The Mammaries of the Welfare State Read online

  ‘Yes, very much. It’s begun to sound like our very own Kumbh Mela. I was riffling through the agenda on my way here. A masterpiece of bilge, if I may say so. Superb.’

  ‘Ah yes, that was necessary. The literature simply had to be as weighty as the event—the prestige of the Department’s at stake, you follow. The inclusion of the unpublished poems of Rajani Suroor at Annexure B was particularly inspired, you’ll agree.’

  He would, in general for the entire document. It was a hundred and fifty pages of culture-related information doubled simply by having been made bilingual, a procedure urged by courtesy to the Department of Official Languages, which had agreed to give eight crores, in the first phase, to the Centenary (for a further four crores, the seminal contribution of the terrifically Anglicized Gajapati Aflatoon to the propagation of Hindi as the State’s official language would first be concocted, then highlighted). Each left page of the agenda was in English; the right faithlessly translated it into Hindi. Statistics, headings, figures—of expenditures proposed in the next three years on any culture-related matter by any body of either Central or regional government, of costs incurred in the last five years on seminars, conferences, publications, festivals, lectures on culture anywhere in the country—balances, amounts carried over, sums lapsed into oblivion, seemingly-relevant extracts of audit reports—all that, the very stuff of government, its records, its heart, its dugs—were slipped in whenever possible, whenever nobody was looking, as it were. Nobody’d had the time, certainly, to check the senseless repetitions that bounced about on the same page and the entire lists that returned in every other chapter to tease the page-flipper, in passing, with a sense of deja vu.

  Some sections of the agenda’d impressed even Agastya into emitting low whistles. The Central Archives, for example, in assessing its activities in the previous financial year, had submitted that it had prepared for storage 15,612 sheets, bound 4,326 books, supplied 48,623 photocopies to scholars against a demand of 1,37,091 and answered 1,846 queries on the telephone. The printer, in disapproval perhaps at its performance, had printed the entire paragraph that dealt with the Archives upside down.

  He’d objected, justifiably, in similar fashion—so Agastya had noticed as he’d browsed through the pages, in a pleasant, drunken haze, in the car that had ferried him to Aflatoon Bhavan from his second lunch with Dr Kapila—to the contents of the last paragraph of the section on the activities of the National Secretariat Library. Agastya had turned the agenda around to see what he could be missing: Other recent acquisitions of the Library include Natwar’s Compilation of Medical Attendance Rules, Including Lists of Admissible and Inadmissible Medicines (With and Without Notes) (Five Copies) and Natwar’s Compendium of Rules and Regulations Regarding Office Uniforms and Office-Uniform-Related Allowances for Permanent Group C and D Employees of the Welfare State (With Notes Only) (Ten Copies).

  Daya was delighted to learn that Agastya would officially be present at the Committee reunion. They spent the night before the meeting together in her hotel room. They hadn’t met for some weeks. She played Heathcliff, he hard to get, she won, hands down and thighs up and all over his face. In the middle of the night, she ordered yoghurt and honey from Room Service while he smoked a terrific cigarette and marvelled at the latest Woman-to-Woman Rani Chandra cassette.

  Out of the blue. ‘August, would you like to meet Jayati—tomorrow evening, after that chaos finishes? Or whenever you shed your inertia?’

  ‘Is it a roundabout compliment? You give good head, so I’d like to loan you out to people who matter?’

  ‘I’ve already told her about your luminous intelligence—he has a good head on his shoulders, I said. After you’ve impressed her with it, I’ll suggest to her that we open a mini- Secretariat of the Centenary in what you most appropriately and poetically call Our City, and that we post you there as Officer on Special Duty.’

  ‘Without specifying them—the special duties. Wonderful idea, Daya. But can’t you swing it without my meeting Jayati-ji? I feel nervous and small in front of greatness, as under you. Not at all like Charlton Heston when he’s dragged before that sexbomb Egyptian queen—quite Jayati-like—in The Ten Commandments. But then I have neither his jaw nor Yul Brynner’s tits.’

