Hubris Ascending.

k.u.m k.u.m BALA MALI Adore.

BHUPEN RAGHUPATI Love.

k.u.m k.u.m Bala Mali adores Bhupen Raghupati. Bhupen Raghupati loves k.u.m k.u.m Bala Mali. Adore and Loathe, Love and Hate, Sweet and Sour, S and M-the Ministers Secretary in the Ministry of Heritage, Upbringing and Resource Investment was pleased with the outcome of his computations. With his w.a.n.g ascending, leaking, licking its lips, struggling for Lebensraum, as it were, in the trousers of his safari suit, he looked up from his desk at the object of his desire for that day.

Shed written earlier for an appointment with the Minister because she had a housing problem that she wished to discuss. Her letter, on fancy handmade paper-along with the compellingly negative notes of the Department-lay before the Ministers Secretary. Her perfume suffused the room-indeed, made him breathless.

He had for long held a theory about perfumes. All human aromas-everybody knew-were an invitation to s.e.x. They emanated from the bodys erogenous zones. The more potent the perfume, the more erogenous the zone. Bad body smells indicated a desire to be mastered, to be down below, an I-have-the-mind-and-body-of-the-Great-Unwashed-so-please-defile-me signal. Good aromas showed a desire to allure, to be approved of, to sniff and be sniffed, sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic psychological insecurity. So sensitive was the Ministers Secretary to odours that on his acute days, he could virtually see the s.e.xual organ-whether p.u.s.s.y or p.r.i.c.k-on which hed focused all his shakti, oozing, sweating out its welcoming scented fluids through constricting cottons and into the air. He himself unfailingly daubed his armpits and crotch every morning with Yardleys Aftershave Lotion.

While k.u.m k.u.m Bala Mali droned on, smiling at him, fluttering her impossible eyelashes, creasing her make-up, he doodled on his note pad, beside his last round of Love-Like-Hate-Adore, a Cubistic sketch of a fecund thatch, beneath it a curious apple-shaped form, from which a pair of thighs split wide apart and beckoning ripples of aroma exuded in sets of four wavy lines each. This was Raghupatis favourite doodle. When time permitted, hed usually add a symbolic worm emerging from-or boring its way into-the apple. It was one angle on the world.

The letter was quite another.

9, Ganapati Aflatoon Marg.

8 January.

Respected Bhanwarji Virbhim Sahebji, Do I need to introduce myself? By using up a few lines to describe myself, do I not insult your intelligence and your knowledge of the world? Id certainly have thought so, but much to my surprise, the civil servants in your ministry hold different views. I must say that I was astonished to receive, in response to my preceding letter on the same subject, a standard cyclostyled reply from the Under Secretary (Housing For Cultural Luminaries), enclosing a form that asked for my biodata.

I did not send it. Instead, in my rejoinder to the luminary, I declared that if he needed to read my biodata to know who I was, then he was not qualified to be an Under Secretary in the Department of Culture. His latest cyclostyled salvo orders me to vacate my bungalow by the end of February.

Its now or never, observed Raghupati to himself; remember that times running out at the speed of light. 'Madam Mali, may I ask of you a favour?

'Why-of course. Smile, flutter flutter.

'Will you have dinner with me, one evening this week? Just you and me? For me, itll be a dream come true.

'Oh, Im very-I dont know what to say!

'Then say nothing! And Ill take your demure silence to mean a bashful yes! You dont know-you CANT know what you mean to me! Youre the raging beacon of my adolescence-ohh, those Sixties films! Iskq Mein Doob Jaa, Lachhmanjhoola, Aag Ki Rekha, Ek Gaon Mein Pardesi, b.u.mbai Kahan Hum Kahan, Jhuk Gayi Sita, Guftagu Chalti Rahe, Naa Mat Kehna, Aakash Mein Teen Badal, Subah Ki Aasha Mein-I could recite the names of your Golden Jubilee films forever, truly! When you announced after Do Raaste Mein Teen Kutte-my G.o.d, more than fifteen years ago!-that you were going to quit films, you caused as much heartache in the nation as Part.i.tion . . . there were a handful of suicides reported in the papers, I remember . . . so what dyou say, Madam? Dinner on Thursday?

'Yes, I suppose so-may I phone you? . . . Ill have to check my diary which, unfortunately, Ive left at home-but you do think that you can solve my bungalow problem?

'Shall we discuss that over dinner? A dinner and a long evening alone with you, Madam, is all that I ask in return. A favour for a favour. t.i.t for tat. The entire edifice of the government, Madam, is based on a quite feudal system of favours. Its even been drafted into our rules and regulations in the form of the powers of discretion granted to our public servants to interpret the law . . . think of the joy that you can give me and I you. The people that you mustve seen in the waiting room all, all have favours to seek and to grant, like barter in a primitive society.

Raghupati saw the ageing actress to her car. It gave him a chance to brush against her, touch her shoulder, her upper arm. Rocking on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, he watched her car, a steel-blue Maruti Esteem, crunch its way up the gravel to the gates of the splendid colonial bungalow, plumb in the heart of Lutyenss City, that hed chosen for Bhanwar Virbhim upon the MPs joining the Central Cabinet as Minister. An exquisite villa, magnificently proportioned; on its lawns, one felt munificent oneself. Would k.u.m k.u.m Bala succ.u.mb to his ardour? Would the aroma of the sap gushing about in his veins make her swoon and wilt? Ahh, life was wonderful. Perhaps she wants it bad, and at this very moment, in the cold comfort of her car, listening to the latest Rani Chandra CD and dreaming of his, Raghupatis, squat tight body-much like a thickening phallus with its foreskin pulled back-she was wetting her wearunder and regretting not having torn them off in the camp office. Ahh, hold on to your longing till Thursday, Janum! Later, when her file had inched its way up to Bhanwar Saheb, shed of course have to contend with his advances as well. She might even-who knows?-be partial to his kind of attractiveness-successful, fat, powerful, black, amoral, lumpen, treacherous, taciturn, risen-from-the-depths-and-still-rising. One could never account for human tastes. Ohh, the wonder of it.

