What we could however pause to discuss is their credibility. Leadership in general involves setting an example. It is only the captain of our national cricket team who leads with the bum. The question is: is a leader expected to do anything after he’s emitted all the right noises? ‘Roll up your sleeves . . . tighten your belts . . . remove poverty (better still, remove the poor) . . . pull up your socks . . . and shed a tear for the downtrodden . . .’
To help you to shed that tear at the right time, at the right place—here, have a car! Do my readers know that in the next couple of weeks, a proposal will be voted through in the Daanganga Assembly to provide interest-free car loans of three lakh rupees to each of its four-hundred-plus Members? In their speechifying, the legislators to a man have lauded the ‘gracious, humanitarian, forward-looking, development-oriented, poverty-alleviating’ proposal. Apparently, they find it difficult to cover their constituencies on their own. Since they don’t own cars, to reach the people quickly and effectively they are forced to accept the proferred help of various contractors, businessmen and industrialists. This they’d rather avoid. So would the Regional Finance Department this proposal. It will cost the state more than twelve crore rupees and of course, it will be impossible to recover any of the loans, particularly from those legislators who lose their next elections or, unfortunately, die. The section of the Motor Car Advance Rules 1949 that deals with elected Members of Parliament and of the Legislative Assemblies—they significantly having excluded themselves from the definition of ‘public servant’—is notably silent on this point of recoupment. No proposal has been mooted so far to amend these Rules. Various former ministers of Daanganga, it should be recalled here, already owe the state more than four crore rupees.
Please also do consider where these legislators will drive their cars to! Daanganga’s 70,464 villages have an average ten kilometres of road length for every fifteen hundred square kilometres of area. I am indebted for this confusing statistic to the National Bureau of Information, Demography and Official Data. Translated, that means for the region a total of about two thousand six hundred kilometres of road, at least a third of which would lie in some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain, namely, the Gayaladh plateau. What is quite marvellous is that even when they have their cars, the Special Allowance that they give themselves at present for not having cars will stay—inflation, rising prices and so on, runs the argument. That is, say, Rs 2000 per month as constituency allowance—presumably to cover the costs of travel between Legislative House and Constituency, you’d think—but wait! Because, at the same time, they enjoy unlimited free first-class train-and deluxe, air- conditioned bus-travel for three persons within the federal region per legislator, the three persons being his good self, his personal secretary and his bodyguard. Nobody wants to kill them, you’d argue. You’d be surprised.
There is only one argument in favour of giving our legislators soft loans for cars. They’ll all be plied as long-distance private taxis, of course—the New Markand-Daanganga Lake run being particularly profitable, as has been proved over the years by all our civil servants who’ve so far used—or availed of, as they’d say—the Motor Car Advance Rules 1949 to buy private cabs. Some of them’ve cogently argued that it’s the simplest way of solving the problem of public transport for the hill resort at Daanganga Lake during the peak tourist season.
Not to forget, in the midst of these meanderings, that each of our guiding lights also gets a crore of rupees for the development of his constituency. They want more—to speed up the process of improvement, they say, because time’s running out. Well, so will the money—fortunately—leaving us with nothing but the question: has socialism been a very good thing for anybody other than the socialists?
There had been times when Dr Chakki had thought that he would never ever finish The Magic of the Aflatoons. Every time—whether in Madna or back home at the Prajapati Aflatoon Transit Hostel—that he’d believed that he had the essay wrapped up, some incident had bobbed up in his memory or in the newspapers and simply screamed to be included. The first draft had been fourteen pages long; the latest stood, vacant, incomplete, at page forty-seven. He’d even toyed with the idea of converting it into a periodical journal that would be a beacon, an icon for their troubled times, wise, statesmanly, therefore with a circulation of forty-three and steadily dwindling because too respectable, too much Nuclear Disarmament and not enough mammaries. In it, he would run a column, quite simply called Sleight of Hand and discuss threadbare therein the marvels of the week.
Of the previous Thursday, for instance, when HUBRIS Minister Bhanwar Virbhim in the Senate, while replying to a Starred Question, had likened the tumult in the House to the chaos of Chor Bazaar, the market for the resale of stolen goods. Dr Chakki had not found the comparison funny. Instead, he’d thought it deeply insulting to the tradesfolk of Chor Bazaar because they, unlike politicians, shriek purposefully, dispose of whatever they take up and do not cheat unreasonably, dealing in amounts befitting the poverty of their State. Sleight of Hand would then suggest that the Minister, in a formal statement, apologize in the House to all the shopkeepers of all the Chor Bazaars of the country. Think of their six million votes, it’d say.