  The next morning, TFIN Complex looked like the setting for a modern film epic. Clear sky, clean sun, trees rustling in the breeze, multicoloured flags, bunting and banners brightening up the enormous renovated courtyard, millions of cops just hanging around, dressed to kill in mufti but still looking like cops, harassed bureaucrats tensely waiting for either a heart attack or a flap, whichever was earlier, ghastly instrumental music—the sort that one suffered, sweating, on domestic flights before take-off—from the speakers hidden in the trees. The selection of the music had been a minor point of discord in the Secretariat. Minister Virbhim had wanted a piece quite solemn and epic, the sort that heralds the arrival of monarchs. It was to be played first for Jayati—but naturally—and then, as a sort of afterthought, for the Prime Minister, who’d be inaugurating the event. That—the inauguration—had been a second minor point of discord. The debate—on how best to kick-start the occasion—had revealed deep cultural differences. Minister Virbhim—naturally—had wanted a series of symbolic rites lasting close to an hour—fire, ghee, priests with tits, bells, incense, Sanskrit, dhotis, garlands, spices, more ghee, that sort of thing. Warm but primitive, had commented Dr Harihara Kapila, the recently-appointed Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, in Hindi, as usual confounding everybody with his mind that truly functioned, simultaneously and all the time, as both razor and corkscrew. He’d won, of course, and the PM would now alight, set free a white pigeon, light one lamp before Payṇchom—miraculously untouched by the father of all fires—a second on stage and leave.

  As for the music, soft, sweet if possible, Kapila’d decreed, and unobtrusive, something like a pleasant whine, like a beneficiary grovelling for more with a shehnai in his mouth—and as long as it’s switched off before anyone important arrives.

  The important numbered almost two hundred. Even Dr Bhatnagar, it will be recalled, with his new agenda, had become one. They’d been given special car passes of different colours and could zoom right up to the grand portals of the main lobby. The passes, like the invitation cards, were numbered, coded and strictly non-transferable—with exceptions, of course, as always in this hierarchy-sensitive system. Even a Private Secretary, for example, was known in an emergency to stand in for his Minister who couldn’t make it because he had to go away—officially, of course—to the South, where he’d shaved his head and was somersaulting around the perimeter of a temple atop some hillock to appease or thank one of the gods, their calls being more peremptory than the summons of the Aflatoons. Thus one explained the presence at TFIN Complex that morning of Chanakya Lala, who drove up in a sparkling cloud of perfume and glided his way from the deep aromatic recesses of his Minister’s holy-white Ambassador to his assigned seat in the tenth row like a product on a smoothly-moving assembly line, shaking hands with and namaste-ing the waiting bureaucrats who mattered and painlessly slicing through those who didn’t. A gentleman to the core of his heart, which was a five-hundred-rupee note neatly wrapped around a Parisian bottle of aftershave.

  Almost all the bureaucrats who didn’t matter were lowly Escort Officers charged with the responsibility of conducting the members of the Centenary Committee from their cars to their seats, in case they lost their way en route. This reception was in part a warm welcome and in part a security measure insisted on by the police, who naturally didn’t want to accidentally rough up a V∞IP, lost and found wandering around in an insecure daze in the vast labyrinthine spaces of the building, stammering before the unspeakable menace of the law, unable to explain who was what and thus being mistaken for an assassin or an arsonist or both. The happier Escort Officers, like Personal Assistant Dharam Chand, were those who recognized their charges. Dharam Chand was to lead the living legend Kum Kum Bala Mali and show
her her place. His bum’d been twitching with excitement for a week just at the thought of swaying a foot ahead of the hips of the ex-actress for a full ten minutes.

  He’d offered himself for Escort Officer duty and’d specifically asked that the ageing Bharatnatyam wizard—or rather, witch—be assigned to him: Now that he worked as Principal Private Secretary to Baba Mastram, he usually got what he wanted. He was still ascendant and had his eye on nestling up to Sukumaran Govardhan once his surrender was sorted out. His old friend and one-time boss, Under Secretary Dastidar, had suggested to him that since they were running short of reliable staff, could he also escort a couple of other minor headaches, Dr Bhatnagar, for example, whose office plagued him, Dastidar, four times a day to learn whom Doctor Saab should expect to find awaiting him the instant he alighted from his Ambassador.