Raghupati strolled across the lawns to inspect the progress on the putting green that hed suggested to the Minister could be developed on the West Garden. Having selected the bungalow for Bhanwar Saheb after an exhausting four-night search, he justifiably felt quite proprietorial about the place.

It ought to be said in defence of the Welfare State that it is by and large democratic. Irrespective of cla.s.s and status, it gives everybody-high and low-a bad time. The higher-up you are, though, the more clout you have to fight and exploit it.

Which is why, about a month ago, after Bhanwar Virbhim had rested on Jayati Aflatoons feet his forehead, and the plague epidemic in Madna had sidled off the front pages of the national newspapers, and she, pleased and tickled, had suggested to her doting cousin-by-marriage the Prime Minister that Bhanwar be accommodated at the Centre, Virbhim, even though acutely disappointed at having been allotted Heritage, Upbringing and Resource Investment, had decided to accept the portfolio with the correct facade of grat.i.tude and joy, and to bide his time, because while waiting, he would be paid, housed and chauffeured about, and through a judicious granting of favours and an intelligent manipulation of the law, hed use the months to augment his vote bank, consolidate his power base and expand his camp following.

As a first step, hed summoned to the capital his loyals-Bhupen Raghupati and Baba Mastram among them-to help him organize himself. The Baba was to decide on an auspicious date and time for the Ministers entry into Aflatoon Bhavan. Raghupati was to set up the Ministers personal offices-one for each of the Departments of Culture, Heritage, Education and Welfare, a fifth for coordinating among the other four and a large sixth one in the camp office at home. That involved, among other things, the selection of a hundred and seventy two staff members, including Personal a.s.sistants, stenographers, clerks, typists, peons, chowkidaars, gardeners and daily wage labourers who could cook, sweep, scavenge, and ma.s.sage Madame Bhanwar Sahibas elephantine legs, and the choosing of curtains, carpets, tables, chairs, air-conditioners, cupboards, idols, cars and smaller idols for the cars. Setting up the Minister set back the Welfare State by the usual one crore.

'Make hay while the sun shines was a principle that had generally guided the actions of both Bhanwar Virbhim and Bhupen Raghupati for many a year. By instinct, children of the tropics that they were, theyd made money whenever they could, for who knew what the morrow would bring? With the years, however-naturally-theyd become sophisticated, the stakes had shot up to the moon-inflation and all that, it even upsets the calculations of avarice. Yet, at the same time, old habits die hard, and they were citizens of a poor country, and thus it was that Raghupati had first of all recruited Shri Dharam Chand, the one-armed peon in the Ministry of Heritage, Upbringing and Resource Investment and a valued henchman of the Minister from his Madna days, to oversee the takings from the other recruitments-at an average of twenty thousand rupees per selected candidate. The hopefuls had turned up in droves from the various other Departments and Ministries of the government, and from the employment exchanges and surplus cells of the staff selection commissions.

Of course, one could also make hay in inclement weather. Truly the land of opportunity, the Welfare State could boast of thousands of officials, great and small, who hadnt let a single chance to rake it in slip by-the accountants who charged a percentage for each salary, increment, allowance and emolument that they paid out to their colleagues, the section officers who picked up fifty rupees for each day of unauthorized leave that they permitted their clerks, the drivers who siphoned off petrol and diesel from their official cars for sale-at bargain rates, of course-to their buddies, the peons who made thousands of rupees extra from faked overtime bills, their superiors who took cuts from them for pa.s.sing those same bills-the list is long, varied and intricately interwoven, and the corruption terribly insidious. There have been times when completely honest-and comparatively honest-officers-Agastya Sen, for example, and Dhrubo Jyoti Ghosh Dastidar, k.u.mari Lina Natesan and Harihara Kapila-have wondered whether they are in fact as honest as theyve always thought themselves to be-the idea of honesty having become more and more slippery with the years-and secondly, what good being honest has done them.

One was honest when one didnt ask an applicant for fifty thousand rupees before one issued him a telephone connection, and one was not honest when one suggested to another applicant that she could pick up that grant from ones Department for her song and-dance routine if she slept with one-that difference had always been clear. But not much else. In the mornings, on ones way to office, one dropped the kids off at school in the office car because the school fell en route. That wasnt dishonest, surely. But if the school was madly out of the way and started two hours before office, and one still used the office car and driver for the kids? And to pay the driver for the extra hours, allowed him to fake some more overtime? No, that wasnt dishonest either, that was merely a reasonable extension of the personal use of a legitimate office perk. As a civil servant, one was dishonest when one used ones official position to hurt, exploit and abuse the citizens, applicants and beneficiaries of the Welfare State. But when the civil servant or the politician did the same things to the State itself? No, that didnt sound very heinous either. What the h.e.l.l, that was almost a perk too-one needed merely to stretch a bit the notion of a perk. Why, everyone did it all the time-faking his income tax returns, fudging the values of his immovable properties to reduce stamp duty, avoiding capital gains, wealth and munic.i.p.al taxes, concealing a.s.sets in insolvency proceedings. These werent truly violations of the law, because the law became an a.s.s when it was applied to its creators. It wasnt seriously meant to be, it was mainly intended to impress on its citizens that the Welfare State meant business. Particularly when it didnt, naturally, because one needed to keep up appearances. And it didnt really, the State hardly ever meant business. It was too slow, lethargic, large, will-less, smug. Smug because its directive principles were n.o.ble, will-less because having framed them, it seemed tove drained itself of the power to see them through. And its mandarins werent helping it any because they needed to help themselves first and thus move up a rung or two on the social ladder. They liked the government because milking it was both easy and respectable, anything but a disgusting crime. Stealing from it made them rich, of course, pushed them way up above the Poverty Line, as it were, but it also made them cats, lions-dragons, if you wish-major players, dynamic achievers. When one has the right background and belongs to the right cla.s.s, an infringement of the legal code does not necessarily violate the moral norm, especially when, in the process, one becomes far richer without actually stealing from any one individual.

Naturally, ones idea of ones own honesty was continually being teased by what was going on all about one-everybody else seemed to be raking it in and quite enjoying the process. One kept ones mouth shut and turned a blind eye because it was none of ones business and one wasnt being paid to wade into deep s.h.i.t, particularly somebody elses-but that was being dishonest, wasnt it, no two ways about that. One couldnt countenance dishonesty and remain comfortable in ones skin. Which thickened, fortunately, with the years, so that, like Raghupati, for example, after twenty-three years of distinguished service, one really had the hide of a rhino: one couldve skinned oneself and not noticed.

