'We will of course link it up with the other s.e.xual a.s.sault case, that of the civil servant, k.u.mari Lina Natesan Thomas. Shes accused Raghupati of s.e.xually attacking her at an official dinner and hes apparently going to receive a court summons. Youre no doubt aware of that?

'Ah yes-k.u.mari Lina . . . already the stuff of legend, Gaitonde-ji, and utterly admirable. A great pity, that I havent yet had the honour of meeting her. Yes, it does seem that the Commissionerd offended her in some way or the other at their first meeting, and on a matter of principle, she refused to let the matter rest . . . a useful thing, principle. One wishes one had more of it oneself. No meetings, files, paperwork, inspections, reviews . . . one can focus all ones energies on representations and written complaints instead, addressed to all ones bosses from the PM down to Shri Raghupati. You of course know that hes due to move now, any day. h.e.l.l be going to the Centre as Joint Secretary. Minister Virbhim cant wait to surround himself with his henchmen, naturally. Meanwhile, the pressure is on us to prepare a backgrounder for a White Paper for the Department on this whole Rajani Suroor business. I told them that itd be easier to draw up an off-white paper.

Bhootnath Gaitondes manner seemed to suggest that Shri Sen shouldnt be chuckling in office all the time. 'For us, the cla.s.s implications of the mysterious disappearance of Chamundi are clear. We intend to give this resonantly symbolic act the widest publicity. It is what in essence all your Welfare State programmes do to all your beneficiaries-what else is b.u.g.g.e.ry but base exploitation, tell me? . . . Vyatha, Suroors drama group, is very enthusiastic about the theme that Ive proposed to them. I met its second-in-command at the Madna International a couple of days ago. An absolute tiger in his enthusiasm, though in appearance, more a dragon-a Bengali too, perhaps you know him?-Ive suggested a full-length street play that will revolve around Chamundi, how the innocent boy has been ensnared by the web of the Welfare State . . . the entire family frankly rues the day when the grandfather became one of the first beneficiaries of the Integrated Tribal Development Plan . . .

Well, not perhaps the entire family, since it is more accurately an enormous tribal clan that stretches up to the horizon and beyond. Beyond because Chamundis agnate uncle, for example, a one-legged father of two nubile daughters and half-a-dozen younger siblings, has for some years been residing far away in the capital-more precisely, beneath the new Trimurti Aflatoon Centenary Celebrations Flyover. As for his more immediate kin, his sister has been discharged from the Madna Civil Hospital with a livid scar on her cheek and a numbness in all her faculties. She returns to the International Hotel to learn that they dont want her back with her new face. She is thus poised to sink back to her roots in the jungles of Jompanna. Chamundis elder brother, Dambha, is fed up of riding an auto-rickshaw in Madna rigged out as Durga and is on the lookout for starting off anew elsewhere. He would have quit the district months ago had he not been dissuaded by his wife, who is blind and was last in the news eight years ago when she had been attacked with a hot ladle by an attendant at the Hemvati Aflatoon Welfare State Home. A truly unfortunate-but representative-clan, dispersed in an enormous diaspora and up against it everywhere, its members individually and haphazardly thrashing their limbs about to stay afloat and above the Poverty Line, dimly aware that unless they seized and moulded their futures themselves, the single miracle that could officially deliver them would be the arbitrary decision of some state planners to improve the economic health of the nation by simply lowering that crucial line.

Up against the plague too, even though it was one of the few misfortunes that hadnt touched them yet. For Commissioner Bhupen Raghupati had decided-and suggested to the Police Superintendent-that the AWOL Chamundi could profitably be considered a victim of the epidemic and should anyone enquire about him anywhere, he was to be told so. Inspired by the idea, Makhmal Bagai, fresh from jail but unrepentant, had proposed the same diagnosis-or else-for both the scar on the face of Chamundis sister and the long trance of Rajani Suroor. The Civil Surgeon had taken three days Casual Leave to mull the theories over.

'Hmmm-ing, and 'I see-ing intelligently at regular intervals, Shri Sen switched off while Bhootnath Gaitonde ran on. His conscience reminded him that he was being paid, inter alia, to listen to whoever sat in front of him. In turn, he pointed out to his conscience that he was sure that his concentration was commensurate with his pay.

In his years in the Civil Service, time and time again, usually when hed been plumb in the middle of something, Agastya had stepped outside himself, observed for a while whatever hed been doing, and then asked himself whether it-his activity of that moment-would in any way, directly or indirectly, immediately or eventually, actually help the absolutely poor, the real have-nots, the truly unprivileged, the utterly G.o.dforsaken-in brief, the supposed primary beneficiaries of the Welfare State. His answer had always been no.

For one thing, development, to be successful, had to be achieved by stealth. No one must know. If the word spread, everybody would move in and walk all over one.

For another-well, how did his day pa.s.s? 1) Listening, off and on, to Bhootnath Gaitonde, a middle-aged, dark star of an unimportant, Leftist-ish political party. That was certainly not going to help anybody. What else?

2) Pushing files on different subjects. Signing a clerks General Provident Fund Loan Advance. Grabbing hectares of some hapless souls land for a thermal power project that would take off two decades after. Answering tedious Parliament and Legislative a.s.sembly questions. Allowing agricultural land to be used for generally illegal, non- agricultural purposes. Enquiring into the misdeeds of a Munic.i.p.al Officer who retired four years ago. Replying to lengthy audit objections. Sanctioning special holidays in the district. Permitting the Electricity Board to build a substation beside the Primary School. Sending two hundred different kinds of statements to fifty different offices. Writing stinkers to subordinates, drawing their attention to earlier stinkers. Ordering other offices to depute their staff for special drives. Disallowing a peons Medical Reimburs.e.m.e.nt Claim. Gearing up for a VIP visit that would always start three hours behind schedule. Unwinding thereafter. Tearing down encroachments and slums. Watching from his car their inhabitants attack the police. Inspecting the records of a district treasury or subordinate office. And so on. None of that even remotely touched the lives of those at the bottom of the pile. What else during the day?

