BHUPEN RAGHUPATI.

Lina Natesan Thomas likes Bhupen Raghupati. Bhupen Raghupati adores Lina Natesan Thomas. Vexed, the Chief Revenue Divisional Commissioner, groping for loopholes, wondered whether she-Bunswali-spelt 'Natesan with an 'h. Wouldnt that transform the outcome? He wouldve so liked the stumps of both names to nucleate to Adore, to skim, like a flat stone across water, past the choices Love, Like and Hate, and swoop jubilantly down on the last, somewhat like a buxom, burly, imperious woman, the chairperson of his thoughts of the past eight weeks, descending on her timorous adorer. Whenever both the names climaxed in Adore, he felt that the deities had beamed refulgently on his itch of the month.

LINA NATESHAN THOMAS like

BHUPEN RAGHUPATI adore

His visitor, Rajani Suroor, cleared his throat for the second time. The Commissioner transferred his blank, baleful stare from his memo pad to him, to his modish, beige kurta, his wire-frame spectacles, the golden bracelet on a hairy wrist, the black-and-white, wavy, dreadfully groovy hair that Suroor, narcissistically, fondled without pause, the sardonically respectful, d.a.m.n annoying half-smile. This fool, the Commissioner felt, should ma.s.sage him, long and slow, glisteningly, with mustard oil; when hed been sated, hed lumber up off the mat and with his belt, thrash Suroor into hushed rashers of crimson flesh; then hed come all over whatever remained of his smirk.

For Lina Natesan Thomas, the plague was altogether a graver subject.

Confidential.

By Registered Post.

From.

The Junior Administrator (Under Training) In the Ministry of Heritage, Upbringing & Resource Investment New -.

Dated: December 9, 19- To.

Dr Harihara Kapila Secretary to the Welfare State (b.o.o.bZ and Official Grievances) In the Ministry of Heritage, Upbringing and Resource Investment, Aflatoon Bhavan.

New -.

Subject: General administrative difficulties faced in the functioning of the above-mentioned department.

Sir, I must record that I was surprised to receive yesterday a State Order directing me to report, within three days of its receipt, at the Office of the Munic.i.p.al Commissioner, Madna, for emergency duty to combat on a war footing the plague that has been raging there for the past two weeks. If I fail to comply with the order, I understand that the severest disciplinary action will be contemplated against me. For ready reference, I enclose at Annexure A a copy of the State Order (No. SUS/Plague/ Crash-FCN, signed by D. Sengupta, Desk Officer, Home Affairs Disaster Management Cell, dated December 5, 19-).

Upon receipt of the said order yesterday, I sought appointments with your good self at 10.30 a.m., 12.45 p.m., 3.15 p.m. and 5 p.m. On the fourth occasion, your Princ.i.p.al Private Secretary told me to put down in writing any items for discussion with you that I might have. I pointed out to him that had he informed me at 10.30 a.m. of these instructions of yours, he wouldve saved the Welfare State one full working day of a Junior Administrator which, when computed in time and money, must surely amount to something. I dont think that your PPS understood my point. Had I known Punjabi, I would have spoken it and he might then have followed me. I have not known him to speak any other language. In fact, in your office, one gets the impression that Punjabi is the official language of the Welfare State.

This present application is handwritten because I do not have any stenographer or typist attached to me- that is to say, to the post that I occupy. In fact, ever since I joined this Department two months ago, I havent been a.s.signed any personal staff-no Personal a.s.sistant, no peon, no clerk. I have failed to understand why. Representations in this regard have been made periodically to the Deputy Secretary (Administration), Joint Secretary (Administration), Additional Secretary and your good self (reference may be made to Annexures B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J and K). It will not be out of place to mention here that when I first arrived in this Department, in lieu of my own desk and office room, I was offered a seat on a cane sofa in the chambers of the then Deputy Secretary, Shri O.P. Chadha. I had at that time complained in writing that it was neither possible nor proper for a Junior Administrator (Under Training), a lady officer, to function out of the chambers of the Deputy Secretary (Administration), a satyr. My complaint, which can be perused at Annexure L, had inter alia noted that Shri Chadha had verbally proposed to me at that time that if I did not care for the cane sofa, I could work sitting on his lap. I had requested him to make me the same offer in writing, but I received no response from his seat. My complaint (at Annexure L), like all my other complaints, has been ignored.

Since I have no personal staff, I will have to go myself to the railway station to book a berth on the train to Madna. My trip to the station itself will be a waste of the time and money of the Welfare State unless it is clear beforehand precisely what I am scurrying off to Madna for. Desk Officer Shri D. Sengupta of the Disaster Management Cell will have no idea because hes one of us. Between cups of tea, h.e.l.l blink and sign whatever is placed before him.

Which he does, invariably. A characteristic of his that Lina Natesan can vouch for since they, once upon a time, for a couple of weeks or so, actually shared a room-with five other officers, fortunately of comparable rank-in Aflatoon Bhavan, housing being one of the more acute problems in the Welfare State.

When she had refused Deputy Secretary O.P. Chadhas offer to function from out of his lap, he had arranged for Miss Thomas one chair and one half of a desk in a fifteen-by-fifteen room on the fourth floor between the Gents Toilet and the canteen of the Department of Mines. The smells from the toilet and the canteen had been her faithful companions week after week, had mingled in her consciousness and at their most potent, had every now and then blended to make her swoon.

One half of a desk means that she sat on one side and Under Secretary Shri Dhrubo Jyoti Ghosh Dastidar occupied the other side. She made it clear to Shri Dastidar from the very first day that he was welcome to the visitors side of the desk. To his credit, he didnt seem to mind, either then or later. Nothing upsets him much, unless it be the sight of work.

The room therefore, to begin with, had four desks and seven officers. Apart from Under Secretary Shri Dastidar, Desk Officer Shri Sengupta and her good self Miss Natesan, there were a.s.sistant Director Dr Srinivas Chakki and a.s.sistant Financial Advisor (Housing for Cultural Luminaries) Mrs Minu Tutreja, who faced each other, and a.s.sistant Heritage Advisor (Pending Parliamentary Questions) Mr Govindarajulu, who shared his desk with Additional Counsellor (Delayed Pensions and Republic Day Parade) Mrs Govindarajulu. As per norms, each officer had been a.s.signed one large G.o.drej steel almirah, one three-tier open wooden file rack, one heater, one wooden teapoy for his or her official water jug and gla.s.s, and a second teapoy for his or her telephone. At Annexure M of her memorandum, Miss Thomas has provided for the readers perusal a fairly accurate sketch of the room as it stood two months ago.

The sketch makes it clear that to reach the door from their seats, both Shri Sengupta and Mrs Minu Tutreja had to squeeze through between the wall and Miss Thoma.s.s chair. Shri Sengupta always preferred to rub his private parts against her shoulder while Mrs Tutreja liked Miss Thoma.s.s upper arm to knead her b.u.t.tocks en pa.s.sant. We all have our quirks. Miss Thomas complained in writing (Annexure N) about both the private parts and the b.u.t.tocks. They were consequently removed. Then there were five. Miss Thomas has always believed in the power of the written word to move mountains, what to speak of buns.

For the record-and for a clearer picture of the room- about a week before the plague, Shri Govindarajulu went to hospital and hasnt returned yet-not at least to his old desk. During lunch hour one day, Mrs Govindarajulu reached across the files that they all found so convenient to use as table mats and whammed her husband on his skull with her steel lunch box. The others present couldnt glimpse much of Shri Govindarajulus face, because of all that curry and blood. Domestic discord, no doubt, spilling over into office hours. A couple of days after, Mrs Govindarajulu availed of the Leave Travel Concession facility and undertook an apparently unending religious tour of the South. Then there were three.