Raghupati and the Baba were also to select, together, a suitable bungalow-or rather, two suitable bungalows, one for the Minister, the other for Raghupati himself. The Commissioner of Lands, Estates and Built-Up Properties sent them the standard list of vacant, suitable accommodation in Lutyenss City that would be commensurate with the Ministers status, may kindly see please. Raghupati did, and not very kindly. His practised eye scanned the list and saw through it in seconds.

'Those rascals have sent us the official list of bungalows meant for those Ministers who havent served at the Centre before and therefore dont yet know whats what. Come, Babaji, weve to hunt at night.

For the civil servants who are transferred to the Centre from outside the capital, it is standard practice to search for suitable official accommodation at night. After sundown, in their official cars with the official list of vacant, suitable accommodation commensurate with their status in their hands, they cruise the wide, dead, tree-lined streets of Lutyenss City, looking for-and stopping to inspect-houses and flats that are dark and that otherwise show no signs of habitation. Then they routinely check to see if the nicer ones are listed in the sheets in their hands. They never are. That too is standard practice.

The difficulties of their search are compounded by the frequent official and unofficial power breakdowns that have become as much a part of capital life as the monstrous traffic jams created by the Prime Ministerial convoys actual and decoy road routes. When they wish to explore further the surroundings of a house or a flat that appears uninhabited and thus promising, they, equipped with torches and a walking stick or iron rod-to protect themselves from the a.s.sault of some ill-tempered stray or pet dog-begin to bang on gate or door till somebody responds. Conversing with shadowy strangers in the dark, they feel dislocated, disoriented like the citizens of a nation at war, and wonder whether the members of any other profession, after so many years of distinguished service, househunt in similar fashion.

'Stop breaking the door down. Yes, who is it?

'Uh . . . do you stay here?

'What do you think?

'No-I mean, do you stay here officially or are you a trespa.s.ser?

'You need help, brother.

In many cases, it is a neighbour who responds to the banging on the gate or door. He too is equipped with a torch and a weapon. If they wish, they can duel in the dark.

'Yes? May I help you?

'Im looking for a house.

'Yes? Which number?

'Uh . . . any number . . . any vacant house . . . is this one occupied?

'If youre senior enough to move in on the sly, you shouldnt be making such a racket.

After a couple of nights of house-hunting, the civil servants return to the Commissioner of Lands, Estates and Built-Up Properties with the addresses of three or four houses that theyve liked, any one of which they wish allotted to them. The a.s.sistant Commissioner scans the addresses, purses his lips and forwards the list to the Private Secretary to the Minister of Urban Affairs. Urban Affairs was once called the Ministry of Works, Housing, Roads and Edifices. As Prime Minister, Bhuvan Aflatoon officially rechristened it because he felt that Urban Affairs sounded more compact, honed, polished and directed. It could not, moreover, be abbreviated to an absurd acronym. The Prime Ministers Office suggested to the Department of Const.i.tutional Languages to pay Softsell, the ad agency that thought up the phrase Urban Affairs, a fee of fourteen lakh rupees. The ministerial change of name cost the taxpayers of the Welfare State twenty-seven lakh rupees in stationery and nameplates alone.

Traditionally, in the Office of the Private Secretary to the Minister for Urban Affairs, the bribe rates for the allotment of official accommodation to civil servants are fixed according to location and carpet area. Changes in the rates are okay only up to a point, beyond which the overly avaricious Private Secretaries and Personal a.s.sistants would be guilty of conduct unbecoming of a civil servant. Those stuffy, old-fashioned bureaucrats who refuse to cough up the bribe-and who sometimes are silly enough to complain-wait for about a year for accommodation, and are then allotted a flat on the sixth floor in the suburbs somewhere, in a grey building without a lift, or on the ground floor right next to an illegal abattoir.

The air in the Private Secretarys rooms was very fragrant, almost overpowering. Every hour, a daily-wage labourer padded about the luxuriously-carpeted floors, spraying room-freshener everywhere. Closer to the person of the Private Secretary, the more refined bouquet of his aftershave-airy, pine-forest-like-mingled with the rather vulgar scent of the room-freshener. With Raghupatis entry, moreover, a blend of Yardleys and sweat was added to the heady mix.

Pleasantries . . . 'Its good to see you in this key post . . . your eyes are gleaming more than ever before . . . Then down to business . . . 'My Minister has finally decided on two bungalows to house himself and his immediate staff. Both are on Ganapati Aflatoon Marg, Numbers 21 and 9. Neither of course features on the list that the Estates Commissioner sent us . . . a Security requirement, apparently . . . Number 21 is vacant and is meant for the Minister himself. The number is auspicious and the few changes required are fortunately quite minor . . . the kitchen at the moment faces east, that of course will have to be shifted to face north-west-at the very least . . . the Master Bedroom will also have to be moved to the east side. Then the number of stairs to the first floor are six short-our Baba is quite definite that the required figure shouldnt be less than twenty-one . . . one wall of the camp office will have to be knocked down for windows-so that we can benefit from the favourable four oclock light. The swimming pool needs to be filled up and made into an exclusive Visitors Hall-anyway, these are minor details, the main issue being that the Baba has vetted and cleared both the bungalows as auspicious. Number 9 unfortunately is at the moment occupied by the One and Only, Fair and Lovely k.u.m k.u.m Bala Mali-so the lurid posters of Baap Ko Jala Kar Raakh Kar Doonga called her. Can your Ministry issue her an order directing her to allow me to move in with her? . . . Stag chortling. ' . . . The location, conjunction and combination of Numbers 9 and 21 are exceedingly favourable-this type of positioning of houses is extremely rare and therefore doubly propitious, so Baba Mastramji has confirmed. I suggest that your Ministry write to k.u.m k.u.mji to prod her p.u.s.s.y a bit, come come, Madam-ji, your times up, pack your bags. Ive found out that she was given official accommodation as a Nominated Cultural Luminary-extraordinary, some of the categories that our people come up with. Your letter could inform her that her Discretionary Allotments being cancelled because there hasnt been any Significant Contribution to Culture from her in the last sixteen years-certainly none since the cabaret-in-the-rain, song-and-dance milestone in Moochhon Ki Kasam-do you remember it? Wet clothes, mammaries the size of Asia, jiggle jiggle, nipples like the heads of street urchins at your car window, some Bharatnatyam steps, crooning into her armpit, then all of a sudden, soaking see-through wet, she was at a temple before Kali, praying and warbling: Hey Ma, Aap Ke Paas Main Chhoti Si Aas Le KarAayi Hoon, that is to say, Hey Ma, Ive Come to You with a Small a.r.s.e . . . Our censors didnt ban it! A truly broadminded culture, ours . . . and by any standards, an extraordinary admission before a divinity, apart from being an outrageous lie. I can tell you right away that when you ask k.u.m k.u.m to vacate, sh.e.l.l defend herself with the argument that as a Culture Luminary, from her present address, shes interfaced with so many other Culture Luminaries, both national and global, that the bungalow is now no longer mere Welfare State accommodation, but a Seat of Culture. Send her reply to me. Ill take care of it-Security Reasons, I think, should suffice. Then we make her an offer she cant refuse.

