The Mammaries of the Welfare State Read online

  The notes that we exchanged last Wednesday were, in brief, as follows:

  I smell a rat. Any ideas?

  I smell a rat all the time. It is the odour of corruption.

  Which particular file do you have in mind?

  I should add here—parenthetically, as it were—that because Shri Dastidar firmly believes that every file and paper in the Welfare State stinks, he has levered out of Stores six rubber stamps to push all his official papers, memos, notes, minutes, reports, statements, documents and files around with. They are:

  1) Please examine.

  2) Please re-examine.

  3) Please put up.

  4) Please link up with previous papers.

  5) Please process

  6) Please forward with compliments to—

  However, to continue with the events of last Wednesday. I set about whisking and rearranging the dust on my table. Pretty soon, I unearthed a dead rat the size of a small cat in the second drawer.

  ‘A plague upon thee, Madam Junior Administrator!’ ran Shri Dastidar’s note.

  For this crime and for several others, I suspect Shri Dastidar’s peon, Shri Dharam Chand. The fellow has no manners and does not like women. I have requested Shri Dastidar a million times (in writing, of course) to instruct him to knock on the door before he enters but to no avail. Each time, he buffets the door open; it slams against the side wall and brings down some plaster while he dramatically pauses in the doorway to leer at me before sliding in like a fat snake. I surmise that Shri Dharam Chand disapproves of me because he stood to gain in the only file that I have received in my tenure here, the proposal of which I rejected because of its patent absurdity.

  The Department had mooted that seven of its peons be paid an Overtime Allowance of twenty-four rupees a day for the months of August, September and October. For what? I had asked and sent the file back.

  The file returned the same afternoon (Overtime files move like lightning) with some bilge-like explanation. Shri Dharam Chand, who was the file carrier, clarified to me that after office closed at 5.30 p.m., he always drifted over to the Minister’s office to help with the work there.

  I cross-examined him for close to an hour and learnt that he—along with the like-minded hopefuls that would’ve benefitted from the Overtime proposal had it slipped past Ms Argus the Undersigned—had been trying for the last six months for a transfer to the Minister’s office. And how had they been trying? When the Minister, along with his Private Secretary, Officer on Special Duty, Personal Assistant, four Black Guard Commando Bodyguards, one daftary, one naik and three peons would debouch from his chambers to waddle the hundred feet to the lift, Shri Dharam Chand & Co., bowing and scraping to the Minister’s heraldic peons in the first row of the cortege, would shoo stragglers out of its path even as the heralds were shooing them out of theirs. Then, with heads bowed and buttocks projected at the right sycophantic angles, they—the Overtimers—would wait, grimacing with tension at the mere glimpse of power, beside the lifts until their doors shut. Then they would all careen down the stairs from the fourth to the ground floor to gape at the Minister and some of the riff-raff jam themselves into three white Ambassador cars. Car doors slamming shut one after the other like gunfire, sirens wailing, red lights flashing on car roofs, horns honking at the heavens to command them not to dare let their attention stray, hooray, they’re off and away! Then, by degrees, a profound, welcome peace would descend on Aflatoon Bhavan. Shri Dharam Chand would blink, wake up and tot up his Overtime for that day.

  I had asked Shri Dharam Chand on that occasion whether he had any idea how much the Minister’s trips from his chambers to his cars alone cost the Welfare State every day and whether he, Shri Dharam Chand, felt no qualms at all about adding to that daily expenditure of over four hundred thousand rupees.

  While on the subject, I should like to draw the attention of your good self to my representation at Annexure O wherein, inter alia, I have objected to the grave lapses in conduct of the Black Guard Commando bodyguards of our Minister. On more than one occasion, when I have either been striding to or coming away from the Ladies’ Toilet on the fourth floor, which is two doors away from the Minister’s rooms, I have had them brusquely waving their automatic weapons at me. I presume that that is not their customary way of saying Good Morning. On each occasion, I have ticked them off for conduct unbecoming with, and before, a Junior Administrator of the Welfare State, but they don’t seem to understand any language. Instead, they vigorously prodded me aside with their guns. Undeterred, with my back against the wall, I continued to complain as the ministerial retinue approached me and then—wonder of wonders!—passed me by! However, I persisted in loudly pointing out to that group of processionally receding buttocks that if it permits a lady officer to be manhandled in the corridors of power in broad daylight, if it doesn’t attend to the legitimate complaint of a Junior Administrator of the Welfare State, then—well—she is left with no recourse but to formally petition the higher authorities. My representation to the Prime Minister on the subject of the conduct of our Black Guard Commando bodyguards is at Annexure P.