Dr Srinivas Chakkis sudden disappearance from the room was effected by the Disaster Management Cell. He left for Madna on plague duty. Then there were two. To quote from Housing Problem of Miss Natesans memorandum: Dr Chakki is also my neighbour in the Praj.a.pati Aflatoon Welfare State Public Servants Housing Complex Transit Hostel near the Pashupati Aflatoon Public Gardens. Does your good self know the Transit Hostel? Twelve hundred one-room fully-furnished flats built at breathtaking speed by the Ministry of Public Works four years ago for the International Man, Woman and Child in Nature Conference that was eventually held at Djakarta? Anyway, I stay in B-318 and Dr Chakki in C-401. We have been meeting almost every morning at six for the last four years or so because we both go and buy milk at about that time from the local Mammary Dairy booth. It was while we were returning from the booth on the morning of November 27 that Dr Chakki revealed to me that he had received orders to join the Central Team of Experts that was being Rushed to Madna that very day.

I should add, to place matters in perspective, that he is an a.s.sistant Director in the Ministry of Public Health (and thus, according to pay scale, half a rung senior to the undersigned).

He returned from Madna on December 7 with the plague and both a red alert and the police out for him. As one of our national newspapers puts it, he is truly the hero-villain of the Praj.a.pati Aflatoon Transit Hostel. He is a hero for having gone to Madna to fight the dreaded disease and a villain for having returned with it.

He is an entomologist by profession. Entomology is defined as the science dealing with insects of public interest, much like a litigation. Dr Chakki has over twenty years experience in the field. He is a veteran of the Menugunta Typhus Epidemic of 1973, the Gaurangabad Malaria Scare of 1976 and the Phatna Encephalitis Rout of 1979. His open letter to four national newspapers, on which I rely heavily, is at Annexure V for ready reference.

After two days of intensively combing the plague-affected areas of Madna for insects of public interest, he contracted high fever and a cough. He attributed the first to the heat of Madna and the second to his cigarettes, and continued working till on the third day, his a.s.sociates Miss Shruti and Miss Snigdha insisted that he consult a doctor. He snarled and pointed out to them that he was one himself. His sudden display of choler-for he normally is one of the mildest of men- convinced Miss Shruti and Miss Snigdha that something was seriously amiss. Abandoning him and their combing, they fled to the Office of the Munic.i.p.al Commissioner and returned with a couple of fierce-eyed constables. Your good self will no doubt be aware that the police and para-military forces are all over the place in Madna. Nothing in our country moves or happens without them-naturally-we being a Police State as much as a Welfare State. In Madna, they have enough work to keep them occupied till their retirement. They track down and force the absconding Munic.i.p.al sweepers and scavengers to return to work, they then protect them from the wrath of the citizens of the town, they guard the abandoned houses in different wards and the clinics of the doctors who have fled, and the persons of those whove returned, they prevent suspected plague patients from escaping from the hospitals and they defuse potential rebellions amongst the overworked, stressed-out medical staff.

It took six policemen two days to locate and cart to the Bhupati Aflatoon Memorial Hospital a comatose Dr Chakki. He was found sprawled in an alley beside an enormous garbage dump, clutching a fat dead rat in his outflung right hand. He took a day to come around. Then, to quote from his open letter, he 'had a look at the conditions in the hospital and promptly relapsed into unconsciousness because then I felt safer.

Not everyone from the capital who happened to be in Madna that week had been brought there by the plague. Naturally not, the officially-unconfirmed outbreak of the epidemic being neither new nor anything more than a sideshow in the complex life of the nation. Rajani Suroor, for instance, last seen seated and smirking before a balefully-aroused Chief Revenue Divisional Commissioner, was visiting for purely cultural reasons (almost-purely; since everything is partly politics).

He, to quote part of his visiting card, is a theatre activist. He discloses easily in conversation that he is wholly committed to Total-, New Broom-, Intimate-, Alternative-, Street-, Militant-, Contramural-and Inadmissible Theatre. His troupe is called Vyatha, or Pain. His detractors call it Gand Mein, or In the a.r.s.e. Vyatha procures, under the programme '6493: Promotion and Diffusion of Demotic and Indigenous Drama and Other Such Forms of Self-Expression, handsome quarterly grants from the Ministry of Culture, Heritage, Education and Welfare. When Bhuvan, the nth prominent Aflatoon, became Prime Minister, he changed its name to the Ministry for Heritage, Upbringing and Resource Investment-HUBRIS, in brief. At a subsequent Press conference, he a.s.serted that the new name was more affirmative, focussed, thrustful and forward-looking. These adjectives were chosen for him by his Information Advisor, one of his New Men, who were mostly youngish and greedy, mostly from his old school (where, they recalled fondly, hed been a complete duh), mostly Oxbridge, mostly h.o.m.os.e.xual. They mostly wore white or off-white Indian clothes. In a sparkling response to a vapid question from The State Today, the PM had added that further, translating the new name of the Ministry would at last give the Department of Const.i.tutional Languages some work. He-G.o.d bless him-was generally devilishly witty at inopportune moments. The ministerial change of name cost the taxpayers of the Welfare State twenty-one lakh rupees in stationery and nameplates alone. The Press conference cost just four lakhs.

Rajani Suroor had been seven years junior to Bhuvan Aflatoon at school. Traffic-paralysing street theatre has brought him and Vyatha to Madna. They intend to perform, outside the Mall Road Gate of Aflatoon Maidan, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, roughly between 12.30 and 2.30 p.m.- when several schools release their charges, the shops havent yet shut, the drones outside the cinema theatres and the hawkers havent yet dissolved into the afternoon-a play, a skit scripted by Suroor, the first of a venturesome quintet on a rather grand theme. He has t.i.tled the skit Baahar Nikal, Ashleel Jaylee; that is his translation of Shakespeares phrase, 'Out, Vile Jelly.

The play depicts an event that occurred in the town some eight years ago, at the Hemvati Aflatoon Welfare State Home for the Visually Disadvantaged. With a hot ladle, an infuriated attendant had gouged out the right eye of a blind girl just because at breakfast, she, like d.i.c.kenss Oliver Twist, had asked for a second helping of gruel. The gruel had been, as always, an uneven mixture of hot water, a trace of sugar dust, wheat dust, much true grit, some c.o.c.kroach s.h.i.t. An appalled Directorate of Welfare Homes had forthwith suspended the guilty attendant and initiated against him both criminal proceedings and an Official Enquiry. So Karam Chand the deft ladle-wielder was ordered to skip work for months, and paid just half his salary, poor thing, for doing so. Before the Enquiry Committee, he deposed indomitably, denied the accusation, contended that he was a victim of the caste politics of the Home, and emphasized that there werent any credible witnesses against him, for however could the testimony of eleven blind juveniles be considered sound?- and that finally, when all was said and done, the episode wasnt that horrifying, was it, because after all, in the first place, the girl had never had any eyesight to lose, had she? The Enquiry Officer, a spiritless Welfare official, took five weeks to conclude that since the matter was sub-judice, the Directorate should await the outcome of the criminal case before awarding a final penalty, and that of course till then, the punishment of suspension should continue.

For the seventeen months that Karam Chand stayed away from work, he st.i.tched undies for men and women and hawked them on the footpath of Junction Road, a.k.a Praj.a.pati Aflatoon Marg. He and his tailor colleagues called them wearunders. He made about sixty rupees a day-not bad, considering that it exceeded his take-home pay-namely, his salary plus his Dearness Allowance plus an Additional Dearness Allowance plus his Regularization of Pre-Revised Pay Scales Emolument plus an Advance Increment plus his House Rent Allowance plus his Uniform Allowance plus a Festival Advance minus his Standard Provident Fund Subscription minus his Group Insurance Programme Contribution minus a Compulsory Security Plan Payment minus a House Construction Loan Instalment minus a Bicycle Purchase Advance Part-Settlement minus his Standard Provident Fund Loan Repayment minus no taxes. Karam Chands income was beneath being taxed by the Welfare State. A standard welfare measure, no doubt-one doesnt s.n.a.t.c.h at the earnings of the almost-submerged four-fifths, particularly when one pays them chickenfeed in the first place. But Karam Chand- and most of the rest of the hundreds of thousands that compose that only-just-floating four-fifths-arent overwhelmed by the bounty of the Welfare State. We earn chickenfeed, they grumble-with misgivings for the Zeitgeist darkening their brows-hence we arent obliged to work hard.

Not at our jobs, anyway. In Suroors skit, the Karam Chand character whoops out a rather peppy song while sending up A Routine Working Day in the Life of an Attendant. Whose shift officially starts at eight every morning, but who never shows up at the Home before nine-which is when he shakes hands with the other Karam Chands, drinks with them several cups of tea, signs the Attendance Register, ungrudgingly tastes the breakfast of the day, dispenses it to the inmates, shakes hands once more with the other Karam Chands, lopes off to Junction Road to hawk his wearunders, returns to the Home for lunch at twelve, and then at two, slips back to the footpath for the rest of the day. The other duties of his post hes disregarded for years, indeed, has all but forgotten-and like his colleagues, he steals for himself and his household whatever he can from the stores of the Home.

Whenever his Superintendentd remind him of one of his effaced ch.o.r.es-'Can you please fill up the water cooler in my room, yaar?-Karam Chand would snappily point out, 'Room coolers are not on my list of duties, saab . . . I dont know, saab. I do my own work to the best of my ability, and I dont poke my nose in other . . . I dont know, saab. It is not my duty to know by heart the lists of everybodys duties . . . I dont know, saab. It could be the duty of the peons or the junior orderlies, the dafadars, senior bearers, jamadars, sweepers, the night watchmen, chowkidaars, a.s.sistants Grade IV, malis, or daily wagers . . . No, saab, why should I have a copy of my list of duties? It was never given to me . . . I dont know, saab. You should make a reference to the Directorate . . . Arrey, suspend me, saab! But for what, for not doing someone elses duty! . . . Control your tongue, saab! Weve suffered a good many Superintendents like you, okay! . . . Ohhhh! Youre doing politics! Youre insulting my caste . . . Ill make a complaint to the higher authorities! . . . Ill make a representation to the Kansal Commission! . . .

Tackling Karam Chand requires tenacity and cunning, the doggedness to prod the Welfare State to move its mammoth, immensely sluggish a.r.s.e. One maddened Superintendent, as a first step towards fixing the attendant, did in fact make a reference to the Directorate of Welfare Homes.

The Hemvati Aflatoon Welfare State Home for the Visually Disadvantaged Date, etc.

Subject: Official List of Duties of Post of Attendant.

Type II in the Above Organization.

Sir, With reference to your letter No. Nil dated Nil, it is requested that the above subject is not readily available in this office. May kindly send two copies post-haste and oblige.

Yours sincerely, Etc.

No reply, of course. A reminder after five weeks. After a further six weeks, a second reminder, this time on flesh-pink paper, to underline the fact that it was a second reminder. Then the Directorate replied that with reference to your letter No. DTY 1093/LST 163/89/A dated etc., a reference had been made (copy enclosed) to the Ministry Of Heritage, Upbringing and Resource Investment and that their reply was awaited. May kindly see please.

In his skit, Rajani Suroor does not present Karam Chand entirely as some unmanageable monster. On the contrary, he is also portrayed as a duteous family man-for whom not even the most openhanded pilfering from the stores of the blind will suffice to sate the underfed mouths at home; a concerned father of four nubile daughters, a survivor of abysmally cynical inertness whose refrain is: Not even the Almighty can divine how I plod on. His obviously symbolic significance is further emphasized by the umpteen references of the narrator-persona of the skit to Karam Chands strategic drifting in and out of the other plays of the quintet. This persona-stout, jovial, tumid-eyed-like those raconteurs who doubt that their audience has grasped the point-also, every now and then, pounces on his spectators with posers like: How much did it cost you taxpayers to have the eye of a blind girl gouged out by an employee of the Welfare State in the course of his official duties?

After much farcical calculation, he himself estimates, 'Rs 17.45 per second, and a grand total of Rs 469318.35.

All the five skits comprise knockabout money-talk of this kind. Karam Chands salary, for instance, is debated by a bunch of boisterous characters; each Allowance, Emolument, Increment, Advance, Subscription, Contribution, Payment, Instalment, Settlement and Repayment is a persona clothed in greyish-muddy kurta-pyjama; the dismal hue is meant to convey the colour of the Welfare State file covers. These players clamber onto one anothers shoulders to suggest ceiling-high stacks of files in a typical office cubicle; they hide behind one another to mimic files getting lost, they slink out when the narrator-persona pockets a bribe; one stoops and bears another spider-like on his back to convey both the oppressive load of the work and the inconsequence of the subject matter; they move-skip, hop, leapfrog, bob, buck, prance, shuffle, glide-all the while to the catchy, rap-like Hinglish chatter of the narrator-persona and the Karam Chand player: O kinsmen of the 'Welfare State-behold your clerk!

Earns sixteen hundred a month of your cash! A lark!

His work? The Cycle Purchase Advance Part Settlements Of nineteen point five rupees per month of other gents Like him! Does the welfare of this-the cream, the fat, Ever reach anyone other than the bureaucrat, The Minister, the clerk, the peon? Thousands of files!

Stacks a metre higher than the clerk-who has piles From roosting on some trivial matter for ages.

The more footling the subject, the many more the pages Of comment and counter-comment-some clerks, of course, Spend their office hours yelling themselves hoa.r.s.e Touting their wearunders all over the pavement Of Junction Road. You object? Shouldnt they be sent Back to work? And punished?-You say so, no doubt, Because youd like another eye or two gouged out.

May we add here?-that blind girl, poor thing-some kind.

soul.

Took her to the Welfare hospital for that hole In her face. The doctor-the usual Welfare quack, Disinterested, on the bottle, with a b.l.o.o.d.y knack For f.u.c.k-ups-patched her up. And then, examining Her a week after, they saw sepsis, blossoming.

And Karam Chand?-Sick of his undies, he slithered Away to buy a caste certificate from a bird In the tehsildars office. And from there, with strife In his heart, he moved on, elsewhere, to a new life.

'Hmmm, observed Commissioner Raghupati. In his later years as a civil servant, he had come to prefer 'Hmmm to 'Interesting and 'I see.

Suroor leaned forward and added animatedly, 'In our sequent skit, we compare-juxtapose-our time and the Kautilyan-which, to my mind, is the archetypal Welfare State.

One-eleven p.m. The Commissioner needed to return home for his bracing ma.s.sage and his light lunch. He smiled at Suroor, scarcely disarranging the hard fat of his face, and pushed a paan into his mouth. He was a perennially hungry, carnal man. In his unending, unscientific tussle with obesity, hed snacked for years on paans. Stocky, the hard fat enclosing cold eyes and a gap-toothed, brutish mouth, the sort of figure that, while erect, rocks all the time on the b.a.l.l.s of its feet. 'The Collector told me that you and he enjoyed a long chat last evening. Raghupati disregarded the minutiae of his work, but was on the ball, intuitively, about the stuff that cast long shadows. So to Suroor he added in a purr, 'Ill be delighted to attend the performance on Friday.

Hot outdoors. A winter afternoon in Madna was usually thirty-five degrees plus. Raghupati namasted his way through the press of pet.i.tioners waiting for justice or some crumbs of largesse. As a civil servant, for twenty-three years, hed seen crowds outside a good many offices of the Welfare State; the numbers had now grown, like the discontent and cynicism, and the clothes were different. Changing times, everyone looked less resigned, more sullen; in the air was less the whiff of those close to the land-who live by the patient rhythms of the earth-and more the reek of the sweat of suppliants who wait, fume and fret, and wait.

Two decades ago, when hed been a.s.sistant Collector at Koltanga and had all but sparked off a riot because hed b.u.g.g.e.red his bungalow peon who hadnt liked it one bit, whod caved in and squealed blubberingly to his parents, the crowd that had gathered around Raghupati then had, without altogether swallowing his protests, finally done nothing but complain to his Collector. It hadnt quite known how to touch-leave alone manhandle-him. In that golden time, hed been a thousand rungs above the hoi polloi and their law that he administered. But with the years, that inters.p.a.ce had narrowed and warped considerably, and a few of them had even begun to dress like him-in tight safari suits of elaborate st.i.tchery-and he simply couldnt risk b.u.g.g.e.ring bungalow peons anymore, and could just about get them to ma.s.sage him instead.

He rolled up his car window so that the driver could switch on the a.c. Officially, he wasnt meant to have air-conditioning in his car, as per a routinely silly economy-measure circular of Dr Harihara Kapila, the Princ.i.p.al b.o.o.bZ Secretary, which had decreed, inter alia, that as per Cabinet Resolution No. CR.ES/4709/F-EM/69 dated etc., only Cabinet Ministers, Vice Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Chancellors and Additional Chancellors of the Supreme Council, Chairmen, Chairmen-Designate and First Speakers of the Summit a.s.sembly, Master Judges and Commons Judges of the Capital Court, Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the Permanent Congress-in brief, the creme de la sc.u.m-were ent.i.tled to air-conditioning in their office suites, motorcades and those parts of their official bungalows that they used for office work. The rest of the officialdom of the Welfare State was advised to use in their office rooms water coolers, the sizes of which per area of room the circular specified. It-the circular- was silent on whether officialdom was meant to boil in its office cars and in those parts of its office flats that it at times used for office work. Four of the seventy-six registered employees unions had moved various courts in the matter, alleging that the circular was offensive, discriminatory, even violative (of the Fundamental Rights Enshrined in the Consti) and unrealistic (since it discounted the prodigious humidity of most regions of the country that rendered all water coolers ineffective-and in fact, intolerable). The courts were still pondering.

The circular cost the taxpayers a little over forty million. The between-the-lines instructions of economy-measure circulars do tend to trigger off a flurry of economic activity; exhortations to be thrifty are generally understood to mean that one may buy whatever one wants, as long as its the cheapest. Never bother about the best. It tends to be expensive and therefore brands you as wasteful and wicked. Remember that only crooks buy for more what they couldve got for less, using the difference to accommodate their shares from each deal. Focus instead on the cheapest, the dirt-cheap, the sub-standard, and whenever possible, on secreting away for yourself a slice of that cheapest. All things must fall apart, therefore decree each office object to have a span of life, and periodically, routinely, replace whatever is not-new with the cheapest, no matter that it might not be necessary. Remember to treat the property of the Welfare State with an almost-manic brutality, much like a serial killer his victims.

Needless to add, the creme de la sc.u.m floats far above economy-measure circulars, which apply-with stolid severity-mainly to the submerged 96.4 per cent of the employees of the Welfare State-namely, the millions of peons and a.s.sistants Grades I, II, III and IV, dafadars, Junior Clerks, drivers, book-keepers, Deputy Clerks, attendants, auditors, Senior Clerks, stenographers, cashiers, Princ.i.p.al Clerks, Auxiliary Diarists, storekeepers, Chief Clerks, typists, accountants, stenotypists, Head Clerks-for none of whom are the batteries in the wall clocks of their grey, grimy crowded halls replaced even once in ten years; their perks are the intact window pane, the not-yet-fused light bulb, the water jug that doesnt leak, the ceiling fan that rotates, the rexine of a table top that hasnt yet been shredded by some clerk crazed by inertia. In their halls-their boxed-in verandas and caged-off corridors-n.o.body provides them file racks for the knolls of files that rise all anyhow up to the ceiling, the snug burrow-lairs of ants, moths, termites, worms, beetles, c.o.c.kroaches, mice, rats, moles, mongooses, pigeons. Some of that rot doubtless slithers into the quality of work of the inhabitants of these office warrens.

But the expenditure of a little over forty million. Opportunely, in good time, several original, attached, dependent and subordinate offices of the four hundred and eighty-seven Ministries and Departments of both the central and twenty-seven regional governments of the Welfare State bought over a thousand air-conditioners-and a good many fridges, freezers, chillers and ice buckets-for the offices, official motorcades and residential offices of their Cabinet Ministers and First Speakers, their Chairmen-Designate and Commons Judges. To that should be added proportionate portions of the costs and overheads of all the activities of all those involved in the issuing of the economy-measure circular-that frenzied dictating, noting, placing on record and compiling, photocopying, cyclostyling, ferrying to and fro, the drafting, minuting, typing, redacting, translating, the bulls.h.i.tting, the time-wasting-plus bits of the scores of salaries, allowances and emoluments, of the expenditure on upkeep, services, electricity-on the four air-conditioners, for example, in the Treasury Ministers chambers that have to be switched on at least an hour before he turns up in the morning for the rooms to be chill enough to facilitate his brainwork, his ponderings.

Thus it was that the replaced air-conditioners tumbled down the ladder into the offices, Amba.s.sador cars, bedrooms and puja-rooms at the homes of Raghupati and his several hundred colleagues strategically dispersed all over the Welfare State.

On cue, Sharada Prasad the driver switched on the ca.s.sette player along with the a.c. Raghupati preferred the fifties and sixties Hindi film songs of Mutesh. When Mutesh, in his doleful, reedy, atonal voice, sang of the aches of love, the perfidiousness of friendship, the ups and downs of survival- his range, in brief-he conjured up for Raghupati the image of a male rape victim singing under duress, while being b.u.g.g.e.red, or even-with Mutesh, as with Raghupati, anything was imaginable-f.u.c.ked in the gullet. He played Mutesh almost always during his ma.s.sages in his puja room.

Through the black-filmed car window, he noticed the sign painters on their scaffolding, flies on the giant billboard that dwarfed the Commissionerate gates. The black film itself-and all tinted gla.s.s, et cetera-had been the subject of another, more recent, circular of the Home Secretary. To help the State in its effort against terrorists, gunrunners, smugglers, kidnappers and other anti-social elements, the police would henceforth regulate how tinted car windows could be. Welfare State-car windows could be darker than private-car windows, but should definitely not be opaque, i.e., a policeman should be able to see inside the car, easily, from a distance of seven feet (2.07 metres). Or so Raghupati had deciphered the circular, which had been issued only in Hindi, the official language.

On the billboard that publicized only Welfare State schemes and projects, Small Savings was making way for Family Welfare. Small Savings had been a smiling family watering a sapling. SUSTAIN THE TREE OF LIFE, had urged the branches of the sapling. Family Welfare was going to be the same trio-parents and one child of debatable gender-playing ringa-ringa roses around an inverted, crimson equilateral triangle, the heart of which would blazon the slogan: ONE OFFSPRING, ONE HEIR, an argument for birth control the inaptness of which for his quarrelsome, litigious fellow-citizens had struck Raghupati more than once. Time and time again in his career-as District Magistrate, as Joint Director of Land Records, as Charity Commissioner- hed observed that his fellow human beings, on the whole, preferred the quarrel to the solution; that is to say, to them, the verdict of any court signified not the resolution of a dispute, but merely a temporary blockage of it. To satisfy their craving, tier after tier of tribunal and bench, council and board, ranged away to the horizons of the Welfare State, and each seat of justice resuscitated, infused new life into, a magical diversity of squabbles: Me-laard, my neighbour has no right to enjoy gratis the shade of the mango tree that grows in my garden, on my side of our common boundary wall.

And.

Me-laard, Norths four clubs, an unethical splinter bid expressing slam interest in spades with at most one club, was a studied attempt to mislead his opponents by underhand methods.

To suggest to such litigants that they should restrict themselves to only one issue was in fact to ask them to sin against their progeny; heaven forbid, however could one not give ones heir someone to litigate against?

The two ad campaigns-Small Savings and Family Welfare- dated from the four months that Raghupati had been Deputy at the Directorate of Information, Public Relations and Visual Education (DIPRAVED). His boss of those days, Harihara Kapila-indefatigable, capricious, witty after a fashion-hed thought up the acronym of the Directorate, for example- would ever so often declare, particularly in front of outsiders and women, 'After I take up a new a.s.signment, for the first six months I maintain that Im learning the ropes. For the next six, I blame my predecessor. Within one year, I begin to get the hang of things, i.e., I realize that the organization should be wound up.

Later, when hed scrambled up the ladder-advising his juniors en route to Suck Above, Kick Below-to become Regional Finance Secretary, he was credited with having successfully transformed ZBB-the Zero-Based Budgeting programme-into b.o.o.bZ: Budget Organization on Base Zero. In the last decade of his unastonishing career, when he had less to suck and more to kick, and when he sucked better than ever before, hed hang, behind every cushioned swivel chair that hed rest his piles in, his favourite poster, framed in black. It parodied an ophthalmologists eye chart: I.

DO.

NOT.

SUFFER.

FROM I.

DISEASE.