  The good Doctor himself had proposed Agastya, who’d parried, ‘If you permit, sir, would that be in form? Seeing us together, the other bureaucrats present might construe that you and I—to quote you, sir—enjoy the same juniority.’

  Thus freed, Agastya’d hoped to sit beside and savour the meeting with Daya. But that was not to be, at least not initially. She was important enough to be seated somewhere in the first ten rows, whereas to him was pointed out a corner of the twenty-seventh. He didn’t much mind, having prepared for the meeting by smoking a killer joint and wearing new wraparound dark glasses to hide his consequent red eyes. ‘Conjunctivitis,’ he’d smile at anybody who glanced at him pointing at his goggles, raising the pale green agenda in his left hand to establish his bonafides. Nobody gave a shit.

  He didn’t smoke marijuana any more before lunch, not routinely. Middle age, no doubt. That morning was special because the night before’d been remarkable, and ruminating Thinker-like on the pot at seven a.m., he’d admitted to himself that he preferred a room, a day and perhaps a life with Daya in them, so how was he going to handle this mid- life crisis? Well, smoke a joint, yes, but after that?

  He was surrounded by bureaucrats discussing the latest transfers, their bosses and colleagues, Jayati Aflatoon, Sukumaran Govardhan, the budget of the Centenary and in the agenda before them, a sub-heading that at times sounded like Beyond War and at other times like Bjorn Borg. ‘This figure in the second column—is it ninety-seven crores or sixty-seven crores . . .?’ asked Agastya’s immediate neighbour of the auditorium in general. He wore a brown safari suit and well-scrubbed tennis shoes. He began to riffle through the pages of statistics and figures with professional disdain. ‘ . . . Either way, the numbers are all wrong—they don’t add up . . . Last year’s expenditure on Beyond War was Plan or Non-Plan? . . .’

  ‘I find that the best method is to take a sip of tea the moment you get the cup, very noisily; then nobody steals your cup,’ declared his colleague, seemingly in reply. He was pale, with long, slicked-back grey hair. He was using his agenda as an ashtray.

  ‘I’m quite curious,’ confessed the brown suit, ‘to see how they interpret these statistics. D’you see? The details, heads and descriptions of expenditure are on the left page, whereas all the columns of figures are on the right; during printing, however, the figures’ve slipped one—and sometimes two—lines down.’

  ‘Non-alignment.’

  ‘A turdle. Do you know the word? My son taught it to me. They use it in school quite often. It’s short form for tremendous hurdle. I like it.’

  A one-armed peon sidled up to Agastya and sullenly pointed out to him a commandingly beckoning Dr Bhatnagar. Tranquil, at rest, sleepily horny and stoned, Agastya didn’t in the least wish to struggle up out of his chair and shuffle down to listen to and note down some utter rubbish. Which it would be, as sure as and worse than death, meant mainly to remind Dr Bhatnagar himself in a moment of stress, brought on by the presence of so many V∞IPs who were ignoring him, that he possessed a mind bubbling over with brilliant, viable ideas and that he, for the betterment of the world, continually needed an amanuensis or he would lose it. ‘Hahn, Agastya . . .’ he would say, looking at him through his nostrils and at everybody else out of the corner of his eye to note how many of them’d noticed how busy he was with affairs of State, ‘ . . . remind me to send a fax to the Commerce Secretary repeated to Industries . . .’

  Agastya instead decided to send Dr Bhatnagar a paper plane. He could write on it all the faxes that he wanted and fly it back to him. An economy measure, even though for Agastya, a doubtful career move. He opened his agenda to decide which page to use and was distracted for a while by the wide variety of choices. He finally settled on the Table of Contents but the plane never took off because while he was making it, all of a sudden, the buzz and murmur of fifteen hundred bureaucrats changed to an extended rustle and swish, like a breeze in a forest, for at the entry of the PM and his entourage, the entire auditorium rose.