The evening before, Bhanwar Virbhim had had to fly out to Navi Chipra for some urgent political skullduggery. The Welfare State paid for the three tickets, of course, on the reasoning that every second and every act in the lives of Ministers and officials is official. As is usual with our oligarchs, felt Dr Chakki in a fever of outrage, when it comes to their personal work, they truly behave as though they lead a nation on the move and going places. Thus at 5.30 p.m., the staff of the Minister ordered the booking office of National Airlines to reserve two Executive Class seats for master and mistress-sharer—Minister and Secretary—and a third Lumpen Class seat for some unidentified bag-and-golf-clubs-carrier on the seven o’clock flight that same evening. Some lionheart, some unsung war hero at the booking office, pointed out that people had already begun checking-in for the flight, that it was jam-packed, but that through some sleight of hand, he could just about accommodate the Minister in Executive and unfortunately nobody else. Then the parleying began and lasted for a couple of hours. The flight was delayed till the Minister, Raghupati and the caddie boarded, sighed and sat back in the seats that they’d wanted, content. Almost. Of course, on Friday, it was learnt that the lionheart in the booking office would receive his orders of suspension from service that day.
Had that been all, it wouldn’t have interested Dr Chakki in the least. What intrigued him, in fact, was that Bhanwar Virbhim always sat in the front left window seat of any plane (or car or bus or bullock-cart, it may safely be imagined). He had been advised so by Baba Mastram. It had probably something to do with staying ahead of the competition, though while up front, he’d be well-advised to watch out for his back. On that Wednesday’s flight, however, he couldn’t get the seat of his choice. Apparently, the boarding card for it had already been issued to the wife of the Domestic Aviation Minister. Physically lifting the aircraft and carrying it off the runway would have caused less of a stir than trying to convince her to change her seat. In any case, why on earth should she?—one could have asked, most reasonably—once allotted, allotted.
Bhanwar Virbhim hadn’t thought so. After beaming a greeting at Madam Minister, all through the flight, he had sulked and unseeingly flipped through the pages of some glossy. Behind that enormous chocolate-brown dome of a forehead, however, the great brain had been ticking away. Two days later, he formally petitioned the Privileges Committee of the House.
Like many other citizens, Dr Chakki was a bit foggy about the Privileges and other Committees of the House, but he surmised that their work had very little to do with the welfare of the people. Bhanwar Virbhim’s argument before it, he imagined, would be that as a Principal Minister, he was entitled to certain privileges, one of which was the seat of his choice in the Executive Class section of an aeroplane whenever he flew. When he
can’t sit exactly where he wants to during a flight, he must argue, somebody or some institution has breached his privilege and thereby insulted him—and through him, the State that he represents at all times. Not granting Bhanwar Virbhim the front left window seat on all flights that he cares to take, therefore, would be like making wearunders out of the national flag.
Over the weekend, Dr Chakki had asked around. Apparently, the privileges of the privileged hadn’t been either defined or codified. Naturally, he concluded. The vaguer the law, the larger its ambit. The more the privileges, the more refined the caste. In his ideal republic, the welfare of Bhanwar Virbhim was not a subject that the State would want to spend much time and money on.
He had been piqued even more by the Starred Question that the Minister had parried and deflected in the House. It had been asked by a witless Independent, the usual front for some disgruntled backbencher.
Has the government finally decided on the proposed surrender of Sukumaran Govardhan? Why on earth is it taking so long to fix a date? Astrological clearance? Or haven’t the national parties finished squabbling yet over which of them he will join?
Insidiously, over the past few weeks, the transfiguration, the apotheosis, of the fabled dacoit-smuggler had begun. A newspaper report in the Dainik of Madna had stated that Govardhan had donated, incognito, several lakhs of rupees to start a primary school in his mother’s name in a predominantly tribal area of the coastal region. He waits for permission to bow down in contrition before the people, trumpeted a full-page advertisement in The State Today, without specifying the he. A second news item claimed that he had sent by envoy a blank cheque for the Plague Relief Fund to the Regional Principal Minister. Philanthropist, humanitarian, champion of the poor—the phrases had started to appear—even statesman. In some of his posters, after the phrase Wanted Dead or Alive had been neatly stencilled, For Parliament.
In one of his speeches at a public function in Madna, Bhanwar Virbhim had gone even further and suggested that Govardhan was blessed in that he had at last seen the light. The occasion for the speech had been a routine three-in-one: Virbhim’s first visit to his constituency after signing up as central Minister, his dropping in as sitting Member of Parliament on the unconscious Rajani Suroor in hospital, and thereafter his benediction of A.C. Raichur’s never-ending hunger strike, to mark the forty-fifth day of which, the Minister had, from a dais rigged up under the trees in Aflatoon Maidan, held forth in his typical, slow, deep, soporific way on the similarities amongst Govardhan’s desire to be restored to life, Suroor comatose in Madna, and Raichur’s self-denial for a better world.