Raghupatis progress across the lawns was feudal. Peons, attendants, gardeners, sweepers, washermen, housekeeper, drivers, ma.s.seurs, cooks, milkmen, constables, chowkidaars, watchmen, bearers, jamadars, dafadars, orderlies, daily wagers and indefinable lackeys all stopped idling, straightened up, cringed, beamed and saluted him. Each of their appointments had been either a favour granted-whenever possible, at a price, and to be redeemed in good time-or a debt repaid; whenever possible, the debts repaid too had been construed as favours granted. Dozens of a.s.sociates, comrades and cronies of Bhanwar Virbhim, of his Begum and their redoubtable scion and Honourable-Member-of-the-Legislative-a.s.sembly-to-be, Shri Makhmal Bagai, of Raghupati and Shri Dharam Chand the peon-dozens of their acquaintances had sons, nephews, brothers-in-law and proteges who were either jobless or underemployed and who needed the aegis of Welfare. Raghupati had signed up as many as he could, age, education, experience, knowledge, competence no bar. Like countless others, he liked being munificent at the expense of the Welfare State. The b.o.o.bZ ban on recruitment applied only halfheartedly to the personal staff of Central Cabinet Ministers, that is to say, like many other policies, it had to be sternly fought, with clout, from within. Minister desires-such a clause should supersede the law in practice; such was Raghupatis belief-why else would one wish to serve the State? Minister desires, for example, the seat of the occupant of the Seat of Culture at 9, Ganapati Aflatoon Marg as a token of grat.i.tude for a favour rendered.

Raghupati desired just as much the seat of the prospective lackey who approached him at that moment from the bungalow, bearing on a tray a gla.s.s of milk. He was Dambha, the elder brother of the still-AWOL Chamundi.

Almost a month after his brothers disappearance from Raghupatis house in Madna, Dambha had suddenly showed up in Lutyenss City with a hope of employment on compa.s.sionate grounds and letters of recommendation from two local, powerful timber smugglers. Bhanwar Virbhims son, who wasnt very good at letters or indeed in general at anything written, had even spoken to Raghupati on the young mans behalf. Whom Raghupati had found rather fetching and from whose sullen, morose professed ignorance of his brothers whereabouts had jumped to the unnerving conclusion that Chamundi was safe and lying low, vengeful and plotting, flat out on a bed in a hut in his tribal village somewhere in the ravaged, discontented forests of Jompanna, plumb in the heartland of Suk.u.maran Govardhan country.

Raghupati hadnt been lying when hed stated that on that December afternoon of the day before the attack on Suroor, after hed spoken to the District Collector on the phone from his bedroom, hed strutted back to the adjoining puja room and found that his ma.s.sage boy-who till a minute before had been unconscious and bleeding from the head-had disappeared, merged into the blue.

Officially, no one had seen him since. The blood stains on the floor Raghupati sponged off before descending. He didnt even mention Chamundi till eight-thirty the morning after.

'Where is he? I cant be bothered with this irresponsibility. Do we have anybody else with hands supple enough for a ma.s.sage?

Out of sight, gradually out of mind. Besides, in the ensuing weeks, everything else had gone Raghupatis way so splendidly-Minister Virbhims return to the lap of the Aflatoons, his own consequent new post, the presence of Baba Mastram in the capital, the silly Natesan court case-that with time, he had begun to feel quite confident of managing any fallout from the Chamundi business.

In Lutyenss City, at 21, Ganapati Aflatoon Marg, therefore, he asked Dharam Chand to accommodate Dambha suitably. In turn, Dharam Chand attached the newcomer to the milkman to whom he, Dharam Chand, had rented out one of the servants quarters of the bungalow. Part of the rent was paid in milk. Mrs Milkman also did the house, ironed the clothes and washed Begum Virbhims wearunders, it being terribly lese majeste that male hands should ever touch them. Milkman Junior, socially more upwardly mobile than his fatherd been, grew orchids, broccoli and artichokes in the back lawns; they were sold to the capitals fancier hotels. On every left-over square metre of kitchen garden, hed squeezed in potatoes, tomatoes, papayas, pumpkin and coriander. Some of that was sold by handcart in the back lanes of Lutyenss City. Father and son had also opened up a dhaba in the courtyard of the servants quarter-entry from the service lane, of course. It provided tea, rusks, biscuits and plat du jour lunches and dinners to the vast population of underlings and factotums in the area. Of course, cups of tea and plates of food-lumpy islands of congealed rice rock steady in a lake of reddish gravy, on the surface of which floated an oil slick-were also sent up, as and when required, to the bungalow. Officially, the dhaba didnt exist because it was a Security risk. When not on duty, however, the Black Guard Commandoes guzzled there for free. Milkman paid Dharam Chand four thousand rupees a month as rent, of which three thousand reached Raghupati, of which fifteen hundred reached Begum Virbhim. From the ministers salary, the Welfare State deducted five hundred rupees every month as rent for the entire bungalow.

