The Mammaries of the Welfare State Read online

  ‘It sounds like a fire alarm,’ muttered Agastya to himself.

  ‘Payṇcho, it is a fire alarm,’ declared—almost shouted—a voice at his shoulder.

  He was surprised to see Dhrubo. ‘But it is attached to the elevators and has been primed to go off only when they malfunction. It is the first mystifying principle of firefighting on a war footing.’

  ‘Yes,’ hissed Agastya. The ear-splitting noise had sent his blood pressure spiralling and his heart off pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, like a long ping-pong rally. ‘Do you know where I can find Dr Jain, Under Secretary, Freedom Fighters (Pre-Independence)?’

  ‘Of course. I’m going to him myself. We enjoy a special relationship because his present PA is my ex.’ They began to climb the stairs.

  Dr Jain’s present PA and Dhrubo’s ex, coincidentally also a Jain, was in Dhrubo’s opinion, a first-rate PA. He understood things in a flash. Early in their acquaintance, Dhrubo had asked him one of his fundamental questions: Are you being paid by the Welfare State to reach office on time in the mornings or not? Ever after, they had vied with each other to be more or less punctual. Office started at nine, they were both in, every other day, by half-past, thanks to Dhrubo’s bicycle and Shri P.A. Jain’s Chartered Bus. He disapproved of Dhrubo’s bike, incidentally, and felt that his boss should drive a car, or better still, wangle an official car like some of the other Under Secretaries did. He’d been particularly outraged by Dhrubo’s asking for a loan from the Department to buy his bicycle—it reflected badly on his PA, Jain’d muttered.

  From nine thirty to ten thirty—till the peon came—free and undisturbed, they planned their day. 1) Send the peon with the bicycle to the repairwala at the gate of Aflatoon Bhavan to pump air into its tyres and check for hidden leaks, 2) phone and phone till one’s fingers become stubs and till one gets on the line the Secretary to the Principal of the Hiralal Aflatoon High School and Centre for Non-Formal Literacy and beg her to reveal whether they’ve admitted one’s niece, 3) send the peon to the Department’s Welfare store to buy hairoil, washing powder, dried mango, mosquito repellent cream, two kilos of rice and three cakes of Lifebuoy soap, 4) contact Sodhi in the Commissionerate of Estates to find out whether he knows somebody in the Municipal Corporation who can fix one’s property tax, 5) ask the peon to cover with brown paper one’s niece’s new school textbooks, 6) try and extract from the Film Festival Secretariat two extra free passes for the forthcoming Latin American Cinema Retrospective, 7) send the peon on the bicycle to the office of the Principal of the Hiralal Aflatoon High School with the letter of recommendation from the Minister’s office that one has faked . . . and thus the day of the civil servant passes. By the time one has finished with one’s PA, one is quite exhausted.

  The other Jain, the doctor who looks after freedom fighters, is the Department’s homoeopath—very experienced and wise, by all accounts. Staff and officers come from far and near, from all over the building, to consult him. He’s extremely reasonable and freely prescribes by proxy. For example, his own PA would accost him at his desk with:

  ‘Jain saab, my neighbour’s son suddenly became deaf this morning.’

  ‘I see. Algebra exam?’

  ‘We don’t think so. TV hasn’t attracted him all morning.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. He looks twelve.’

  ‘Any family history of any irregularity?’

  ‘I don’t know. His mother has the hots for me, but perhaps that isn’t related.’

  ‘Difficult to say. Give him these two powders . . .’

  Dr Jain liked looking after freedom fighers because they gave him lots of free time for his homoeopathy. He was a good soul—he was quite upset when Dhrubo’s second promotion was withheld. It reflected badly on the service, he muttered. And sharp—and mindful of his colleague’s good name; it was he who had suggested that in winter Shri Dastidar could bring two jackets to office, one for his goodly frame and the other to be draped for the day on the back of his chair, to reassure all those who came calling for a response from his seat. It was the easiest way to slip into Aflatoon Bhavan, incidentally. The next time the cop at the gate stopped one, one could just point heavenwards and mumble, ‘Consult Jain Saab.’ He practised his homoeopathy gratis, of course, for the love of the craft.

  ‘What’s with the camera around your neck?’ asked Dhrubo of Agastya between the eighth and ninth floors.

  ‘Ah. I plan a photo-exhibition on the Innards of the Welfare State, for which I was hoping to touch you for a grant.’

