The Mammaries of the Welfare State Read online

  Waiters continued to careen past them, bent sideways at alarming angles to counterbalance the weight of five-to-six trays, one atop another, poised equably on left shoulder and upturned, backward-pointing left palm. On each tray, Agastya could see rows and rows of identical, tiny steel bowls; those on the top tray were full of some mud-coloured gravy. The waiters wore crumpled, off-white khadi uniforms and extraordinary, foot-high, maroon turbans all brocaded in gold; they looked like the proud crests of a flock of some rare, gigantic birds bobbing, bouncing and nipping about against the grey-and-brown shabbiness of the canteen. To each waiter who shot past them, Agastya serenely and pleasantly repeated their order for tea. Some of the waiters’d grunted, but one couldn’t be certain that it’d been in response.

  The tea finally arrived, tepid, sweet, mild dishwater in a cracked cup. Well, what else could he expect for fifty paise, demanded Agastya of himself, Darjeeling Flowery Orange Pekoe from Fortnum and Mason? A fundamental law of economics in the Welfare State, Sir—subsidy breeds substandard. You’re in a Departmental Canteen, remember, a welfare measure for the employees of the government, not to be confused with any of the welfare measures for the citizens under that government. The canteen buys its raw stuff—rice- dust, oil-and-used-engine-oil, flour-dust, potatoes-and-worms, curry-powder-and-the-good-earth, cockroach-and-lizard-shit—from the Department of Raw Materials and Civil Supplies—pretty cheap, special rates and so on. It’s a tortuous, instructive journey for the bags of sugar and the cans of kerosene, from one warehouse to another godown, from a depot to a storehouse to a truck to Aflatoon Bhavan. Everyone steals en route—it is Clause 28(iv) of the Public Distribution of Essential Commodities Act. Notwithstanding any law or regulation to the contrary and for the time being in force, all dealers, purveyors, transporters, merchants, middlemen, tradesmen, caterers, canteen managers and the suchlike, of food, raw materials, provisions, foodstuff, provender, rations, groceries and the suchlike, meant for the eventual consumption of the employees of the Welfare State, may, whenever deemed fit, adjust to their convenience, the quality and quantity of the edibles and consumables under their charge. It is the reason why there’ll always be rats in government warehouses, their ground excreta in government wheat, monkeys in Aflatoon Bhavan and gods in Heaven—somebody has to be around to take the shit, to foist the blame on, scapegoats for human misdeeds. If he analysed the ingredients of his cup of tea, he’d find that it wasn’t worth more than fifty paise. It was completely off the point to argue that outside the sphere of the Welfare State, far far away from that indescribable Departmental Canteen, in a normal, decent, ordinary cafe or restaurant, a cup of tea cost about twenty times more. That was only natural because it was twenty times closer to what a cup of tea should be. The Department’s Class IV Employees’ Union had till then strenuously resisted all attempts by the Canteen Management to raise the prices on the menu. The proposed hike for tea was to one rupee—a hundred percent increase. Criminal! Would people never understand? In the Welfare State, everything was free or as close to free as cheap could get. Give us this day our daily crud.

  They temporarily parted ways after tea, Dr Alagh to try and find the two Under Secretaries whom they’d come to meet, Agastya a quiet corner where he could smoke a joint. Eventually, the Civil Surgeon located at least the room of one.

  Not many more signs could be put up on his door. Beneath his bilingual nameplate hung a board that took up half the door. It described his designation in full, in both Hindi and English: Under Secretary: Gajapati Aflatoon Centenary Celebrations, Our Endangered Tribal Heritage, Promotion and Diffusion of Demotic and Indigenous Drama and Other Such Forms of Self-Expression. The third sign read: No Visitors Without Prior Appointment, underneath which was the suggestion: Please See My PA In Room 3872, D Wing, Desk IV. The fifth board reminded all passers-by that Visitors Without Prior Appointment (were) Not Encouraged. The sixth stated quite simply: Please Do Not Spit Here.

  The seventh and last plate read: This Area Meant for Parking of Official Cars Only. Any Car Unauthorizedly Parked Will Have Its Tyres Deflated. By Order of the Under Secretary Administration. Thank You. It had been stolen about a year ago by the Under Secretary from the car park downstairs because he’d liked it and had wanted to see how many passers-by would actually read it on his door and find it odd. In one year, no one had complained.

