Servants of India

by R K Laxman

  The neighbours opened their windows and peered out at the ruckus mat was going on next door. Although eating chocolate was usually restricted to only once a day, the mother was now desperately trying to tempt the child with a whole bar of chocolate. Thankfully this worked and the child quietly followed his mother into the house.

  The ayah’s husband stayed on, hanging around the garden on the day of his arrival. Parvati would take a quick short break from her duty when the child was with his grandmother, rush to her husband, exchange a few words and dash back. As dusk fell she fed the child and put it to sleep. When the mother returned home the ayah went and sat under the tree near the gate talking to her husband. Ramesh saw their vague forms in the dark.

  When he stepped out of the house for jogging early next morning he saw the ex-soldier sleeping curled up in a corner of the veranda. At noon he saw him washing himself and his clothes under the garden tap. The ayah shared her lunch and dinner with him. At night the man retired to the corner in the veranda to sleep and she returned to her usual place next to the child’s cot.

  Everything went on with precarious rhythm, the daughter-in-law keeping her social rounds, the ayah giving her undivided attention to the child and her husband vaguely wandering in the garden. No one wanted to disturb the undefined arrangement.

  One day a nodding acquaintance of Ramesh’s who lived in a housing complex close by greeted him. ‘Hello, my name is Gajanan. I live on the third floor in that flat. You have kept a watchman, I see. Considering the number of burglaries and murders one hears about these days it is very wise of you not to depend on the police but to make your own arrangement for security … Tell me, where did you get him from? I see he is a very conscientious chap. Do you think he could keep an eye on our housing society as well during the daytime? I am the secretary and I can fix his salary and so on. Do please ask him and let me know.’

  They chatted for a while about the increase in crime rate, corruption among the police force and politicians, CTBT and so on before they parted.

  A few days later Gajanan had a talk with the watchman who gladly accepted the new post. The ayah was delighted. The daughter-in-law’s joy knew no bounds. ‘Never before has the servant problem been solved so satisfactorily all round,’ Ramesh mentioned proudly to his friends. Then he added, ‘Of course, that was many years ago. What happened later is another story …’

  Anthony the Chauffeur

  The next on Gancsh’s ‘Servants of India’ list was Anthony, a car driver.

  Mr Krishnan had retired after four decades of loyal service in a reputed export company. In all these years he had never given a thought to his accommodation, telephone and car—all of which he would be losing on retirement.

  After some makeshift arrangements he found a two-bedroom flat far away from the hub of activity he had been used to all these years. He got a telephone connection too in a surprisingly short time after talking to people with influence in the telephone department and greasing the palms of several senior and junior officials concerned. As for a car, it was the easiest to get. New models of cars were flooding the market, and loans to buy them were being offered by banks thorough attractive advertisements in the newspapers. So tempting were they that a person who could not afford even a bicycle went for a car.

  Mr Krishnan applied for a loan and booked a small red car that he saw standing in the showroom. It was delivered in a surprisingly short time at his doorstep (as the ad had claimed). Mr Krishnan knew nothing about cars, nor about driving. He was used to sitting in the rear seat of chauffeur-driven official cars reading the chairman’s speech or the annual report of some company or the agenda for the board meetings or correcting proofs of speeches he had to deliver. Now it broke his heart to sec the immobile red vehicle in the parking lot. Finally he procured a driver through the transport section of his old office.

  On the first day Damodar the driver gave Krishnan and his wife a ride round the town in the new car. Damodar was in high spirits and explained the various good points of the car, the music system, the air conditioner, the cellular phone charger etc., admiring the ingenuity of the Japanese. He demonstrated the smoothness of the steering, the powerful pick-up and the efficiency of the power brake system, jolting the passengers about in the rear seat in the process.

  Damodar’s salary was disproportionate to the duties he had to perform. In the morning he had to drive Mrs Krishnan to an ayurvedic clinic where she was a consultant, and had to bring her back after a couple of hours. Mr Krishnan would be busy in the meantime with his financial affairs, investment stocks and shares etc. Then he would dress up to go to the local club to play bridge till lunchtimc. After leaving the master in the club, Damodar would bring Mrs Krishnan back home. Since she would be busy with the household work she hardly went out. Damodar just hung around the parking lot waiting for the time to fetch Krishnan from the club. After that he was free unless Mr Krishnan had to visit his dentist or unless the lady wanted to go shopping or drop in on her friends.

  The couple congratulated themselves on having got a driver who was loyal, uncomplaining, punctual and efficient. Krishnan was very proud of Damodar and boasted to his friends how he had made the selection after subjecting the applicant to exacting questions and rigorous examination, and how liberal he was with fixing his salary.

  A few months later Damodar let the Krishnans down by not turning up for duty. Mrs Krishnan had to go to the clinic in a taxi and Krishnan skipped his bridge session. The driver absented himself for several days. One day Krishnan was surprised to see Damodar merrily driving his bridge partner’s car. Later the partner told him grinning that Damodar had offered his services for a slightly higher salary.

  It was months before Krishnan was able to procure Anthony. He was a tall thin character who could easily double for James Bond with slight changes in his complexion, shape of the nose and hairstyle.

  Anthony’s unhurried duty left him with a lot of free time. One morning, when he was returning home after dropping Mrs Krishnan at the ayurvedic clinic, he saw some office-goers at the bus-stop thumbing passing cars for a lift. Anthony slowed down, picked up three hitchhikers and dropped them off at their offices. He was surprised when they gave handsome tips when they got off.

  Anthony began to pick up short-distance passengers whenever the car was shuttling between one place and another without legitimate occupants. Thus he collected quite a packet by way of tips at the end of the day. Once in a while Anthony would tell Krishnan he was taking the car for servicing or minor repairs and disappear for a long time, giving lifts to people in a hurry. Krishnan who was totally ignorant about cars did not notice the steady increase in petrol consumption, the frequent need for servicing and wheel alignment etc. He just paid the petrol bills when presented with them.

  One day Krishnan was sitting in the car which was stuck in traffic during peak hour. Suddenly a smartly dressed young man carrying a briefcase opened the rear door with a snappy ‘Hi Anthony’ and jumped into the car. Mumbling ‘You are late today’, he took out a cell phone and spoke urgently into it: ‘I’m late, I’m sorry. Don’t start the meeting till I come. I think I will make it in a few minutes. Awful traffic jam!’ Turning his attention to the driver, he said, ‘Anthony, please drop me at the post office corner.’ He then took out some papers from the briefcase and began to go through them. When he got out he handed over some cash to Anthony and hurried away, weaving a path through a mixture of vehicles, pedestrians, hawkers and beggars who were moving in all directions.

  It was all so sudden. Krishnan remained a dumb spectator throughout. After some time he asked, ‘What’s going on, Anthony?’

  ‘Where, sir?’

  ‘That man, who was he?’

  ‘He wanted a lift, sir.’

  ‘But he seemed to know you. He called you by your name.’

  ‘Once I gave him a lift, sir. When he couldn’t find a taxi.’

  The explanation left Krishnan in deep doubt about Anthony’s honesty. He was giv
ing lifts to strange people on the road for money! In fact Krishnan had sometimes seen people trying to wave down his car while passing a bus stand. Krishnan did not want to go into the details and end up losing Anthony.

  ‘After dropping master at the club or madam at the clinic the car is empty and I thought there was no harm in giving some people a lift,’ Anthony said casually. The explanation seemed quite logical. On hearing it Mrs Krishnan at first lauded Anthony’s helpful nature. But soon it dawned on her that he was actually misusing the car behind their back. Both husband and wife, however, were at a loss to find a solution to the problem. They could not let him take them for a ride and made suckers out of them under their own noses, letting strangers use their car as a taxi. They came to the conclusion that there was no use in warning Anthony and ordering him not to misuse the car. He was in sole charge of the car most of the time with no one to keep a watch on him. They decided to warn him in a tactful way and avoid the risk of losing his service.

  ‘The best thing is to tell him that one of your friend’s drivers was cheating his master by using his car as a taxi and he was caught and was handed over to the police …’ Mrs Krishnan suggested.

  ‘What a brilliant idea,’ Krishnan responded sarcastically. ‘He is not a dumb fellow! He would immediately realize I am referring to him and throw the car keys on my face and depart. It has got to be completely indirect …’

  ‘Supposing he does not get the point and continues his taxi business. How are you going to catch him? By standing in the bus stand?’ Mrs Krishnan asked cynically.

  ‘Oh, you leave all that to me. I will handle it. One must have an imaginative approach to the problem. I will create a purely fictitious situation and narrate it to him without letting on that I’m actually referring to him. You wait and see …’

  ‘How will he know it is him you arc accusing if you are going to be vague, tell me,’ the wife insisted.

  Krishnan lost his patience and said, ‘Will you please mind your own business and leave this matter to me? Please don’t interfere.’

  ‘But the other day when Anthony came late you wanted me to deal with him … Why? Now you behave as if …’ she shouted back.

  A couple of weeks later Krishnan came to her room beaming and announced, ‘Anthony realized his mistake. He apologized most humbly to me and promised never again to betray the trust I have in him. The poor boy was on the verge of tears …’

  ‘How did you do that? How did you make him realize he was deceiving us?’ his wife asked, exuding admiration for her husband.

  ‘Ah, that is called tact, diplomacy, strategy, cleverness … that’s why I said, leave it to me. Don’t interfere. I have handled hundreds of such fellows in my job …’

  Everything went on smoothly after this for several months. Anthony was behaving himself without any cause for complaint or suspicion.

  One day as Krishnan was dressing up to go to the club the telephone rang. Krishnan picked it up and heard a voice ask, ‘Excuse me, is it Mr Krishnan’s residence? Well, please tell Anthony not to look for Sham Pyarelal at the post office this morning … Thank you.’ Krishnan put the receiver down totally disillusioned and looked out of the window. He saw Anthony cleaning the car.

  He always kept it sparkling.

  Iswaran the Storyteller

  Ganesh was in two minds about whether he should include the story of Iswaran in his chronicle ‘Servants of India’. It really seemed too strange to be credible. Finally he decided to use it, thinking that after all reality sometimes bordered closely on the fantastic.

  The story was narrated to Ganesh by a young man, Mahendra by name. He was a junior supervisor in a firm which offered on hire supervisors at various types of construction sites: factories, bridges, dams, and so on. Mahendra’s job was to keep an eye on the activities at the work site. He had to keep moving from place to place every now and then as ordered by his head office: from a coal mining area to a railway bridge construction site, from there after a few months to a chemical plant which was coming up somewhere.

  He was a bachelor. His needs were simple and he was able to adjust himself to all kinds of odd conditions, whether it was an ill-cquipped circuit house or a makeshift canvas tent in the middle of a stone quarry. But one asset he had was his cook, Iswaran. The cook was quite attached to Mahendra and followed him uncomplainingly wherever he was posted. He cooked for Mahendra, washed his clothes and chatted away with his master at night. He could weave out endless stories and anecdotes on varied subjects.

  Iswaran also had an amazing capacity to produce vegetables and cooking ingredients seemingly out of nowhere in the middle of a desolate landscape with no shops visible for miles around. He would miraculously conjure up the most delicious dishes made with fresh vegetables within an hour of arriving at the zinc-sheet shelter at the new workplace.

  Mahendra would be up early in the morning and leave for work after breakfast, carrying some prepared food with him. Meanwhile Iswaran would tidy up the shed, wash the clothes, and have a leisurely bath, pouring several buckets of water over his head, muttering a prayer all the while. It would be lunchtime by then. After eating, he would read for a while before dozing off. The book was usually some popular Tamil thriller running to hundreds of pages. Its imaginative descriptions and narrative flourishes would hold Iswaran in thrall.

  His own descriptions were gready influenced by the Tamil authors that he read. When he was narrating even the smallest of incidents, he would try to work in suspense and a surprise ending into the account. For example, instead of saying that he had come across an uprooted tree on the highway, he would say, with eyebrows suitably arched and hands held out in a dramatic gesture, ‘The road was deserted and I was all alone. Suddenly I spotted something that looked like an enormous bushy beast lying sprawled across the road. I was half inclined to turn and go back. But as I came closer I saw that it was a fallen tree, with its dry branches spread out.’ Mahendra would stretch himself back in his canvas chair and listen to Iswaran’s tales uncritically.

  ‘The place I come from is famous for timber,’ Iswaran would begin. ‘There is a richly wooded forest all around. The logs are hauled on to the lorries by elephants. They are huge well-fed beasts. When they turn wild even the most experienced mahout is not able to control them.’ After this prologue Iswaran would launch into an elaborate anecdote involving an elephant.

  ‘One day a tusker escaped from the timber yard and began to roam about, stamping on bushes, tearing up wild creepers and breaking branches at will. You know, sir, how an elephant behaves when it goes mad.’ Iswaran would get so caught up in the excitement of his own story that he would get up from the floor and jump about, stamping his feet in emulation of the mad elephant.

  ‘The elephant reached the outskirts of our town, breaking the fences down like matchsticks,’ he would continue. ‘It came into the main road and smashed all the stalls selling fruits, mud pots and clothes. People ran helter-skelter in panic! The elephant now entered a school ground where children were playing, breaking through the brick wall. All the boys ran into the classrooms and shut the doors tight. The beast grunted and wandered about, pulling out the football goalpost, tearing down the volleyball net, kicking and flattening the drum kept for water, and uprooting the shrubs. Meanwhile all the teachers had climbed up to the terrace of the school building; from there they helplessly watched the depredations of the elephant. There was not a soul below on the ground. The streets were empty as if the inhabitants of the entire town had suddenly disappeared.

  ‘I was studying in the junior class at that time, and was watching the whole drama from the rooftop. I don’t know what came over me suddenly. I grabbed a cane from the hands of one of the teachers and ran down the stairs and into the open. The elephant grunted and menacingly swung a branch of a tree which it held in its trunk. It stamped its feet, kicking up a lot of mud and dust. It looked frightening. But I moved slowly towards it, stick in hand. People were watching the scene hypnotized from nearby h
ousetops. The elephant looked at me red-eyed, ready to rush towards me. It lifted its trunk and trumpeted loudly. At that moment I moved forward and, mustering all my force, whacked its third toenail on the quick. The beast looked stunned for a moment; then it shivered from head to foot—and collapsed.’

  At this point Iswaran would leave the story unfinished, and get up mumbling, ‘I will be back after lighting the gas and warming up the dinner.’ Mahendra who had been listening with rapt attention would be left hanging.

  When he returned, Iswaran would not pick up the thread of the story right away. Mahendra would have to remind him that the conclusion was pending. ‘Well, a veterinary doctor was summoned to revive the animal,’ Iswaran would shrug casually. ‘Two days later it was led away by its mahout to the jungle.’

  ‘Well, how did you manage to do it, Iswaran—how did you bring down the beast?’

  ‘It has somerthing to do with Japanese art, I think, sir. Karate or jujitsu it is called. I had read about it somewhere. It temporarily paralyses the nervous system, you see.’

  Not a day passed without Iswaran recounting some story packed with adventure, horror and suspense. Whether the story was credible or not, Mahendra enjoyed listening to it because of the inimitable way in which it was told. Iswaran seemed to more than make up for the absence of a TV in Mahendra’s living quarters.

  One morning when Mahendra was having breakfast Iswaran asked, ‘Can I make something special for dinner tonight, sir? After all today is an auspicious day—according to tradition we prepare various delicacies to feed the spirits of our ancestors today, sir.’

  That night Mahendra enjoyed the most delicious dinner and complimented Iswaran on his culinary skills. He seemed very pleased but unexpectedly launched into a most garish account involving the supernatural.