves the place aggravated by the Bulldog!
And my chance came. I booked the ticket at 6.10 pm, well ahead of closing time. Still people were coming in; pieces of paper were falling down and flying around. Faces grew tense, crowd grew bigger... Still 20 minutes were left for the counter to close...