  Dr Alagh knocked. No response. He knocked again, then bravely opened the door. A tall, plumpish man concentrated on his tai-chi exercises in the centre of the room. At the second desk, a solemn, bespectacled attractive woman paused in her writing to glance up forbriddingly at Dr Alagh.

  ‘Oh hello! . . . I was looking for the Under Secretary for Demotic Drama. I’ve an appointment with him.’

  Without quickening or disturbing the slow, flowing rhytnm of his arm movements, the exerciser pointed to the vacant chair behind the first desk and remarked in soft, measured tones, in harmony with the undulations of his body, ‘There is no response from the incumbent’s seat. Please try after some time.’ Then the exerciser pointedly—but fluidly—turned his back on Dr Alagh.

  Who, nonplussed, shut the door and read the boards and nameplate on it one more time. Had he just encountered one Under Secretary and her gigolo or two Under Secretaries, of whom one, for reasons of state, was nameplate-less? Mr Tai-Chi had been more poised than unfriendly. How many minutes was after some time? Perhaps he should go off somewhere to unearth the Collector of Madna. Or he could ferret out in one of these warrens the Under Secretary for Freedom Fighers (Pre-Independence). He ambled off, nervous.

  Meanwhile, to avoid passing under a monkey that squatted atop a steel almirah and bared its teeth at everyone that tramped past, the Collector of Madna had purposefully turned into the first open door. A huge room that looked small because of the usual chaos of tables, chairs, almirahs, shelves and hillocks of files. There was just one man in the room, hunched in a chair by a window. Agastya threaded his way across. The man wore a brown suit and sparkling-white, new tennis shoes. He had yellowed, sad eyes. Beside him, on the table, lay his opened lunch box. At his feet glowed the room’s single electric heater, on the wire frame of which were being reheated, in twos, the chapatis from the lunch box. On one of the cleaner files beside the heater lay the chapatis that’d already been done. The silence was companionable.

  ‘How will you reheat the vegetables and the dal?’

  The man pointed to the flat metal pen-tray. ‘That fits very well on the heater. We stir with the stencil pen. Have you had lunch?’ asked he courteously.

  ‘Yes, thank you, but please do go ahead . . . It’s way past lunch hour, isn’t it? . . . Actually, I came in in search of a light for my cigarette.’

  ‘Smoking is forbidden in all Welfare State offices,’ said the man sadly, dextrously replacing the chapatis on the heater with the last two from his lunch box. ‘I tend to have my lunch late because of my arthritis and my piles. I have to complete my special joints-and-neck-exercises every morning, so I can’t reach office before eleven. Where’s the time for lunch at one? . . . during lunch hour, everybody saunters off outside to soak in the sun and eat peanuts and oranges . . . in our Department, only Under Secretaries and above are entitled to electric heaters in their rooms. Presumably only they need to keep warm in winter. I represented, arguing that I ought to be issued one on account of my arthritis. General Administration ordered me to face the Medical Board. I represented, arguing that the members of the Board committee belonged to castes traditionally hostile to mine. A final decision is still awaited. Meanwhile, I befriended the Section Officer, Stores, at our Lunch Club.’ He picked up the pen tray from the table, tipped its contents—ballpoints, pins, clips, erasers, markers—into a drawer, wiped it with a duster, then paused to glance shyly at Agastya, ‘Are you sure you won’t join me for a late lunch? . . . If you really want to smoke, you may light your cigarette from the heater. Here, use this paper’—handing him part of a blank sheet that he’d torn out of the nearest file—
‘but please smoke at the window and try and exhale with your head out of the window, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘With pleasure. You wouldn’t mind, of course, if my cigarette is crumpled, hand-rolled and smells a little eco-friendly?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  The phone rang, a muted but insistent, urgent, brr-brr. The man in the white tennis shoes ignored it, perhaps because he’d started lunch, at all times a sacred business. It wasn’t easy to discern which phone to pick up, since each of the eight desks in the room had an instrument, and they all seemed to be ringing.