Raghupati asked Dambha to wait while he downed his gla.s.s of milk. Hot frothy milk at four oclock sharp, straight from the udder, as it were, was his way of cutting down on tea and coffee. It made him feel full and ill all evening. His fingers brushed the others as he picked up the gla.s.s. 'So how are things with you? . . . How are the cows? Is the bull f.u.c.king them well or does he need goading? You look well-hung, you could teach him a trick or two. Now that youve almost joined the Welfare State, youd better watch your organ, oil it, take care of it, or else itll shrink. The States been known to have that effect under its Integrated Small Tools Programme . . . Are you any good at ma.s.sage? . . . You are? Excellent! Why then, youre overqualified for us! You milk cows-squeeze, squeeze?-grow and sell broccoli, run errands for a dhaba and ma.s.sage bodies-and yet you hope to join the Welfare State as a lackey on daily wages . . . yes, job security and all that-theres none, incidentally, while you remain a daily wager. Theres only the promise of permanent employment dangling before you while youre pushed around and exploited. The good life starts when you become a permanent servant of the government . . . and gets better and better as you climb the ladder-take the case of your present demi-G.o.d Dharam Chand, in whose presence I dare say that your organ begins to leak out of nervousness . . . some years ago-so the story goes-the moment he was made permanent-he was then called Karam Chand, but thats another story-he stopped going to office and instead began selling wearunders, in earnest, all day-near the railway station of his native town. He was at that time an attendant in some State-run blind school. After some weeks, his boss the Superintendent asked him to return to work. Dharam Karam Chand was so offended by the order-an insult to his status of a permanent employee-that is to say, its temporaries like you whove to fetch, carry and obey without question, the permanents have an option-so Dharam Karam, deeply disturbed as a consequence of the felt insult, in the course of his official duties, gouged out the right eye of a blind girl-and nothing permanent happened to him as a result. He became a fat file, of course, part of the collective memory of the Welfare State-its the natural outcome of the buck-withering process. And thats why youd like to join us, isnt it? . . . Well, I too like being close to and part of our fat files-those Himalayan ranges built out of thick, brown, depressing, faded-even-when-new covers and millions of pages of thin, cheap, off-white paper produced at astounding cost-surrounded by all that, you feel snug, as though you belong and your ident.i.ty fits, like a tiny screw somewhere under the bonnet of a car. Youre doing your bit, you feel, to run the country even when youre ferrying the kids of a Controller of Rationing to school. Did you know that Dharam Chand feels that its time to change his name, now that hes moved up and is with the Minister? A new lifestyle, a new ident.i.ty, a smooth snake shedding its skin. Hes toying with Naram Chand . . . good boy, thanks for the milk. Come over to my camp room for a trial ma.s.sage after dinner tonight. About ten-thirty, after Shri Bagai leaves, okay dear? . . .

A submissive a.s.sistant Engineer from the Electricity Board waited a few paces away, head down, file in hand, the correct junior courtier. The false ceiling in the camp office was in place and the third air-conditioner had just been fitted; would Ministers Secretary Saab care to see?

'Yes, after I inspect the West Garden. Have those silly electricity bills been sorted out yet?

The a.s.sistant Engineer shuffled about and giggled in nervous excitement. 'Yes sir. No sir. I understand that the Honourable Minister has written to the Honourable Power Minister, sir. Im sure that itll all be settled soon.

'Id even advised that the Divisional Manager be transferred because of his att.i.tude. Has that happened? 'Yes sir. No sir. Not yet. In fact (nervous giggle), hes appealed to the Power Minister against what he calls Unnecessary Interference in the Smooth Functioning of the Government.

'How smooth does he want it to be? Like the shaved cheeks of his a.r.s.e? Shrieks of nervous laughter.

The previous inhabitant of 21, Ganapati Aflatoon Marg, had been a Hindi film actor-a matinee idol-and an ex-Member of Parliament, a Nominated Culture Luminary to the Upper House. In his time, he was reputed to have earned fifty thousand rupees a day, year after year. He owned a flat in Bombay City, a villa in the suburbs, a sort of castle by the beach and two office complexes. He had air-conditioned-at official expense, of course-the outhouses of his official bungalow to house his Siamese cats. He had surrendered the bungalow to the Commissioner of Estates after a t.i.tanic, two-year struggle (it had even been mooted that the Army should be sent in to evict him). His argument-spread over a dozen letters addressed, among others, to the President of the Union, the Vice-President and the Prime Minister-had been, more or less: 1) However can a petty bureaucrat ask the idol of the ma.s.ses to move his bloomin a.r.s.e? 2) And yet people continue to wonder what is wrong with this country! 3) Why doesnt the Army move in first to evict its own hundred Generals from the bungalows that theyve overstayed in for years?

Matinee Idol left behind at 21, Ganapati Aflatoon Marg, among other things, an outstanding electricity bill of some eight lakh rupees. Raghupati found it outrageous that the Electricity Board should bother Bhanwar Virbhim, the new occupant of the bungalow, with the sins of the previous one. Not that Raghupati considered it a sin-indeed, it was standard practice. One fitted a bungalow of that size with fourteen air-conditioners and six geysers and one used them as befitted ones status, but to pay ones electricity bill emitted terribly wrong signals; it clearly meant that one was slipping down the ladder. Only people without clout paid their electricity bills. Those with, never received any. They instead asked for-and got-official air-conditioners in their loos.

By serving the representatives of the people, one serves the people. Were the Electricity Board ever to ask Raghupati why on earth it should forego its dues outstanding against the occupant of 21, Ganapati Aflatoon Marg, he wouldve reasoned such. Or, since every second of the official life is official, the office should bear all expenses incurred. Then again, the bounty of welfare extends in all directions and knows no bounds; only the n.i.g.g.ardly and the shortsighted think of economies. In a large country, you have to think big.