  Shri Dastidar frequently breakfasts in our room (He always invites me to join him but I usually decline). It is for this reason that large empty cartons of Kellogg’s Breakfast Cereal (Wheatflakes. Whole Grain, Whole Nutrition) are freely available around his desk. Into one of these was stuffed the dead rat from the drawer. Shri Dharam Chand packed it quite professionally and we dispatched it to where it belonged, the office of the Municipal Commissioner, Madna. We feel that, for the time being, it can substitute for me.

  We have sound precedents for our decision. The kind attention of your good self is drawn to a news item on the plague that appeared in The State of the Times on December 3, a photocopy of which is placed at Annexure Q. The rats of Madna have not yet been tested because many of them, the newspaper reports, drowned in the recent floods. Many others have been, well, resettled along with the 1400 tonnes of garbage that is being lifted every day from the various quarters of the town. More to the point, since the hospitals, dispensaries and clinics in the district do not boast of all the medical facilities required to test for the plague and other similar epidemics, several other dead rats have been sent by post to Navi Chipra and New Killi for analysis. This interesting fact came to light at more than one post office in the country when, while sorting out mail, postmen began to complain of a breathtaking pong emanating from some of the packets. Several of the aggrieved postmen have gone on a lightning strike and till date, have refused to return to work until, to quote from their distributed memorandum, ‘the State makes adequate provision for their welfare and safety from the plague.’

  On the subject of their strike, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases has been approached by more than one newspaper to confirm whether the decision to remit by post dead rats all over the country has its approval. The Institute, however, has been silent on this and other issues for more than one week, perhaps because all its telephone lines are dead.

  I would like to submit at this juncture that the dead telephone is emblematic of the quality and extent of communication between different Departments of the Welfare State. In this regard, the attention of your good self is drawn to the news item on Housing Problem of yesterday’s edition of The State of the Times entitled: Plague Patient on the Loose. I quote:

  A ‘definite’ patient of pneumonic plague, according to the doctors of KLPD Hospital, is loose in the capital. He would have been in quarantine had the telephones of the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Swannsway Camp not been out of order.

  A spokesman of KLPD stated last evening that a middle- aged man reported at the hospital on Saturday with all the ‘classic symptoms’ of the disease. He was diagnosed as having the plague by the doctors on duty but unfortunately, ran away while arrangements were being made to transfer him to Swannsway Camp.

  Very little is known about the patient. His name is Chana Jor Garam Rai; he is a labourer fro
m Bihar; he is now footloose in the city. He arrived from Madna on the Shatabdi Express on Saturday with a couple of friends. The train pulled in at about 7.30 p.m., that is, five hours late, so what’s new. Shri Chana Jor Garam had been feverish for the past two days and was delirious for the entire train journey. A male Belgian tourist in the same compartment was galvanized into near-hysteria at the sight of the patient’s delirium. Suspecting the worst, he immediately dusted himself and Shri Chana Jor with Gamaxene powder. He meant well.

  Shri Chana Jor collapsed on the platform. His group had intended to carry on to their village in the Champaran district of Bihar and was infuriated because its plans had to be changed. The patient was taken to KLPD in a three- wheeler. The doctors there point out that all the hospitals in the capital have received instructions from the Ministry of Public Health not to take in any plague patient but instead to immediately dispatch them to the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Swannsway Camp. Therefore, they tried to contact the IDH to direct it to send its special vehicle meant for transporting plague patients. When they couldn’t get through, the Medical Superintendent of KLPD, Dr L. Majnoo, decided to transfer Shri Chana Jor Garam to Swannsway Camp in one of their own hospital ambulances. However, while the vehicle was being lined up (repair the puncture, where’s the damn driver?, try the self, push start the Neanderthal, go fill up some diesel), the patient and his friends slunk off in the three-wheeler that had all the while been waiting outside.