3) A seven-hour-long District Planning and Development Council Meeting, the miasma of which was interrupted only by a stultifying lunch. At such gatherings-Members of Parliament and of the Legislative a.s.sembly, local politicians, prominent citizens, chums of the party in power-all harangued the government in general and the bureaucracy in particular for their misdeeds. Their revelations and accusations were on the whole accurate and had the sting, the fury, of those done out of a deal. Not even one such allegation or denunciation, in Agastyas experience, had been prompted by any sense of justice, propriety, fairplay, ethics, decency or right. However, being fundamentally clearsighted-or innocent-he still believed that these concepts existed and had meaning in the Welfare State. As far as possible, for example, and without cracking up, he wanted to ferret out and help the neediest of the needy, the sort who actually died every now and then of hunger; he wished to work out a system, a method, by which these millions could be precisely located, to cleave through the mountains of off-white paper to arrive at the heart of the matter, the essence of the Welfare State. Of course, working out that system would require more off-white paper. Fortunately, thered never be a shortage.

Sure enough, hed ruminated in his black diary: Out of all these schemes, plans, projects and programmes of ours that look so snazzy on paper, who benefits in the end? After every b.u.g.g.e.r down the line, that is, has wolfed down his cut? Its almost always someone familiar with the system, isnt it? Hes benefitted before from some other programme, so he knows how those dreadful forms are to be filled up, which twenty-three doc.u.ments are required, whom to bribe to get what faked. If he himself cant apply the second time round under his own name, then his mother, father, wife, sister, sons, uncle or cousin can, or he himself can under an a.s.sumed name. Not that he doesnt need the peanuts that we dole out, but surely, in this monstrously populous, economically haywire country, there exist millions who need them more. Of course, one column of the dreadful form will routinely ask the beggar whether he or, his near and dear ones have ever sucked before at these dugs, or at other dugs, of the State. We might run out of milk for them, but not for ourselves, and never will we run out of paper. If only wed all been cows.

Bhootnath Gaitonde left after decades, with an a.s.surance, however, that they would see each other again within the hour at the special meeting convened by the Commissioner to discuss the minute-to-minute programme of the Prime Ministers visit.

The special meeting was actually two. To the second meeting had been invited the Army, the Air Force, the police, Public Works, National Highways, the Munic.i.p.ality, Public Health, the District Council, the Intelligence Bureau, the Security Branch, the District Education Officer, the press and media staff, General Administration and of course Protocol. All of them had to attend the first meeting too, formal invitations to which had only gone out to the elected, political and other heavyweights of the district. The two meetings would naturally discuss the minute-to-minute programmes of the Governor and the Chief Minister as well, since they were the princ.i.p.al among the many dignitaries expected in Madna before and for the PM. The second meeting would actually chalk and iron things out-who would garland whom, when the Army would salute and where the schoolkids with their paper flags and patriotic songs would be lined up. The first meeting had been organized mainly to ensure that no one felt offended at being left out of the Top-but open-Secret deliberations of the second-which of course the invitees to the first wouldnt attend, it being hush hush and restricted only to about a hundred officials.

To be honest, the second meeting-which would be the first of a series of many, held with increasing frequency and panic and decreasing method-would map everything out but the nitty gritty. How many in the helicopter? Who were the others? The exact time of arrival? Was Bhanwar Virbhim part of the entourage or was he now officially in some other camp? Would the PMs food taster be on the flight? Where was lunch? Was the helipad to be sanitized twenty-four or forty-eight hours before the landing? Could they presume for heavens sake that the police would not insist on photographs on the temporary ident.i.ty cards that would be issued to the privileged who would be allowed into the V?IP enclosure at the helipad? No VIP enclosure at all? Did they know what they were saying? Would his route to Aflatoon Maidan skirt the plague or pierce through it? Was it really necessary to have armed gunmen on the rooftops all along the route? Provide them packed lunches and bottled mineral water? Really? Why dont we set up Committees for each macro event and sub-committees for the micro events? Well, micro as in bottled mineral water for armed gunmen en route? Who would clear, from the Security angle, private video cameras? Not you? You only do TV channels? Then who? Will we need separate pa.s.ses to have access to the twenty-four-hour control room? Is the visit to Rajani Suroor in the hospital official? Oh, a private diversion? At the Maidan, a maximum of how many chairs on the dais? Chairs with armrests? Are sandalwood-scented garlands acceptable to the PM? You know, because of sandalwood and Suk.u.maran Govardhan?

The list of questions was never-ending; further, they changed with every meeting. Those answered and settled beyond doubt on Monday became irrelevant on Wednesday. Is the Prime Ministers Private Secretary a vegetarian? was Mondays question. He isnt coming, was Wednesdays information, but his Princ.i.p.al Personal a.s.sistant is. Well, whats his name? Not much is known of this one but he keeps a vow of silence on Thursdays.

Different sections of the vast police network of the Welfare State-Intelligence, Security, Anti-terrorism, Vigilance, the regional police-knew some of the answers to some of the questions but they werent telling. For one, they couldnt-no one could-be absolutely certain of their information. For another, to reveal it was an unnecessary security risk, that is to say, knowledge is power. I do my job, if others had done theirs, the country wouldnt have gone to the dogs.

When they did communicate what they knew, it was either because the news was stale and safe or it had already been pa.s.sed on by somebody else. The transmission was almost always oral-by wireless or telephone; firstly, because writing stuff down took time; secondly, because notes and faxes became records, the undeniable, ineradicable evidence of an event, and therefore avoidable. The receivers sometimes wrote the information down and telegrammed or faxed it back for confirmation, which hardly ever arrived, usually because by then the facts had changed. On the rare occasions when minute-to-minute programmes werent turned around at the last minute and Headquarters could boast of a responsible and dutiful set of officers, the written confirmations trickled in, in twos and threes, a week or so after the event.

Between Bhootnath Gaitonde and the two-in-one meeting, the Collector of Madna tried to meet all his hundred waiting pet.i.tioners in under half-an-hour. His best timing till then had been twenty-eight minutes for one hundred and thirteen of them. He was however tripped up completely by the forty-third, a spirited eighty-year-old woman who claimed to be a Veteran Freedom Fighter. Her bewildered rage didnt look as though it could be a.s.suaged by thirty undivided seconds of the Collectors time. Sighing, Agastya settled down to focus on her complaint. The letter to Daya would have to wait a while. Chidambaram glided in with some sheets of whitish paper and the local newspapers. Without interrupting his 'Oh dear-ing and 'Let me see-ing, Agastya ran his eye over the headlines. He was comically outraged by one leading news item. He summoned Chidambaram.

'The Dainik has this time confused leptospirosis and the plague. I mean, where do these people live? I want you to ask the PRO to arrange to send an intelligible rejoinder . . . perhaps even organize a press conference . . . the subject can be . . . The Rats of Madna: A Comparative Survey . . . that should cover just about everybody . . .

Places werent marked for the officials in the meeting hall of the Commissionerate but nevertheless, they all sat in strict pecking order to the left of the Commissioner around an enormous round table, facing the members of Parliament and Legislative a.s.sembly and other worthies. On Agastyas right sat Madnas Superintendent of Police, Panna Lal Makkad. Atop the files that Agastya had carted along for psychological support lay the sheets of whitish paper that he hoped by the end of the meeting would become his letter to Daya.

Makkad was gruff and glum, with hooded eyes, and a toothpick and fist in his mouth. Post-lunch was clearly not his time of day for special meetings. While the Chairman of the District Council declaimed on the need to have the Prime Minister commemorate his historical visit by inaugurating the unfinished new premises of the Madna Janata College, the necessity therefore of completing construction in six days and the general criminal laziness of the district civil engineering staff, Makkad belched and yawned at regular intervals before falling into a light doze with his eyes wide open. At four- thirty, after the non-official special invitees had taken a quarter of an hour to physically quit the hall, and the Collector had jotted down a few points with which to rea.s.sure-if not lull-the a.s.sembly into believing that all for the PMs visit was well, Makkad leaned across and breathed into Agastyas ear, 'He isnt coming, you know. Dont tell anyone because you arent supposed to know officially till next Monday.

The Collector controlled an urge to clamber on to the table and do a striptease. He instead observed the armed forces, clearly miffed at the civilian notion of their place in the hierarchy, gather up their things and reposition themselves in correct descending order alongside the Commissioners right elbow.

'His piles acting up?

'Sort of, what with all the drama thats going on. His advisors fear his being upstaged by Suk.u.maran Govardhan. Who, it is true, has sent out feelers for a trade-off. An unconditional surrender for a general pardon; then run for Parliament, and with his crores, back the right horse for PM.

Fact tarted up as fiction, garnished as fantasy, but nonetheless fundamentally fact. Agastya began to love the meeting. He valued them in particular when they-almost officially-became pointless. 'Has he decided whom to surrender to?

'He naturally wants it to be the PM. Live TV coverage while he ceremonially hands over a couple of flame throwers. The PMs Secretariat has snapped its fingers at the idea. A criminal cant simply start from the top. He must wait a bit to get there.

'So the buzz is true-he and Bhanwar Virbhim and the rest of Jayati Aflatoons caucus to orchestrate a palace coup, following proper democratic procedure, of course.

The Superintendent merely smiled in reply and while continuing to gaze beatifically at the armed forces, settled down to s.n.a.t.c.h a quick supplementary nap.

A Pest in the Corridors of Power.

To rendezvous with Daya at the earliest, and at the expense of the Welfare State, far away in anonymity, peace and quiet, the Collector of Madna suggested on the phone to the Under Secretary for Demotic Drama at Aflatoon Bhavan that he be summoned to the capital fourteen hundred kilometres away to report, in person, to the Centre on exactly what happened in broad daylight to Rajani Suroor.

'Sure, good idea, agreed Dhrubo. 'Bring that pest from the hospital, Alagh, along. Make it a delegation.

He looked less like a pest and more like the dragon of the comic-strips, Dr Alagh the Civil Surgeon of Madna did. He had hooded, sleepy eyes and a long nose, almost as wide as his mouth, with inordinately-flared nostrils. His lips were pale and thin, but his mouth enormous; when he smiled, his face became quite pear-like. The gaps in his teeth could comfortably allow the exhalation of fire; perhaps they-the gaps-had been created by his breathing under stress. Certainly, both his moustache and goatee had an uncertain, wispy, singed look. Appropriately, his remaining teeth were dark brown from smoking.

Except for a patch of forest above his left ear, he was bald. He wore that patch long, oiled it, dragged it up and across his dome down to his right ear where, mission accomplished, he abandoned it; tendrils of hair wandered all over his scalp, determinedly searching, like vines, for support.

He was short and podgy, perennially shabby, generally in sandals and off-white trousers and bush-shirt. For the meeting at the Centre, he carried a leather briefcase with his wallet, a small towel, his cigarettes, some Nivea cream for his chapped lips and a few books in it. They made him feel intellectual and creative, like a college student with a future.

They werent of much help, though, in the jungle of Aflatoon Bhavan. A cop stopped him and Agastya at the doors and asked them in Haryanvi-Punjabi, in a lazy, friendly way, 'And you, Hero Masters, where dyou think youre off to?

Alagh Saab (as he liked to be called) began to stutter in Hindi, 'We wanted to-Culture . . . a report . . . Under Secretary . . . appointment . . . He glanced at Agastya for guidance but the latter didnt much wish to converse with a cop. Besides, he-Agastya-was comfortable only in Bengali, Hindi and English. Haryanvi frightened, and Punjabi appalled, him. He was also depressed at being one of the only pair to be stopped in the leisurely after-lunch influx into the building.

The cop wriggled his eyebrows at them. 'Whats in that bag? A bomb? An AK-47? He commandingly stretched his hand out for the briefcase. Mesmerised both by the power of the law and the Haryanviness of the policemans personality, Dr Alagh numbly handed it over. A Surd breezed by with a cheerful invitation for the cop, 'Coming up to the Coffee House? For something piping hot before we f.u.c.k your mother? A large group of folk singers that had just been cleared by Reception guffawed.

The cops paw emerged from the briefcase with T.S. Eliots Notes Towards the Definition of Culture and the Nivea cream. 'Whats this for? he demanded, pushing the Nivea under Dr Alaghs nose, but he didnt really want an answer. He was about to rummage deeper when he-'Aha!-caught sight of the leather strap of a simple automatic camera around Agastyas neck. He looked sternly from one to the other. 'Spies, perhaps! Photography is strictly banned in Aflatoon Bhavan-youll of course tell me that you didnt know that.

'It isnt a bomb, for Heavens sake. Its silly to ban photography in the office when you have at least five hundred photocopying machines in each Department.

'Deposit this camera at Reception and get a pa.s.s from them for whoever you want to meet.

'Look-we have been to Reception! We have an appointment at 2.30 with the Under Secretary for Demotic and Indigenous Drama. We tried his intercom from Reception but there wasnt any reply because he never answers his internal phones. Theres n.o.body in Aflatoon Bhavan, hes often declared, whom hed care to receive a call from. The man at Reception understood but couldnt issue us a pa.s.s because as per rule, he has to first confirm the appointment on the intercom with the officer to be visited. He suggested that we should explain the background to you and that youd be sure to follow and let us through . . . are you wondering whether the Under Secretary for Demotic Drama answers his external phone? He doesnt, but mercifully his PA does-thats how- 'HUBRIS DESCENDING! All of a sudden, from the speaker above the cops head, a deafening, panicky whisper, as though from an archangel under stress. 'Attention, Main Gate, Reception and Parking . . . HUBRIS descending . . . Attention . . . The electrified cop straightened his beret, pulled his stomach in and roaring his intimidation at the throng around him, began to march towards the elevators twenty paces away, vigorously shoving to left and right all the potential a.s.sa.s.sins who awaited the Ministers descent. Agastya and Dr Alagh, who happened to be on the right, with one shove were propelled considerably closer to the stairs. Returning the camera to its case, Agastya watched for a couple of seconds the faces of the others gaping at the elevator while they waited for it to open to debouch Bhanwar Virbhim and his cortege; then he and Dr Alagh began to mount.

To restore his nerves, he needed to p.i.s.s, smoke and drink some tea. In the corridor on the fourth floor, to locate the loo, he followed the overpowering stink of urine. En route, he was distracted by a sign that read in both Hindi and English, Toilets This Way, but which pointed the way hed come. In two minds, he about-turned and hesitantly retraced his steps till the stairs, where he stopped. The pong of urine to him now was as confusing as the Toilets signs because every now and then, in his bewildered pa.s.sage down the corridor, it had mingled with the smell of hot, thick, sweet, milky tea.

The corridors of Aflatoon Bhavan had once been a handsome five metres in width, but over the years, the cupboards, desks, chairs, electric fans, coolers, shelves, sofas, stools, teapoys, clocks, folders and files had edged out of the twelve-hundred-plus rooms and sidled along down the pa.s.sages in search of lebensraum. Virtually every inch of common zone in the building-foyer, corridor, lobby-was now piled high with junk; only those s.p.a.ces declared by the Black Guard commandoes to be sensitive from a security angle-that is to say, those areas that would catch the Ministers eye in his shuttling from motorcade to elevator to office, escaped the rubbish, the lumber. That still left quite a few kilometres of corridor. The fire-escapes, storerooms, garages and the dead-ends of pa.s.sages all resembled the aftermath of an earthquake, a riot or a bombing-discarded, broken furniture and mountains of files, doc.u.ments, booklets, official publications, piled all anyhow, one atop another, restrained from blocking off the heavens only by the ceiling. At regular intervals in the corridors, painted signs on the walls exhorted denizens and visitors, in two languages, to Keep Quiet, Refrain From Spitting and Smoking and to Maintain-separately-Peace and Communal Harmony, Cleanliness, Dignity of Office and Due Decorum. Paan stains, that covered the discarded furniture and files like enormous drops of red rain, had on occasion soared up to splotch some of the signs.

'Whered you think the toilet can be, Sen saab?

'Westward ho. Cant you smell it?

Shrill giggle. 'Yes and no. At times, it smells like tea.

Same thing, though, pondered Agastya the thinker. On each floor, the Gents was two doors away from a Department Canteen. The two stinks were in one sense Welfare measures, generated so that even the blind could find their way to both refresh and relieve themselves. The not-so-blind too, perhaps, because those Toilets This Way signs had been quite misleading, hadnt they? Theydve staggered on and on down these corridors in the wrong direction till their bladders wouldve burst. Of course, they could always have squirmed into any of those crevices between desk and almirah. One could think of them as resthouses for travellers on the Road of Life. The Toilets signs therefore were reminders of All That Misguide. They were also subtle and potent advertis.e.m.e.nts of the Department of Education-seventh-to-eleventh floor-for its Literacy Commission. The workers who actually measured, hammered and put these signs up-how many of them, dyou think, asked Agastya of himself, could read them?

Uh . . ., he replied.

Exactly. They-and their brothers-also erect our road signs. That is why, if you want to go, for example, from Aflatoon Bhavan to, say, the Pashupati Aflatoon Public Gardens-to restrict the example to the family, as it were-and you scrupulously follow the signs that you can decipher from your driving seat, it should take you about a year, plus-minus two months. We wont make it, you know, as a nation until-to take only one instance-the people who put up our road signs and the people who need to use them, to decipher them from their cars, are the same.

How interesting . . . why doesnt someone get rid of all this junk? One could sell it for lakhs of rupees to the kabadiwala. Surely the Welfare State would welcome the revenue.

No, too dangerous. Too many decisions. Which kabadiwala was one going to call? The man on the bicycle ringing his bell beneath ones bathroom window while one shaves in the morning-'h.e.l.lo, come over to my office tomorrow morning at eleven with all your friends and buy off me three hundred truckloads of junk? How would one prove to Audit that he didnt bribe one for being so kind? Even a one-per cent cut on the sale of all the clutter of Aflatoon Bhavan would be more than a salary for the whole year. No. One would follow procedure. There exist rules even for the proper disposal of office junk. One calls for a minimum of three quotations from interested parties. If the value of the rubbish is estimated to be above a certain amount, one advertises in the newspapers. Which newspapers? All the major newspapers of all the SAARC countries? Perhaps, since the kabadiwala is quite a SAARC inst.i.tution. Then, mindful of the Official Language Policy, one routes the Junk Disposal File through the Director, Official Languages. The quotations then are examined and processed at the appropriate level.

Further, what is junk? Speaking of levels, which one would best define it? There, on Agastyas left, those lemon- green booklets dispersed all over those desks and sprouting out of that cupboard-three thousand of them were published some four years ago. Two thousand seven hundred remain. They are the Ministers Welcome Address on the Occasion of the Inauguration of the Plenary Session of the Trimurti Aflatoon Birth Centenary Celebrations Committee. What was one to think-were those booklets junk?

Under Secretary (Ways and Means and Administrative Reform) had certainly thought so and-to use officialese-Initiated A File on the subject. Permission is sought to call for quotations from interested dealers in sc.r.a.p. Oh dear-one wouldve imagined that the nationd gone to war. But Ways and Means had fought back like a hero-Kit Carson, absolutely.

The proposal is not meant in any way to insult the august office of the Minister. It is only intended to allow Aflatoon Bhavan to breathe a bit. Improvement of the Work Environment. It is alternatively submitted that the booklets be circulated amongst our Higher Secondary Central Schools as proposed models of English prose for those students of Standard Eleven who offer English as their Optional Third Language. Of course, if approved, more copies would have to be printed. The views of Director, Official Languages may kindly be solicited in this regard. However, it should be pointed out here that copies of the official Hindi translation of the Welcome Address, regrettably, are not immediately traceable in Aflatoon Bhavan. If required, a second official Hindi translation may be commissioned after a decision has been taken at the Highest Level. Naturally, a parallel enquiry would have to be initiated into the absence or disappearance of the Hindi texts.

Not surprisingly, the file was still drifting about in one of the abysses of Education-after all, what was four years in the life of a Welfare State file? Not even a heartbeat. Meanwhile, there mouldered those masterpieces of oratory. Pa.s.sersby had often been offered copies. Of course, before one actually disposed off all those booklets and files, oned have to consider the invaluable insulation that they provided to the entire building in winter. An indisputable fact, when one recalled how many clerks had snugly slept for months ensconced among them.

The Gents Toilet was large, greyish, brightly-lit, wet and crowded. Dr Alagh stepped up, gritted his teeth, fumbled with his fly, managed to undo its b.u.t.tons in time and as he let go, sighed with relief and shut his eyes. A couple of seconds later-in midstream, as it were-he squeaked in disgust as he felt something warm and-well, urine-like-spray his left foot. He opened his eyes. In a nanosecond, he yelped in horror as he realized that the p.i.s.s wasnt his. He jerked his leg away, glared at the profile of the p.i.s.ser on his left and hoped that the dirty look would suffice because he didnt quite know what to say. What could he say? Mind your spray? Look before you spatter? Yet, equally clearly, his glare had no effect because his neighbour-small, moustached, with a lined, desiccated face-was p.i.s.sing with his eyes closed, leaning against the marble part.i.tion that separated him from Dr Alagh. Who hurriedly stepped down to avoid being further irrigated.

But who continued, however, while reb.u.t.toning himself and rolling up till the knee his left trouser leg, to glower at the b.u.m and back of the off-target p.i.s.ser. Which is when he noticed that the p.i.s.sers right arm tailed off at the elbow. He held the edge of his kurta in his mouth and the strings of both his pyjamas and his undies in his left hand, thus leaving himself no means by which he could catch his p.e.n.i.s to guide its stream. Dr Alagh stopped glowering.

Revolted, confused, abashed and curious, he watched the p.i.s.ser skilfully knot up with one hand and amble off towards the sinks. Where he stopped to shake hands with a friend. Who had to let go of his crutch to extend his hand. They chatted. At that moment, the cleaner who was swabbing the floor neared them and-in warning, perhaps-clicked his tongue a couple of times. The p.i.s.ser leaned sideways, shook hands with the cleaner and said something. The cleaner responded in sign language. One of the doors of the WCs creaked open and out stepped a man in sun gla.s.ses, with a walking stick. He tapped his way towards the door. Two places away from Dr Alaghs at the urinal, a short, podgy man with the lost, open face of a victim of Downs Syndrome, half-turned to holler a greeting at the blind man, who responded cheerfully. Near the window, a teenager with a left leg badly deformed by polio, was feeding what looked like chapatis to a large monkey that squatted on the sill on what appeared to be a bundle of files.

The flash of Agastyas camera disturbed most of them. For a few seconds, it had been quite challenging. He hadnt been able to decide whether to centre on the one-armed handshaker or the monkey.

'Photography is strictly forbidden in all Welfare State premises, sir.

'Yes, not to worry. From his wallet, Agastya took out his temporary laminated photo pa.s.s of the Bhayankar Middle Income Group Swimming and Recreation Club and flashed it under the one-armed peons nose. 'Thats all right. PMs Secretariat. Administrative Reform Division. He clicked the monkey, the files, the grimy window, the sc.u.mmy sink. 'Weve received more than one complaint about this monkey menace in these corridors. That theyre keeping the officers and staff away from work.

'They are divine, sir, hardly a pest, warmly protested the one-armed p.i.s.ser. 'Attendance is particularly thin today for a different reason. By the way, I am Dharam Chand, Personal peon at the Ministers Residence and Joint Secretary of the Aflatoon Bhavan Cla.s.s IV Employees Union. I have- he phallically raised the stump of his right arm-'applied for exemption from plague duty. Meanwhile, three hundred and forty-four Under Secretaries of the Central Ministries, mainly of the Departments of Official Languages, Food and Rationing, Civil Defence, Physical Education, Prohibition and Excise, Town Planning, Vocational Training, Sales Tax, Dairy Development, Rural Broadcasting, State Lotteries, Water Resources, Land Records, Books and Publications, Employment Insurance, Ayurvedic Sciences and Malpractices and Village Industries have trooped off to the Supreme Court with a pet.i.tion that: one, accuses the Welfare State of wilfully playing with the lives of its public servants and two, suggests to it that if it still insists on playing G.o.d, it should draft to Madna, given the subject matter of the mission, only the officials of the Department of Public Health.

'Oh dear. Madna is from where he has come- Agastya jerked his head at Dr Alagh '-and specifically to meet two Under Secretaries. Have they been sent off there or have they marched off to the Supreme Court instead? Under Secretary for Demotic Drama Shri Dastidar and Under Secretary for Freedom Fighters (Pre-Independence) Dr Jain? Though the latter of course we wish to consult in his personal capacity as a h.o.m.oeopath.

Dharam Chands eyes became smaller and craftier. 'Madna? And are you a bounty hunter? A grant stuck somewhere? He strutted across to the monkey on the window sill to deposit beside it a paper packet of yellowish, greasy sweets that he had pulled out of his kurta pocket. It was a daily routine for him, one of his ways of appeasing the G.o.ds for his thousand crimes.

Some of which he had, once upon a time, under the name of Karam Chand, committed in Madna, a place which, despite its insignificance and general ghastliness, is central to this story. Madna is representative of ten thousand other small towns and five hundred other districts in a land of a billion people. The events that occur and the characters who exist there could quite easily be located in any of the other dots on the landscape. Indeed, it would be more useful to say that many of the incidents-the outcry over the plague, the disappearance of Chamundi, the attack on Suroor, the ping-ponging of Agastya Sen-take place in Madna princ.i.p.ally because they have Madna-like qualities.

Ditto for the characters. It is not therefore an extraordinary coincidence that three of them from Madna-the Honourable Collector, the Honourable Civil Surgeon and Dharam Karam Chand-should be found at the same moment in the Gents Toilet of a government building fourteen hundred kilometres away in the countrys capital city. For at any given time (during office hours, it must be clarified), Aflatoon Bhavan is crawling with Madna types from all over the land. The buildings size, after all, must not be forgotten. Fourteen storeys, six wings, twelve hundred rooms for thirty-four departments of the government, nearly twenty kilometres of corridor-how could all that s.p.a.ce not be temporarily occupied by at least a minuscule percentage of the billion hopefuls of the country?

Like Dharam Chand, for example, whose-it must be remembered-tortuous, eight-year-long journey from Madna to Aflatoon Bhavan had been instructive and ill.u.s.trative enough to have become the plot of a quintet of street plays that Rajani Suroor had crafted for Vyatha.

Retribution atop a local train awaited this marginally insane ex-attendant of the School for the Blind, Madna. Upper-cla.s.s travel of a kind, on the roof, ticketless, with friends, a breeze of a journey on most days, relaxed, at ease- one always had to grip something stable, of course, in case the slow train, unable to keep steady, jerked over points, or lurched around curves without warning. That day, perched on the third bogie from the rear, waiting for the train to start, Karam Chand, hating the delay, had both his hands in the air, running a filthy comb through his spa.r.s.e hair.