  The cortege was all in dazzling white. Agastya was reminded of the advertisement for Rin, the detergent that washes whitest. Jayati’s white sari had a gorgeous maroon border. Clumsily, Bhanwar Virbhim led the PM and Jayati to the tall brass lamp stand at the left of the stage, where waited two nervous young women dressed in glorious, practically- bridal, silk. With the earthen lamps in their hands, they drew concurrent and symmetric circles of welcome in the air before the PM’s and Jayati’s heads, chests and for some reason, stomachs. With a sudden, convent-school curtesy, they then handed over the earthen lamps to the Aflatoons and hesitantly motioned them to step forward to the lamp stand.

  Since all the eyes were on the stage, Agastya used the moment to steal away to the opposite side of the hall and settle down a couple of rows further back, right next to an unimportant-looking exit, to locate him where myopic Dr Bhatnagar, despite his contact lenses, was likely to take fifteen minutes. Ah, what have men not done for freedom? Or for love. He should send a note to Daya—whose perfect, tastefully-grey head he could glimpse, he was glad to note, a few rows ahead of Doctor Saab—informing her of his change of address. The unimportant-looking exit opened furtively and the Public Works Secretary, criminally late and therefore flustered, and not as marvellously coiffured as usual, slipped in and dived, virtually in one movement, like a soldier hitting the ground, into the seat beside Agastya; clearly, the stares of the auditorium were to be avoided like shrapnel.

  In Agastya’s lingo, a deep-shitter was a person wallowing in it. Recognizing a mega-example in the Public Works Secretary, he smiled at the senior bureaucrat’s profile and to make him feel better, took off his own dark glasses. The Secretary continued to vigorously chew gum till he relaxed a bit in his chair, then, without glancing at Agastya, asked, ‘We haven’t obviously reached Item Number Two on the agenda. Has anybody said anything so far?’

  ‘Not from the stage, sir.’ Agastya consulted the Table of Contents. Ah, Item Two was the vexed question of the placement of the statue of Gajapati Aflatoon in the Arabian Sea. He regarded Deep-Shitter’s profile with a little more interest. If what he’d done to the file of the statue was any measure, Agastya was in the presence of a bowler of world- class googlies.

  For the last decade or so, certainly as long as he’d been in service, the Russians’d been wanting to gift the Welfare State a hundred-metre-high granite statue of Gajapati Aflatoon which they both—the Russians and some of the living Aflatoons—wanted set in the bay just off Bhayankar. When last estimated, the operation was to have cost twenty-four crores. Agastya’d seen photographs of a model of the statue; it’d remarkably improved the original. More hair on the head, an intelligent, handsome expression, terrific shoulders and pectorals under the shawl, right arm raised in paternal benediction—and it had still resembled Gajapati! Great art, except that Public Works—not being confident enough of not fucking it up—simply didn’t wish to be saddled with the headache. Permissions from Environment, Defence, External Affairs, Home and Petroleum were sought, the last because it’d nothing to do with the subject and would therefore take the longest to reply, since the file would tour each Department and Section of its Minis
try, relayed by one to the other with the terse note: Not ours. Yours perhaps? Clearing—and overriding—all those turdles took six years. (External Affairs, for example, had battled as heroically as Porus against Alexander: This Ministry will agree to this project only if the Russians allow us to gift them in exchange a statue of comparable dimensions, sculpted by one of our best artists, of Lenin or Stalin, that would enjoy pride of place amidst the ships of one of their warm-water ports.) The Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Secretariat then began to lean on Public Works, the only one of the Ministries that hadn’t—officially—definitively replied. They both wanted the statue to be in place and inaugurated in the centenary year.

  It was then that the Secretary had asked:

  Is the statue to face the sea (in a confidential minute in the file) or the shore? If the sea, we’d be symbolically declaring that Pundit Gajapati Aflatoon has turned his back on us. If the shore, are we not in danger of offending our neighbours across the seas by a permanent, grossly material, display of the rear of the Founding Father of the Welfare State? Public Works is not to be held responsible for the international repercussions of this subject.

  Secondly: The bay at Bhayankar is one of the prettiest in the country, but its waters have helped the inhabitants of the world’s largest slum in their morning ablutions for generations. A view will have to be taken on whether we wish the statue of Pundit Aflatoon to preside every day, till the end of the world, over a million squatting figures and indeed, whether we wish its granite to be washed forever by—well—rather polluted waters.