  After his escape, KLPD Hospital officially decided to minimize its significance. Even though plainclothes men are on a twenty-four-hour lookout for Shri Chana Jor Garam at all the railway stations, no official red alert has yet been declared. ‘But that is just a matter of time asserted one of the younger doctors of KLPD on the condition of anonymity, ‘it cannot be otherwise; the patient had all the “classic symptoms” of the plague and had just arrived from Madna. What more proof does one need? I will burn my degrees in public if he doesn’t have the disease.’

  That will indeed be a small price to pay for the relief. That apart, it is needless to add here that the mood of the Emergencies Department at KLPD is feverish. With reason, since Shri Chana Jor Garam was there for some time and might well have infected anything that he touched or exhaled upon. A sobering thought. Because of an acute, yet routine, shortage of the drug, the hospital staff has been dosed with tetracycline but not the patients.

  In short, even though it is clear that the matter is being hushed up to avoid ‘unnecessary panic,’ get ready.

  Tetracycline is difficult to come by in Madna as well. Overnight, its dealers and retailers have made it as rare a commodity as statesmanship and probity in public life. To distract himself from it, the Collector of Madna, Shri Agastya Sen, usually flits to any one of his several other insurmountable problems. They come in all sizes. Wishing to write a letter to his friend, Daya, in Navi Chipra, for instance, he asks Chidambaram, his Reader, ‘Can I get some decent writing paper? Something I wouldn’t be ashamed of?’

  A late morning in winter beyond the enormous vaulted rooms of the office. From the stone corridor outside, from amongst the pigeons and the water coolers, drift in the rustle and shuffle, the occasional cough, of a hundred petitioners waiting to gnaw the Collector’s ears with their diverse tales of tortuous, enervating injustice at the hands of a dozen different departments. The man-size windows are open and welcome in a variety of smells and the warm soporific air. They haven’t had any electricity since the morning. Through the window on his right, Shri Sen can see, a hundred metres away, the compound wall of the Collectorate coming up. The premises had never had one and thus, every day for over a century, had welcomed, kept open house for, the cattle of the district. Generations of cows, bulls, calves, oxen and goats had come to love the grass and the off-white paper, the serenity and openness of the Collectorate compound. Pushing for the wall had been one of his predecessor’s first acts on taking over the post some thirteen months ago. The wall was now two feet high, not likely to rise any further in that financial year and effective against everything but the urchins and the goats. The puzzled, disoriented cattle now wandered up and down Junction Road and into Aflatoon Maidan, holding up traffic and disturbing courting couples. The view from the window was silent and sunny, in spirit like a graveyard in an Ingmar Bergman film.

  Shri Sen leans forward to note the comparison somewhere on his enormous desk for use in his letter to Daya. Meanwhile, a child, with his half-pants down to his knees, crosses his field of vision, hopping from spot to spot to look for paper to wipe his arse with. Madna faces an acute and chronic water shortage. The subject has been noted in Shri Sen’s To Do list in his very first week in office.

  The Collectorship of Madna is the seventh post that he has held in eight years. He is quite philosophic about the law that governs the transfer of civil servants; he sees it as a sort of corollary to the law of karma, namely, that the whole of life passes through innumerable and fundamentally mystifying changes, and these changes are sought to be determined by our conduct, our deeds (otherwise, we would quite simply lose our marbles); only thus can we even pretend to satisfactorily explain the mystery of suffering, which is a subject that has troubled thoughtful souls all over the world since time immemorial. It is also a hypothesis that justifies the manifest social inequalities of the Hindu community.