A sudden twitch, like a start, beneath him, just the engines spasm, but to the rim of the roof slipped he and scrambling about for a hold (pink comb still in hand, no doubt because he wished to complete his toilet before descending), went over. And yet witnesses claim that it could have been more hideous, for he did manage, before the train began to glide forward, to roll his torso off the track. Of course, the whole thing took a second. His forearm remained.

River of blood. Squeals. Rags of shirt-sleeve, stained.

Rajani Suroor had found the biography of Dharam Chand intensely emblematic. They had met on another local train seven years later during one of Vyathas performances in a second-cla.s.s compartment.

'Here, let me treat you to samosas, bread pakoras, chutney and tea while in return you tell me the story of your life.

Within those seven years, Dharam Chand had come to own a few hectares of sugarcane land somewhere in the north and two modest houses-one regularized, the other about to be-in one of the oldest slums-practically National Heritage quality-in the heart of Lutyenss City.

He had also fallen into the habit of attending office in Aflatoon Bhavan just twice a week.

Why? Shri Dhrubo Jyoti Ghosh Dastidar, till recently one of his three bosses, had asked him.

Because Ive lost my mind, hed explained, and continually forget that Ive a job in Aflatoon Bhavan. When Shri Dastidar had raised his eyebrows, hed elaborated that he felt terribly depressed and guilty at having tricked, and been ungrateful to, the Welfare State.

Six years ago, the governmentd decided to clean up the stretch of slum at Gadarpur that fronted the Airport Road because the Lieutenant Governord complained that it looked unspeakably ghastly when he drove past it with foreign VIPs-Fidel Castro, Olaf Palme, people like that. However, the Urban Development Secretary had written back to the Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor that the government had no money for the project. No problem, a.s.serted the Lieutenant Governor, clearly a statesman with zip and vigour. I shall ask my industrialist friends to chip in.

No problem, sir, declared they, and many thanks for the advertising opportunity. So the government had relocated Dharam Chand and a few thousand of his neighbours on fifteen-by-fifteen plots of marshy government land in the middle of nowhere twenty-five kilometres north of the city. Dharam Chand and Co were encouraged to move with soft-feather-touch, interest-free-loans of a few thousand rupees each. Which none of them has yet paid back, of course. For one, the period of repayment is thirty years. For another, they just stopped trudging to the bank with their instalments. Too much of a bother. Besides, no ones pressing them very hard.

From the point of view of Dharam Chand, the dislocation had been brutal. The middle of nowhere was christened Senapati Aflatoon Nagar. It had no schools, no markets, post office, hospitals, doctors, bus services, parks, service roads, cinema halls, nothing. All of that bobbed up, certainly, practically overnight, cancerously, with the speed and quality of growth of the boom satellite town. At first, with the money that the governmentd given him, on his fifteen-by-fifteen plot, he built only one room. With plywood and cloth, he part.i.tioned it. He, his wife, his keep and his four daughters stayed in one half; he leased out the other. In a couple of years, with the rent, along with a House Building Advance and a Loan Against his Provident Fund from the Department, he built overhead a second room and a loo. Thus, in easy stages, the bare plots of Senapati Aflatoon Nagar became proper, Munic.i.p.ality-approved, two-and three-storey houses. In a few years, therefore, when their ghetto-in-the-wilderness had become almost respectable, with the una.s.suming, settled air of a fifty-year-old slum, Dharam Chand and his neighbours sold their houses for several lakhs each and returned to invest in their old haunts in Lutyenss City. Not exactly the same stretch alongside the Airport Road that theyd originally occupied, of course, because that was now the fourteen-storey Kamalavati Aflatoon Office-c.u.m-Shopping Complex-but to all the pavements, parks, open s.p.a.ces, road shoulders and disputed plots in the vicinity. Where the Munic.i.p.al Corporation wouldnt let them rest-and thrive-in peace. They were continually being menaced by demolition drives, bulldozers and the police. Their days were a blur of bribes, threats, stay orders from the courts, pet.i.tions, demonstrations and minor riots.

His att.i.tude to the Welfare State was therefore schizophrenic. In the first place, he hated it for having dislocated him simply to make crores of rupees out of the sale of land that hed come to believe was his own-his patrimony, as it were. After all, many of those dispossessed had been the original squatters beside the Airport Road a good thirty years ago, long before either the airport or the road. However, at the same time, he hated himself for feeling grateful to the Welfare State for the free plot, the soft loan, the chance to legitimize his existence, to become a property owner, the landlord of a two-storey structure. After hed sold what hed built, even though the moneyd been welcome, and had helped him towards buying his hectares of surgarcane land and his modest slum tenements, he had still felt foolish and naked, empty-handed, as though hed wronged both his family and his future. Hed then blamed the State, as a grieving child his parent, for having allowed him to sink again into the mire.

'Thats truly sad, Dhrubod opined, 'and touching, but how is it linked to your showing up in office only on Tuesdays and Thursdays?

'Very well, sir. Ill bring you fresh sugarcane juice from my fields.

The offer of whichd placed Dhrubo amongst the chosen-the select few officers whom Dharam Chand thought worth his while to b.u.t.ter up-right alongside, for example, the newly-promoted Deputy Financial Advisor and Dhrubos part-time adversary, Mrs Minu Tutreja. She was attractive, venal and artistic, and therefore ideal for the Department of Heritage. She came from a small town not far from Dharam Chands fields of sugarcane, -a fact thatd pleased, flattered and excited him no end and made her even more worthy of the gifts of the flasks of juice twice a week.