  Agastya made himself comfortable on some files on the window ledge. It was a good place to finish his joint; then he’d get back to locating Dhrubo. Sighing richly, he exhaled dragon-like through where the pane was meant to be. Before him, not a hundred feet away, were the rows of windows of some other wing of Aflatoon Bhavan. From his seat, he could see nothing else, no sky, no ground, just the occasional pipal sapling tenaciously finding life in the damp walls, the black waste pipes and the trash of fifty years thrown out of a thousand windows. Where they weren’t slimy-green with damp, the walls of Aflatoon Bhavan were a dusty grey. One in two window-panes was broken, two in three windows wouldn’t shut. Pigeons roosted on the occasional air-conditioner. Families of monkeys went about their business on diverse floors, under different ledges, much as though his seat was a vantage point from which to view a cross-section of some simian apartment block. He couldn’t see much, though, of the interiors of any of the rooms that faced him. Those windows that hadn’t been sealed off by air-conditioners had been stoppered by brown files, by mountain ranges of off-white paper, chunks of which, in landslides, had joined, on the overhangs below, the plastic bags, the newspaper wrappers of lunches, the dry ink stamp pads. Nothing, no record (the mountain ranges seemed to say) is ever thrown away. Naturally not. After all, government is based, and acts, on its records. Records are its history and the ground for its planning, are vital for Audit and Parliament, for continuity in governance, for the protection of the taxpayer’s interests. In 1950, the Hakim Tara Chand Committee, in its report on Documentation and Codification in the Welfare State, had pointed out that to house the permanent records of the Central Ministries and Departments alone, the National Archives, against its 1949-capacity of twenty linear kilometres of shelves, would need four hundred-plus linear kilometres.

  It may be noted here (to quote from the Foreword of the report) that the requirement of shelf space of ALL the Departments of the nineteen REGIONAL governments of the Federal State was felt to be beyond the purview of this Committee; also, that it focussed only on the Centre’s PERMANENT records, assuming—optimistically, it must be admitted—that it, the Centre, had organized well its system of weeding out its Himalayan quantities of paper, of separating its permanent files from its ephemeral transactions, its land records from its applications for Casual Leave.

  The record is silent on precisely what the Welfare State did with the Hakim Tara Chand Committee Report. In the Bhanwar Virbhim regime, however, a proposal under consideration moots the setting up of the Taj Babbar Committee to study anew the vexed question of the updating of the recommendations of the, 1950 Committee. Professor Taj Babbar, as is well known, is a prominent educationist and the ex-Principal of Madna’s Janata College.

  Nothing, therefore, is intentionally jettisoned—one never knows when one will need what, and later, one doesn’t want to be blamed, as they say, for acts of omission and commission. But it’s altogether a different matter—and it can’t be helped, you know—if some of that record simply slides, wilts, gives up, falls by the wayside, drops dead.

  As for the living, Agastya couldn’t spot very many human figures; it was that uncertain, somnolent time of the afternoon. Occasionally, a head leaned out to spit paan into the air; at another window, a figure gargled and washed up after yet another late lunch.

  ‘Should I answer the phone?’

  With his mouth full, the man raised his eyebrows and his shoulders, and even curled his lips a fraction.

  ‘Which phone is it?’

  ‘All of them. They’re all extensions.’

  ‘Why don’t you pick it up? It might be important, or even for you.’

  ‘I’ve said hello to you already,’ said the man coldly, ‘it’s enough for the afternoon.’

  Agastya descended from his seat, walked over to a desk nearer the door and lifted the receiver. Just then, the man advised him, ‘If whoever it is first wants to know, without preamble or introduction, where you’re speaking from, you must retort, “From my mouth. Where are you speaking from?” That’ll teach them. I always do that. It hasn’t taught them anything, but it does give the conversation a flavour.’

  ‘Hello . . . from my mouth. Where’re you speaking from? . . . no, nothing, nothing at all, I said, whom d’you wish to speak to? . . . yes, this is Aflatoon Bhavan, Department of Culture, Heri—’

  ‘This is Atomic Energy, not Culture,’ objected the man politely, clearing up after lunch, sweeping crumbs and leftovers directly onto the heater, from which merrily flew the sparks, like Tinker Bell, onto the floor and the occasional, vicinal mound of files.

  ‘Really? . . . But how odd that Under Secretary, Vanishing Musical Traditions should be just about three doors away . . . the man on the phone wants to know whether the office is open on Monday.’

  ‘A good question, tell him that.’ The man now stood at attention, ramrod straight beside the desk, chin up, shoulders back, chest out, stomach in, knees locked, gazing into the middle distance. He inhaled deeply and as he spoke, began to swivel his neck, with agonizing slowness, from extreme left to extreme right and back. ‘We’re all tense this afternoon. You see, including the weekend, there are six official holidays next week. Monday’s the only working day. Tuesday is a new holiday—the Bajendrabadkar Centenary as a sop to the Marxists. Wednesday of course is Christmas, Thursday is the martyrdom of Guru Shankar Shambhu, therefore a Restricted Holiday—the twenty-third of the year—very tricky that, what in government circles is referred to as the RH factor, and Friday’s the Declared General Strike, the Viraat Bandh of the opposition—so nobody’ll waste time trying to reach office. It’s interesting that we’ve never had week-long official breaks in December before. April, August and October have traditionally been the better months from that point of view. It’s a development that I’m sure all of us will welcome.

  ‘But we learnt this morning that Mother Almeida’s more ill than ever before—which is saying quite a lot, considering that her heart stopped beating last month and her lungs gave up pumping last Saturday. She’s ninety-five or thereabouts. When she departs, that’s a holiday, for sure—maybe even two, who knows?—but we’re all pretty tense, you see, because if she’d said, Good Night, World, this morning, then Home Affairs would have declared the holiday today itself, which would have disappointed us acutely, because we’d all have been in office anyway—after eleven, at any rate. I’ve never taken a single day’s leave in my twenty-nine years of service. One doesn’t need to, I say. Once I finish my exercises and reach office, it isn’t so bad . . . some of my women colleagues went out to the lawns with their knitting and everything earlier than usual this afternoon. While in the sun, before they start their peanuts and oranges, they intend to hold a Special Prayer Meeting for the health of Mother Almeida. All are cordially invited. Ideally, they’d like her to leave us on Sunday afternoon. Otherwise, please, please, God, let the gentle soul live all of next week . . . tell him not to be so lazy and to phone Home Affairs if he’s so keen to find out about Monday.’

  ‘He wants to know whom he’s speaking to.’

  ‘Well, give him your name.’

  Nervous, in two minds, without saying anything, Agastya put the phone down. It immediately began ringing again. Ignoring it, he watched his host carry a plastic water bottle to the window, rinse his hands, gargle and spit out into the void three mouthfuls of water, return to the desk, pack up his lunch box in a plastic bag, in pas
sing drop a cupful of water to douse a spark atop a mound of files that had been smouldering menacingly, flick invisible specks of dust off his suit, and with a last, sad glance at Agastya, toting the plastic bag and the water bottle, make his way to the door.

  It unnerved Agastya to realize that he was going to be left alone in the room. ‘Oh, I ought to be leaving too. Many thanks for the light for the cigarette . . . Aren’t you going to switch off your heater?’

  ‘It isn’t mine, you know. I always leave things the way I found them. It is a sound principle in government. Doesn’t ruffle any feathers. You rise faster.’

  ‘Yes. Should I switch it off then?’

  ‘After I leave, please, if you don’t mind. If you receive a shock or something, I don’t wish to be late at my desk, you follow.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘We usually wait for the power cuts to effect our economies in consumption . . . I should get back to my desk before the lights go off. I’ve quite a way to go, you know. Irrigation, A Wing, eighth floor . . . Water Resources Management . . . Wastelands Development Corporation . . . leave the heater on, actually. If the power doesn’t fail us, my wife’ll be pleased to return to a warm seat. Okay, goodbye.’

  In the corridor, the mewl of a siren, terrifyingly loud, almost made Agastya forget where he had to go. As usual, nobody around him seemed to be affected by—or indeed, even hear—the din. Its hideousness—the wail of a thousand police cars—drew him forward like a magnet to its source, one of the two elevators in the west lobby. Out of Order, flashed the red sign above its doors, on-and-off, on-and-off, perfectly synchronous with the modulations of the siren.