'The macro view, explained Raghupati expansively to Makhmal Bagai, in Hinglish, long after office hours, in his camp study, over gla.s.ses of Johnnie Walker Blue, 'has always been the need of the hour. Sit on the moon, and in the cold blue light, gaze down on the remote, quiet, sombre, beautiful and tranquil earth. Distance provides perspective and objectivity. All our squabbles and tensions will be seen for what they are-fundamentally petty, trivial. What, for example, is a roadside brawl, a disruption of some piffling street play, in the grand scheme of things? Nothing, merely a ripple, just frolic The whisky was a gift from Makhmal, whod flown in that evening from Navi Chipra. Raghupati loved the richness of its fumes. For years now, whenever hed had a cold or a sore throat, hed inhaled from, and then sipped, a peg or two of neat good Scotch. In a sensationalist article on espionage in the Ill.u.s.trated Weekly, hed read once that Indian spies could be bought over by just one bottle of Scotch. He hadnt found the notion particularly absurd or objectionable. Of course, it depended on the whisky. A bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, for example, golden, limpid, perfect, seemed a reasonable wager for ones soul.

The stronger the bouquet, naturally, the worse the stink that one is trying to subdue. By that standard, Makhmal Bagai was a two-week-old, putrefying, maggot-ridden cadaver. He routinely doused different parts of his body with scented hairoil, talc.u.m powder, aftershave lotion, eau de Cologne and deodorant. The charm that he always carried with him was a tiny sandalwood Ganesh, the powers of which were periodically revived, as it were, by dips in sandalwood oil. To neutralize his foul mouth, he ate over a dozen perfumed paans a day (he and Raghupati shared, among other things, the same taste in paans). He liked incense to be lit in the rooms that he occupied, however temporarily. His attendant of the day carried, beside his paan box and mobile phone, a box of incense sticks; his manifold duties included lighting one of them up before Makhmal could notice its absence.

'Whenever the case of Miss Natesan surfaces in court, that will be my argument-me-laard, the macro view. A point of order. The sight of her sari squeezed into the crevice of her b.u.m upset my love of order, so I plucked it out. With my thumb and forefinger. I couldve used my teeth. Why should my love of order so convulse the harmony of the world? Me-laard, reflect instead on the larger issues-bonded labour, corruption in high places, freedom of speech, the suppression of immoral traffic, crimes against women, caste reservations, violence in politics, the Police-or the Welfare State. Leave that fat, charming and pig-headed Lina Natesan to her memos and reminders.

'I could arrange for some acid for her face. Take her mind off her b.u.m.

'That wont be necessary. Her face is nice, dont spoil it. In fact, after that c.o.c.k-up with Rajani Suroor last month, your father and I both feel that for a while, we could do without your help, thank you.

Makhmal didnt feel secure without a weapon. It was usually a switchblade. Were he to reflect on the subject, hedve been both puzzled and relieved that unlike him, the wide world didnt believe in the perfect simplicity of the efficacy of violence. My G.o.d-how much people talked, and wrote, and argued! Use a gun, boss, or a hockey stick, because times running out, look, gurgling down an unplugged drain.

When hed dropped out of school, his father had packed him off to the North because hed wanted Makhmal to broaden his horizons, get out of Madna, out of his hair, see the country, maybe find a vocation. At his uncles sweets shop in Dundimandir, Makhmal had sat behind the cash counter for six months, acquired a taste for the scent of rose water, improved his Hinglish, broken a bottle of Limca on the jaws of an ill-tempered customer who couldnt wait for his change, and from his a.s.sociates picked up a Punjabi manner of p.r.o.nouncing English words. The accent had waned with the years but could still, every now and then, particularly in moments of stress, bob up in his delivery. 'Jealous became 'jaluss as in 'jalopy, for example, 'shock was 'shokk-uh and 'memories 'mammaries. He didnt have very pleasant mammaries.

'Miss Natesans case shouldnt pose a problem. Ive discovered that the judge is likely to be S.H. Sohan, who in his after-hours is a Punjabi poet. Ive spoken to him on the phone-in Punjabi, of course-and Ive an appointment with him early next week. Would me-laard like to be, I asked, our Official Delegate to the World Poetry Conference in Honolulu? Return air ticket, six free days in a deluxe hotel, per diem at par with international standards, facilities for simultaneous translation into five international languages while me-laard recites his immortal verse in Punjabi before n.o.bel laureates, literary agents from London, publishers from New York-would me-laard do me the honour of deigning to accept? In reply, he f.e.l.l.a.t.ed me on the phone. If the case comes up, who knows, he might send Miss Natesan to jail for conduct unbecoming of a civil servant . . . Just press the bell-I need some milk to make a new, great c.o.c.ktail.

Incompetent and dangerous, Makhmal had had no choice but to enter politics. In his late teens, hed been quite an a.s.set to his father during both the Parliamentary and the a.s.sembly elections-dropping in at polling booths with jeeps full of gunmen to terrorize voters and steal ballot boxes, bribing policemen with petty cash, food and cheap whisky to look the other way, whisking away and beating up members of rival gangs, shooting rounds off into the air when things looked too quiet-ahhh, politics was the good life. After the third elections, Bhanwar Virbhim had appointed him one of the General Secretaries of the State Political Party. Hed wanted his dunderhead son to learn some of the facts of life, to revere wealth, not to remain forever r.e.t.a.r.ded, to grasp that money was infinitely more powerful than the gun, that nothing was socially more respectable than power, that to be on the right side of the law, one simply needed to be above it. Expectedly, Makhmals record of violence earned him Z-category Black Guard Commando protection. All those guns, that screaming motorcade, the awed, frightened faces of bystanders, went to his head. Fast cars began to attract him almost as much as weapons.

In the one week that hed spent in Madna jail, his father once again had become a Central Minister. Virbhim had let his son stew a bit behind bars because hed correctly gauged that it would look great on his own cv. Finally, before using his clout to extract Makhmal, hed conveyed down the line that that would be the last time that hed be interceding on his sons behalf. One more misdemeanour and Makhmal would be quietly tossed out into the cold.

Being a fool, the son didnt see-or didnt care-with what agility his fathers ambition, his arrogance, was ascending. Not his fathers alone, for it was in the air. The stars, no doubt. Jayati Aflatoon, Suk.u.maran himself-already half-legend and now aiming for the heavens-Dharam Karam Chand, Baba Mastram, Bhupen Raghupati-their fortunes were all sap-filled and on the rise.

Raghupati in particular considered himself quite lucky over the Lina Natesan mess. Time and again, hed plagued Baba Mastram for an angle on her.

'She has a knack of attracting calamities, the Baba had divined after a couple of days of thought. 'Perhaps she irritates her stars too, who knows?

'When they fail, mortals can but hope to try to help. I feel that I should repay the love that she doubtless feels for me but which-messed-up introvert that she is-she can never reveal even to herself in this life. So Ive decided to recommend her name for one of our long-term, government-to-government, foreign training courses. Im glad to learn that she will be accepted at LInst.i.tut Europeen DAdministration Publique at Strasbourg. Sh.e.l.l soon dazzle Europe with her reports. Once there, Paris and all that, who knows, she might even find true, requited love. So, after Judge Sohan, thats my second safeguard against the siren.

Things that didnt concern him didnt register with Makhmal. He was on his first visit to his parents after his stint in jail but had no wish to meet either of them face to face. He would have liked Raghupatis counsel on how to plan his future in politics but felt that he already knew too well-and would be utterly bored with-what he would hear. He wished to be Minister of State for Coal and Mines for hed heard that bribes for the lease of a mine could touch a crore of rupees. Think big, think quick, that was his style. Change it, is what Raghupatid been advising for ages.

'Coal and Mines is Big, Big, child. Remember that just to get Heritage and Time Pa.s.s, Bhanwar-ji brushed Jayati Aflatoons feet with his forehead. Wait a while-the hierarchy needs patience and cunning. In the meantime-Ive told you before-stop carrying guns. Stop slapping the Opposition with your slippers in the Well of the House, particularly when the indefatigable governor is in the midst of his inaugural address of the Budget Session. Stop lifting up your kurta to display your pyjama-strings to female members of another party. So what if the TV cameras on you? Some of your viewers might actually wish for better returns for the one lakh rupees per second of taxpayers money being spent on running the a.s.sembly. A new leaf, therefore, for the new age, Makhmal. Learn to give speeches on weighty subjects. Learn to read. Clamber on to one respectable bandwagon or the other-three or four, if possible. Make a start somewhere. Let me see . . . When you learn to read, my dear gem of the Deccan, Ill give you a comic-strip called Asterix. Our a.s.semblies remind me of his life and times.

Half in alarm, Raghupati watched Makhmals face crumple up with the strain of expressing an idea. 'I must have a reason to discipline myself. In the last three years, Ive attended as a special visitor nine sessions of the a.s.sembly. The anti-aircraft gun scandal, the sugar deal, the securities cover-up, the bank fraud, the telecom fiddle, the fodder swindle, the urea scam, the insurance racket, the export licence rip-off, thats what we discussed. And side by side, the desecration of places of worship, the bomb blasts, two nuclear explosions, one official and one unacknowledged border war and the riots after riots after riots. Not a whisper, in three years, about welfare, about the good of the common man, whoever he might be. Why should I discipline myself?

'Hey Ram! . . . For a long time, your father and Ive believed that the inside of your skull must resemble the stuffing of an old, old mattress, the sort that is periodically redone by those wandering mattress-makers . . . dont you wish to follow your fathers footsteps? Distance yourself as much as you can from your past. Change it whenever necessary, its as natural to human beings as blushing. Look at him, its the silly season here, so hes swished off to Madagascar to sign a Cultural Agreement. It wouldnt be necessary for me, he said, to accompany him because the text of the Agreement was straightforward-just the Director (Cultural Agreements) would do. Shes forty-two, with fat chewable lips and watermelons on her thorax. Your fathers been complimenting her on her saris for some weeks now. Ahhh, the call of the flesh.

Amongst his wearunders, safari suits and bottles of anti-flatulence pills, Bhanwar Virbhim carried with him to Madagascar an impressive array of ca.s.sette tapes on both Northern and Southern cla.s.sical music. Some were gifts for his host Ministers in Antananarivo, the others were for his own listening pleasure. As Culture and Heritage Minister, he needed to know at least something about the musical traditions of his country. Ditto for literature, painting, the fine arts, the works. Thus within a week of his taking over the post, Bhupen Raghupati had suggested to him that his, the Ministers, day should begin, be filled, and end, with appropriate music. CD players, tape recorders, discs and ca.s.settes were bought. Peons crept into Bhanwar Saabs bedroom on tiptoe at five in the morning to switch on an apt bhajan. They were transferred to places far far away if the tapes had been incorrectly cued and if, as a result, the Minister had to suffer some notes of music inappropriate to-and therefore inauspicious for-the hour and day of the week. What good, Raghupati would thunder at his staff, is the Ministry of Culture, Heritage, Education and Welfare if it cant even provide its Minister the music of his choice at the hour of his choice? Remember that he doesnt have time for music and yet he needs to hear it, to imbibe it-therefore the right kind of music, and always in the background.

While in the foreground? Politics, need one ask? The politics, for example, of an appropriate past, both personal and public. An example of the new personal past, from the opening paragraph of Virbhims speech at the annual convocation of the National Academy for the Performing Arts-Bhanwar Virbhim as created by Bhupen Raghupati: 'In my college days, my father would give me a certain amount of money every week for my bus fare. I saved that money by walking to and from college. With the money saved, twice a month, Id buy tickets to local Kathak concerts and ghazal evenings . . . Once (chuckle chuckle) . . . Such fictions are perfectly natural and harmless, and come even more easily when no records exist of the persona of the reminiscences having ever set foot inside any college anywhere in the country, unless it be in some police file for hara.s.sing a female student, smashing chairs and windowpanes, and making bonfires out of the property of others.

And the new public past. As Heritage, Upbringing and Resource Investment Minister, alive to the sense of history, in the very first month of his tenure, Bhanwar Virbhim commissioned a set of social scientists to write, in phases, the-as it were-memoirs of the nation. The standard texts were outdated (he minuted in Hindi in the file on the subject) and completely colonial in their approach. They didnt do justice to-in fact, didnt even mention-the pivotal roles played by certain subaltern political movements, social cla.s.ses and most significantly, less prominent castes-for example, Bhanwarjis own-in any of the significant developments in the country in the last two hundred years. The best way to inform our fellow citizens, surely, was to provide them some A-one reading matter. The work of the new social scientists would be supervised by a Committee of Experts comprising, in the main, retired bureaucrats with just-published, flatulent memoirs. The books would be written in English and, after the texts were approved, translated into the eighteen official languages recognized by the Const.i.tution. In all, there were to be twelve tomes that would cover the history, geography, sociology, anthropology, geology, biophysics, environment, botany, zoology, religion, language and culture of the country and its peoples. The entire project was to cost the Welfare State seventy crores over a period of five years. Out of the panel of names of suitable savants submitted to him, Bhanwar Virbhim rejected seven and added eleven new characters out of his own pocket. Those recommended by him were all either from his part of the country or his caste or both.

The intelligentsia of the Ministry of Heritage, Upbringing and Resource Investment was quite appalled and too spineless and devious to fight back directly. In its routine manner, it diffused the word. Thus two Sundays later, for instance, the Weekend Today, that claimed a readership of over two million, ran an eight-page article, an extract from a longer work ent.i.tled The Magic of the Aflatoons. It was written by a Dr Srinivas Chakki, an entomologist by profession and a Thinker on the side.

. . . How does one enter the record books? One way is to act so as to be worthy of them, so that history, as it were, will remember one. Another, far easier, way is simply to rewrite the record book and include oneself in it. Do not merely devote all the s.p.a.ce of the book to the also rans, but also a.n.a.lyse the motives and performances of the never-rans. History as determined by the wouldve-liked-to-runs . . .

After a couple of paragraphs of this style of attack, Dr Chakki hadnt been able to resist broadening his target to include-indeed, aiming way off the original mark at-all Members of Parliament and of the Legislative a.s.semblies.

It had been hoped when we became independent that in pursuit of an ideal of the trusteeship of the national wealth, the leaders of the State would set examples in austerity and take no more than five hundred rupees each per month as salary. It is noteworthy that several decades on, our legislators have not belied that hope in the letter, but as for its spirit, as the French would exclaim, oo la la! Our guiding lights, forty years after Freedom, still vote themselves a monthly pay of five hundred rupees (that is to say, roughly the equivalent of a few packets of Rothmans Twenties), but over the years, have invented a wide variety of devices for augmenting that income on the sly. They of course routinely give themselves free housing-four-bedroom-villas plumb in the heart of Lutyenss City-free cooking gas and water, free telephones and transport, and a mult.i.tude of other benefits. They also take care that at all times, their basic salary of five hundred-which is all that they reveal to the taxman-remains below the taxable income. One notes of course in contrast that their perks, when received by you and me, are madly taxable, thanks to them. After all, they make the laws. Thats what theyre being paid those Rothmans for. Yet they decided-in pa.s.sing, as it were-that they needed an incentive to attend office, to come to work. So they provided themselves a daily allowance-non- taxable, of course-for being present in the House. Attentive readers of this paper will recall that several years ago, itd been the first to point out that our guiding lights, like errant college students, were in the habit both of cutting the House after roll call and of noting their attendance even for the days on which they were absent. Ah, the power of the pen! For, after a spate of such articles had held them up to ridicule, and accused them of continuing in Parliament the fine traditions of their college days, the signatures were dropped but alas, the per diem remained. They still earn it for the entire duration of the session and, for good measure, for the three days preceding and succeeding each of their sittings. Acknowledging their own need to form a little capital on the side, they allow themselves to sanction cooking gas connections and allot ten telephones per annum to their nominees, no questions asked.

It has been calculated that were our guiding lights to be regarded as ordinary mortal citizens liable to taxes, their current emoluments, for each one of them, on the average would work out to about twenty lakh rupees per annum (not counting their guns, of course). Other things being equal, as our economists say, how many of them would command such a figure in the open market is not a question that need detain us here.

What we could however pause to discuss is their credibility. Leadership in general involves setting an example. It is only the captain of our national cricket team who leads with the b.u.m. The question is: is a leader expected to do anything after hes emitted all the right noises? 'Roll up your sleeves . . . tighten your belts . . . remove poverty (better still, remove the poor) . . . pull up your socks . . . and shed a tear for the downtrodden . . .

To help you to shed that tear at the right time, at the right place-here, have a car! Do my readers know that in the next couple of weeks, a proposal will be voted through in the Daanganga a.s.sembly to provide interest-free car loans of three lakh rupees to each of its four-hundred-plus Members? In their speechifying, the legislators to a man have lauded the 'gracious, humanitarian, forward-looking, development-oriented, poverty-alleviating proposal. Apparently, they find it difficult to cover their const.i.tuencies on their own. Since they dont own cars, to reach the people quickly and effectively they are forced to accept the proferred help of various contractors, businessmen and industrialists. This theyd rather avoid. So would the Regional Finance Department this proposal. It will cost the state more than twelve crore rupees and of course, it will be impossible to recover any of the loans, particularly from those legislators who lose their next elections or, unfortunately, die. The section of the Motor Car Advance Rules 1949 that deals with elected Members of Parliament and of the Legislative a.s.semblies-they significantly having excluded themselves from the definition of 'public servant-is notably silent on this point of recoupment. No proposal has been mooted so far to amend these Rules. Various former ministers of Daanganga, it should be recalled here, already owe the state more than four crore rupees.

Please also do consider where these legislators will drive their cars to! Daangangas 70,464 villages have an average ten kilometres of road length for every fifteen hundred square kilometres of area. I am indebted for this confusing statistic to the National Bureau of Information, Demography and Official Data. Translated, that means for the region a total of about two thousand six hundred kilometres of road, at least a third of which would lie in some of the worlds most inhospitable terrain, namely, the Gayaladh plateau. What is quite marvellous is that even when they have their cars, the Special Allowance that they give themselves at present for not having cars will stay-inflation, rising prices and so on, runs the argument. That is, say, Rs 2000 per month as const.i.tuency allowance-presumably to cover the costs of travel between Legislative House and Const.i.tuency, youd think-but wait! Because, at the same time, they enjoy unlimited free first-cla.s.s train-and deluxe, air- conditioned bus-travel for three persons within the federal region per legislator, the three persons being his good self, his personal secretary and his bodyguard. n.o.body wants to kill them, youd argue. Youd be surprised.