They were a familiar sight-Mrs Tutreja and Dharam Chand in the corridors of Aflatoon Bhavan. After her promotion, shed been allotted Room 4609 in Wing N of the building. The car park for the Department of Heritage vehicles was outside Gate 13. Even after two months at the job, she had very little idea of how to get to her room from the gate and was terrified that shed permanently lose her way in the maze of corridors and floors and languish for months-shrivelled, starving, unwashed, unheeded-in Atomic Energy, Jails and Urban Land Ceiling, Rural Development, Revenue and Forests, Public Relations and Protocol, Cooperation and Transport, Rehabilitation and Labour, Horticulture and Command Area Management, Dairy Development, Fisheries and Tourism, Law and Judiciary, or Industry and Company Affairs. She therefore had to be led-practically by the nose-to and from her room. In her first week after her promotion, while shed been traipsing along in the corridor behind Dharam Chand en route to the loo, simpering back at everyone whod beamed sycophantically at her, cutely crinkling up her nose at the better-looking males, revelling in her combination of official power and personal helplessness-sure enough, the lights had gone out. Shed shrieked softly a couple of times, invoked a handful of G.o.ds and for support and succour till illumination returned, clutched on to the soft, lifeless stump of Dharam Chands right arm. Thereafter, all her guides had received instructions from her office staff to have on their persons official candles and matches or flashlights that worked. All phallic symbols, please note, Dhrubo had pointed out to Dharam Chand, including your right arm. Dharam Chands eyes had widened and shone with respect.

She was quite easy to work with. She brought to her job a welcome single-mindedness. In her twenty-three years of service, the one country in the world that she hadnt yet visited officially was Mongolia. Thus, while governments toppled all around her, she got down to business.

'How is our Heritage Exchange Programme with Mongolia? Dead or alive?

'Its one of our very best. Madam.

'Good. Please put up a draft of a letter from me to our Amba.s.sador in Ulan Bator . . . strengthen bilateral relations . . . mid-term review . . . Ministerial delegation . . . an exhibition of Buddhist relics . . .

The third officer to whom Shri Dharam Chand had been a.s.signed at that point in his career had been Shri Dastidars colleague and room-mate, Miss Lina Natesan Thomas. His official relations with her have been described in some detail in her memorandum on the general administrative difficulties faced by her in the functioning of the department.

I have in pa.s.sing mentioned above the peon Shri Dharam Chands several crimes against me. To justify the use of the plural, I will engage the attention of your good self with just two more examples. On October 29 last, when I arrived in office at 8.59 a.m., I found, while settling down, an unmistakable teaspoonful of s.e.m.e.n next to the official water gla.s.s on the bottom left hand corner of my desk. I was surprised, to say the least. I shot off a memo to Shri Dastidar. Since he doesnt get in before ten on most days, I had to wait for quite a while for his rejoinder. Meanwhile, Shri Dharam Chand banged open the door more than once to look in on me-in itself most unusual, since he generally doesnt show up until an hour or so after his superiors. On each occasion, he smirked at the teaspoon, next at me and then slammed the door shut. Suspicious, to say the least.

In his memo, Shri Dastidar was most incisive: Preserve it in an envelope for subsequent DNA a.n.a.lysis. We will catch the blackguard yet.

The off-white On Welfare State Service envelope still reposes beside my personal copy of the Civil Service Leave Encashment Rules, 1972 in the bottom-most drawer of my desk.

I am given to understand (from Shri Dastidars speculative memo on the subject, placed at Annexure R) that amongst the members of Shri Dharam Chands caste, to offer a teaspoonful of ones s.e.m.e.n to someone is to threaten him, to warn him to lay off, much as the symbolic presentation of a betel nut in certain other primitive Indian communities denotes that the recipients t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es are to be replaced. I should record here that I myself am a staunch Roman Catholic.

Whenever I visit the Ladies Toilet, namely about four times during office hours, I am unfailingly trailed by Shri Dharam Chand whistling and singing two Hindi film songs: 1) Ganga Tera Pani Amrit and 2) Ram Teri Maili. (I make so bold as to enquire at this stage whether the knowledge of our official language of your good self is good enough for you to understand the above two phrases. I take the liberty of translating them in any case. The first means, Ganga, Your Water Is Ambrosial and the second, Ram, Yours Is Dirty.) Shri Dharam Chand sings rather well.

He, however, dresses inappropriately for office. Middle-aged men of the lower cla.s.ses ought not to wear tight blue jeans to work, even occasionally. How is one to distinguish our college-educated, dope-smoking, English- speaking, unemployed idler from a representative of the submerged nine-tenths if both are going to wear jeans? Moreover, your good self is surely aware that all Cla.s.s IV employees of the Welfare State-and they number over seven million-get a Uniform Allowance of Rs 44/- each per month and a separate Uniform Washing Allowance of Rs 27.50 per month. Where does all that money go? To buy jeans. Because in my two months here, I havent spotted even one peon, naik, dafadar, jamadar, orderly, sweeper, bearer, watchman, chowkidaar, mali or night watchman in uniform. They have all at one time or the other worn jeans.

Shri Dharam Chands argument against wearing his uniform is that it is made of khadi and that khadi is shabby, ethnic, indigenous and dull. Khadi makes its wearer feel crumpled, grey, poor, deprived, backward, depressed and dispossessed. The Welfare States policy to enforce khadi only on its Cla.s.s IV employees clearly indicates its desire that they forever remain Cla.s.s IV in spirit.