  ‘Any time for old time’s sake, save during my tai-chi. We are at the moment tied up with the celebrations of the thirtieth anniversary of the nation’s Finest Hour in Athletics—you know, when Silkha Singh came in fifth in the heats at the Rome Olympics. Perhaps next week?’ On the landing of the tenth floor, Dhrubo continued, ‘May I ask why you need to consult Dr Jain? Or is it a delicate matter?’

  ‘Well—for Dr Alagh’s piles. You see, in the last harrowing fortnight in Madna, miraculously, his haemorrhoids have improved—virtually disappeared, actually. Somebody in Vyatha, that theatre troupe, told him that one little-known symptom of the plague is its beneficial—but temporary—effect on piles.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ responded Shri Ghosh Dastidar the tai-chi performer, breathing easily as he took the stairs two at a time, ‘whether my office-chair isn’t a piles giver. You’re familiar with the principle?’ He waited on the eleventh floor for Agastya to catch up. ‘I’ve submitted a proposal to the Anthropological Survey for funds to study the alarming phenomenon of the sizable number of civil servants who have piles. Piles and piles—if you’ll permit—of clerks, Section Officers and above, sitting in the same chairs for seven hours a day, munching plates of pakodas and gulping down twenty cups of tea in the course of their labours. Surely the force of gravity—I argue in my proposal—will find it easier to tug down a colon when it can focus for such a considerable length of time on its target. In an Appendix to my project outline, I’ve set down an interesting corollary to my main argument, namely, the fascinating relationship between a senior civil servant’s piles and his Personal Assistant.

  ‘I’ve cited the example of the Liaison Commissioner Dr Bhatnagar and his PA Satish Kalra. Do you know Dr Bhatnagar? Know of him? A legend of a man, a gem, one of our very best. Destined for the UN, absolutely. The longer Dr Bhatnagar is held back from what he feels is his forte, i.e., a key posting in one of our Economic Ministries, the worse his piles becomes, naturally. Equally naturally, being so senior, he can’t possibly speak directly to his doctor, who is after all merely a General Practitioner attached to the office, and therefore a sort of freelancer on the payroll of the Welfare State, a part-time junior of his, in effect. Loss of caste, absolutely, to speak to him face to face, or even on the phone. A Doctor of Ideas cannot stoop to listen to the counsel of a Doctor of Medicine, even when it’s for the pain in his own arse. So he waits for his PA to phone him in the morning and whimpers and moans to him the intimate physical details of his agony. The PA then phones the Doctor of Medicine and summarizes those details for him—to wit—“The pain in my arse has a pain in his arse.” He next listens to the doctor’s prescription, then phones Bhatnagar Saab and relays to him a careless precis of it—for example—“You’ve to apply Trusted Hadensa, sir, to the affected part, rest in bed all day, no disturbance, no phones, and call him—I mean, I’ve to call him—in the morning, sir”—and immediately after switches off while the Doctor of Ideas bawls out both the PA and the GP for failing to sympathize with and understand his arsehole. To improve that understanding, Kalra the PA spends the entire day alternately phoning the two doctors . . . In passing, I’ve suggested to the Anthropological Survey to grant me funds to study the economics of that day of the PA, and of his relationship with his boss’s bum. You really ought to meet it, and feature it in your photo-exhibition.’

  ‘A legend, you say?’

  ‘A lion of the civil services, a model for a
ll seasons.’

  Boobz

  For his first meeting with the Liaison Commissioner, Agastya Sen had worn a tie and carried a briefcase in which he’d put his tiffin box, a bottle of boiled water and the day’s snipped-out crossword from The State of the Times. He’d been on leave for close to six months before that and had put on weight. When he’d take off his shirt and tie, he’d feel as free as toothpaste emerging.

  After eight and a half years in the Civil Service, his professional career had fallen into the rhythm of a few months of work followed by as many months of leave as his bank balance and the Welfare State would allow. The government was usually quite generous with Leave Without Pay.

  On his return from Aflatoon Bhavan in December, he—apparently due to Makhmal Bagai’s lobbying—had been booted out of the Collectorship of Madna in the last week of the year and been made Deputy Chairman of the Coastal Regions Manure Supply and Marketing Structures Authority. Within a fortnight of his taking over his new assignment, the recommendations of the Central Ninth Pay Commission had finally been accepted and given effect to by the State. As a result, civil servants all over the land had received: 1) numerous cyclostyled circulars in the regional language full of inferences and reasoning, percentages, months, years and the sign @, and 2) at last, long after the circulars, a bonus the equivalent of about two months’ pay. It hadn’t been called either bonus or pay, but Agastya couldn’t be bothered. It had seemed ridiculous to him to waste time, energy and paper differentiating between emoluments, arrears, defrayments, acquittances, settlements, remittances, disbursements and payments when all that was being discussed was a couple of thousand rupees. When he’d seen the State Order distributing the chickenfeed, he’d counselled himself, ‘Time to take wing, my dear. Set the wheels in motion.’ So he’d written to his boss, the Coastal Region Zonal Commissioner, ‘I beg to take whatever leave is due to me because I need to visit my native place urgently since my mother is serious.’ His command of officialese was excellent and one was hardly ever refused leave when one’s parents were serious.

  Once every fortnight, from a hole in the Prajapati Aflatoon Welfare State Public Servants’ Housing Complex Transit Hostel in the capital, he’d sent a telegram to the Zonal Commissioner: Mother still serious.

  He waited in the waiting room of the Liaison Commissioner’s office from ten-thirty onwards. The Commissioner’s PA, one Shri Satish Kalra, periodically looked in on him, first to usher in a peon who’d brought him sweet, milky, rather nice coffee, then to silently thrust into his hands, at intervals of half an hour, The India Magazine, Business Today, India Abroad, What Business of Yours?, India Today and Inside Outside. Shri Kalra was an averagely tall man with a huge head, a young expression, grey hair and a stoop. His facial skin sagged. He dressed impeccably. Later, Agastya learnt from the others in the office that Kalra had once been immensely fat, out of some book of Don’ts, but had, some five years ago, mysteriously and rapidly lost weight.

  From ten-thirty till two, one by one, different heads popped in around the door to briefly stare at him—just checking the new Deputy out—he in his tight cream shirt and tie, all tits and tummy, inhaling and feeling slightly sick at his day’s nth cigarette. Just after two, Kalra came in once more to escort Agastya to his own room. On the way, he told him that the Liaison Commissioner would be a little late that day in reaching office.

  Agastya finally met him the next morning. Dr B.B. Bhatnagar was in the midst of dictating to his PA. He liked being called Doctor Saab. He had a Ph.D on Third World Economic Initiatives from the Bhupati Aflatoon International Open University. The Ph.D had of course been attained on office time. For two full years, he’d made various subordinates of the Liaison Commissioner copy down for his thesis different paragraphs from a dozen other Ph.Ds. Then, with his contacts in the government, he’d sent his Ph.D supervisor and others on his jury panel off on one official junket after another—a seminar in Bangkok, a symposium in Hawaii, a conference in Rio, three nights and two days in Hong Kong, four nights in Sydney. After his Ph.D, he preferred to refer to himself as an Economics man, Commerce and all that.

  Dr Bhatnagar had four receding chins, soft, dimpled, demure folds of skin shying away in layers from his bird nose, his Hitler moustache and his gold spectacles. He had pink lips and eyes. Behind his thick glasses, the edges of both his upper and lower eyelids were turned outward, thus lining his eyes pink and giving his expressionless pupils a rosy tinge.

  Behind his enormous desk, he sat balanced on a chair that rested precariously on just its rear legs. With a pencil in his left hand, he explored the jungle in his left ear for crud and animal life. His right hand clutched the desk for support. Periodically, to simulate the Thinker, he would raise his right hand to his chin, lose balance, flay his arms about for equilibrium, and finally lunge forward to land the chair with a thump on all four legs.

  ‘Good morning, sir. I’m Agastya Sen.’

  ‘Good morning. Don’t disturb my chain of thought just now. I’m feeling very creative. Kalra will tell you that I’m usually at my most creative in the mornings. You may sit down. You couldn’t call on me yesterday because I’m too senior, that’s all right. I joined the Service twenty years before you did, while you were wetting your short pants probably. We won’t meet very often because of your juniority. I will leave notes for you with Kalra, and you may phone me at 8.30 every morning to receive your instructions for the day because, as I pointed out just now, I’m at my most creative in the mornings. If I’m in the middle of my puja at that time, you may phone me again at 8.45 and—I’ll be frank—if need be, again at 9 a.m. You may now listen carefully to—and try to understand—this first draft of a White Paper on BOOBZ, that is to say, Budget Organization On Base Zero. Yes, Kalra, where was I?’

  Agastya quietly collapsed into the chair next to Kalra. On the edge of the seat on his left perched the office’s Public Relations Officer, a small, fat, wicked-looking man with eyes radiant with anxiety, eyebrows that wouldn’t stop wriggling, and a goatee. He’d taken off his shoes and socks and was vigorously rubbing the spaces between his toes. He’d overwhelmed the large room with a prodigious foot stench. Agastya wanted to leave the room and the job at once. Dr Bhatnagar, however, dictated right through the foot stench, so senior an officer was he.

  ‘Hahn, Kalra . . . please take down . . . on the other hand, as a resultant implication of my feedback comma which is based on integral considerations comma—no, Kalra—make that integral subsystem considerations comma there is bound to be a sharp interface in coordination stroke communication stop. The specific criteria for the regulated flow of effectual information will have to be worked out per se comma but it is imperative that there is an initiation of critical paradigmal development comma and a crucial tertiary feedback on the functional interrelationship of hardware comma fourth generation technologies and the system rationale stop Regards stop Read it back to me.’

  Kalra read it out loud, dispiritedly, in silence and footstench. After he’d finished, Doctor Saab pushed his pink lips out in a thick, dissatisfied moue and after a long, contemplative minute, suddenly landed his chair with a decisive thump, startling them all and snapped out, ‘Okay, fax it immediately, send a telex too, crash, and in the post copy, highlight the thrust area.’ They all watched Kalra get up heavily from his chair, lumber to the door and leave the room. Doctor Saab seemed to wait for him to reach his seat, then he picked up the intercom and brayed, ‘Hahn, Kalra, Doctor Saab here . . . come in, please, I want to add one more line to the fax.’ While they waited for him, Doctor Saab looked at the PRO while informing Agastya, ‘It’s terrible, I’ll be frank, but I can’t leave these policy statements to anybody . . . Hahn Kalra—’ Dr Bhatnagar rocked back to an impossible angle to observe his PA through his nostrils. ‘Take a line before Regards. Quote In any case comma I’m having examined the commensurate set-off that the PO stroke HA may like to give in a costing exercise to such an eventuality Unquote.’

  Doctor Saab call
ed Agastya by his first name because it was a sound Management technique. He’d picked it up when he’d been ‘in Commerce . . . later, I’ll be frank, Business Administration at Harvard and all that. They asked me to stay on for my Ph.D but I said no, my government needs me—which is not quite true, because only a section of government needs me, the forward-looking, dynamic, creative section . . . Why were you on long leave before you joined us? Family problems? I understand from Personnel that you’ve availed of long leave quite often, in fact, virtually twice a year in the last eight years.’

  The entry just then of a small, sexy, North-Eastern woman mercifully prevented Agastya from replying. Doctor Saab’s face became the colour of his lips and he began to trill incoherently. To make the room worthy of her, he sent Footstench out at once. Babe and Agastya exchanged Looks. ‘Ah . . . come, come . . . Madam Tina is our Office Superintendent . . . this is Shri Agastya Sen, the new Deputy Liaison Commissioner . . . he’s been posted here to assess the new BOOBZ programme . . . you may go now, Agastya . . . Kalra will help you familiarize yourself with the office . . .’

  The Liaison Commissioner liaised between two governments, the regional government several hundred kilometres away, and the Centre. He was a sort of ambassador of a particular province to the government in the capital city of the same country. Hundreds of cases of the regional government, in any one week, would be pending with Big Brother at the Centre—a Ways and Means Advance with Finance, a Drought Relief Sanction with Agriculture, Political Clearance for the Chief Minister to travel abroad with External Affairs, a proposal to take over a sick cloth mill with Textiles, Industries, Commerce, Economic Affairs and Labour, a scheme to mutilate the coastline beyond recognition with Environment, and so on. The Liaison Commissioner was meant to chase up whatever was important. He was Mr Fixit. His entire office had been created and existed only to doggedly prod the Welfare State into moving, shall we say, different portions of its mammoth, immensely sluggish arse. In him, the government thus officially acknowledged that—God damn the citizenry!—even for its own OFFICIAL work, nothing moved in the Welfare State unless it was prodded. The Office of the Liaison Commissioner cost the country about one crore per year. There were thirty-four of them in the capital. Plans were afoot to have each province similarly represented in each of the thirty-three other provinces in the land.