  His To Do list is actually an enormous black diary full of cross-references and coded marginal scribbles. The cattle, for example, haven’t been struck off yet; they’ve instead been relocated from April (that deals with problems pending within the Collectorate) to the September-to-December section (that is reserved for the police). The black diary is not the official diary of the Welfare State for that year. It was one of several gifted to Shri Sen in an eventful first week by various local businessmen, builders and industrialists. He chose it chiefly for its generosity of size and layout.

  In the official diary of that year, he intends to maintain his dhobi account at home, which clothes sent, how many lost, how many torn, burnt, how much due, how much to deduct. The official diary was meant to have white pages and a chocolate-ish cover, but it looks more or less uniformly grey. It is carried about by the losers. Three million-plus copies are brought out every year by the Commissioner of Printing, Paper and Stationery for the Welfare State at a printing cost of a hundred rupees per copy. He employs three hundred thousand people and amongst other activities, supplies all the Departments of the State with, amongst other things, files, file covers, file boards, file boxes, notepads, envelopes and paper of dizzying sizes, sealing wax, pins, clips, tags, blotting paper and bottles of red, blue, green, black and blue-black ink. However, he cannot produce paper white and thick enough for Shri Sen when the latter wants to write to someone outside the Welfare State.

  A pause in the day, in the never ending lurch from telephone call to unwelcome visitor to personal work to meeting to review to site inspection to social function to public puja to official inauguration to ghastly crisis to office files to telephone call. Just then, a goat looks in enquiringly at the window. It is a frequent visitor; it pops in sometimes to chew up some paper and crap between the almirahs. ‘Fuck off, you,’ orders the Collector. It does. This is power.

  Every now and then in his career, once a week on the average, Shri Sen regrets his decision to join the topmost Civil Service of the country. On the other days, when he reflects, life outside the government appears tense-making, obsequious and fake. In contrast, within the Welfare State, he feels that he has at last begun to trip without acid—with his feet six inches above the ground, yet with an ear to it, walking tall, on a permanent high. There have been moments in the last eight years when he’s caught himself thinking that he could quite easily have worked in the Welfare State for free. Of course, given his salary, he is doing almost just that.

  Chidambaram sidles in at that point. Generally speaking, the more he sidles, the less welcome the news. ‘Sir, milk- white paper not readily available in Stock, sir. I have
sent the boy to Gaindamull’s Stationery Mart on Junction Road, sir, to purchase . . . and there was a telephone call from the Circuit House, sir. Shri Bhootnath Gaitonde has left and is on his way here to meet you.’

  All of a sudden, Shri Sen feels an urge to smoke a cigarette. He hasn’t smoked even one in four years, but the desire still assails him every now and then. He manfully resists, remembering that he has the Welfare State to thank for helping him to kick the habit. For smoking and spitting paan all over the place have been banned by law in all the offices of the government. It is a regulation that Shri Sen has enforced with considerable enthusiasm and vigour, commanding the police to arrest and harass, in their own inimitable way, all offenders. The Welfare State has certainly helped the fascist in him to bloom.

  As for dope, though governance couldn’t wean him off it, it did manage to influence his mode of its intake. A Collector couldn’t very well be seen rolling and puffing away at a joint, so he began to brew cannabis in his morning pot of tea and stuff pellets of hashish into his post-lunch paans. Paans were eminently Establishment—why, the Chief Revenue Divisional Commissioner had more than ten a day. He had a plastic wastebasket beneath his desk into which he periodically spat paan gob and residual cud (this disgusting habit was not an offence; if you kept your red paan spittle to yourself and your wastebasket, you were law-abiding).

  Those in the know will corroborate that dope that enters one’s bloodstream through one’s stomach hits later, hits harder and stays longer than that through the lungs. Thus, in the course of his day, when Shri Sen wasn’t on a permanent high, it could be presumed that he’d wandered further up—as it were, onto Cloud Nine. Moreover, during the past eight years, he’d discovered that cannabis and hashish, steadily imbibed, helped marvellously to lessen the pain and discomfort of his senselessly strenuous swimming and jogging sessions. Dope, he was convinced, was the antidote to much of the suffering of the civil servant. Thus, in his black diary, in the February section that was devoted to Possible Ideas for Essays and Articles on the Welfare State, he’d noted: