Aap Qatar mein hain

A friend from school who had once gone to Bombay, would often recount how the line busy message there would be relayed by a sweet sounding operator as “aap Qatar mein hain” (You are in a queue). That was way back in the late 1990’s when the mobile phone revolution had not taken the country by a storm. The days of the telephonic “Qatar” have gone away, thanks to the mobile revolution, but no other revolution has probably been able to do away with the queue factor, totally.
Take any railway reservation counter, for instance. Irrespective of the number of windows, one in all probability finds himself behind at least 20 others, the first five of whom make a circle around the counter trying to look at the details of the one first in the line. One very plausible reason for this can be the fact that 50% of the counters are almost always closed, three are current reservation counters and the computers in two others seem to be out of order. So all in all you have three to four functional counters with about thirty to forty persons jostling for space outside each of them. And thus is formed the “Qatar”, which Bombay telephones has been able to do away with.
When it comes to queues, of all the places I have visited so far, Calcutta must take the cake for the highest number of queues. Come out of the Howrah station and look around you will see queues everywhere. Queues at the pre-paid taxi booth, queues for the buses run by the state transport (CSTC) , queues for the auto rickshaws as well as the cycle rickshaws. The Calcuttans are a disciplined and a patient lot, There are long queues at the metro stations at the ticket counters. There are the Sunday queues at the “mangsher dokan”(The shops selling mutton). There are queues at the shops selling “Telebhajas”(fried savouries). There are queues at the shops selling “ruti and dim tarka” (Chapatis and dal fry). There are queues at the pujo baris (the puja pandals) during Durga Puja, during Kali Puja, during Laksmi Puja and almost every festival with which the Banagli bhadralok forms an emotional bonding.
But the greatest laugh is generated at the urinals at the railway stations in Howrah and Sealdah. The urge to piss is quite evident as the commuters in the queue wait with patience, crushing their teeth and swearing under their breath about the volume of the liquid waste the luckiest among them is releasing.
As in life, so in death. While the average Calcuttan spends about half of his life waiting in queues, his dead body too has to wait in a queue, especially if his kin decide to go the green way, i.e use an electric crematorium. Though this is something, I can not and will not generalise, because the Calcutta loving bhadralok will not be able to defend aamar Kolkata, but I have been a witness to such a queue of dead bodies, waiting to be burnt at the Keoratala burning Ghat.
The ones at the back were however not cursing the ones at the front.