In the sparse audience that afternoon could have been spotted two players of Vyatha, in town on an emergency, namely, an infection of Suroor’s urinary tract. At Vyatha, they all took turns to visit Madna once a fortnight, not that they were of any help at the hospital. All that they ended up doing was squandering their tight budget on second-class rail fare. Had Suroor, to a man felt they, been shifted out of that town and taken to the capital, at least the troupe would have saved its finances.
He wasn’t—so the players learnt that afternoon from the horse’s mouth while listening to the Minister—because Madna was considered to be as good a damned spot as any in the world for miracles. Suroor must rise from where he has fallen in time to be part of the committee that would welcome and accept Govardhan’s surrender. One must always give the godforsaken—whether small-town, gross man or distinguished villain—the chance to make good. If they goof up, why, it simply means that one has underestimated their underprivilegedness.
In his reply to the Starred Question in the House, Bhanwar Virbhim had impressed even that jaded audience with his disingenuousness and his double tongue. He skirted all the facts that even the children of the alleys knew. Sukumaran Govardhan after all was to sandalwood smuggling what Kellogg’s is to breakfast cereals. For over two decades, his gang of murderers had razed hundreds of acres of sandalwood plantation, hanged by the same trees forest officers, shot dead police officials, terrorized and exploited entire villages, and God alone knows stolen how many hundreds of crores of rupees of the national wealth. His surrender would only marginally be less of an event than the nation’s achievement of independence. It—the surrender—was to be televised live for over two hours on the National Channel. His life had already inspired eight violently romantic Bombay films, in all of which he’d been depicted as a modern Robin Hood. Hood he certainly was. After over two decades of brutal criminality, he had nowhere to go but into politics. It was being bruited about that he intended to officially and legally change his name to Sukumaran Aflatoon and contest the Parliamentary elections from Baltod, where he’d already bought up his entire caste vote. He had once over two hundred criminal cases registered against him. Of course, before the law, one is innocent until proved guilty—and so he was free to fight the elections, but in the last ten years, the two hundred cases had been as effectively forgotten as the sandalwood, for their witnesses had quietly retracted their statements and been encouraged to crawl back into the woodwork.
In the discussions in the House, the Minister eulogized Govardhan’s philanthropy but omitted to mention that behind the setting up of almost all the smuggler’s charitable trusts could be seen terrifically well-planned moves to either evade tax or grab land. Always a sound investment, land. Well, felt Dr Chakki, if the record of the House was going to comprise Virbhim’s fictions, there would be no harm in adding the half-truths, the rumours, the whispers. It could include, for example, the one from last March, namely, that to escape unscathed from the urea scam, Sukumaran paid the Minister in the PM’s Secretariat two crore rupees just to have forty-five seconds alone with the Prime Minister, on the red carpet, on the tarmac, before the Great Man boarded his plane. Or the old one from his past, that he’d arranged for the deaths of his father and an uncle when he’d sensed that they were going to sell him out to the police. Or the near-certainty that he had abandoned ivory only because he found the cocaine traffic as lucrative and less cumbersome. Or Dr Chakki’s favourite Sukumaran myth, that no matter how late the hour, at the end of the day, after his bath and his prayers and before nodding off, he needed to deflower a virgin every night—perhaps again on a red carpet.
In the future, Dr Chakki fancied that he himself would be appearing quite often before the Privileges and other Committees for both his incendiary journalism and his reformist thinking. Well, he was quite ready. Once he had broken through the avarice of the self-serving classes and prodded them to see that the welfare of all was in their own interest, he could with an airy heart explain to the Bhanwar Virbhims that he wished to be judged not by those legislators for whom he had scant respect, but by the people. The Committees, nonplussed, would half-heartedly threaten him with jail. He would welcome the idea, for it had for a long time been one of his intentions to expose prison conditions in the Welfare State. To save face, as it were, they might even sentence him to four days’ imprisonment in the Apnalal Aflatoon Marg jail, but grant him A-one status in it; to wit, a Brahmin among the inmates. He would be provided a cot with a special mattress and bedsheets and be entitled to the luxuries of newspapers and food from home. He would take along with him an amulet of a tiny sandalwood Ganesh—to remind himself, with its perfume, of why he was there—and he’d write about those four days for the next four weeks.
Bhupen Raghupati did not notice that the Dambha who brought in the jug of milk and an ice bucket had changed since the afternoon. At five o’clock, he had received in the servants’ quarters-cum-milkman’s dhaba an expected, long telephone call from Madna. He’d spoken guardedly, in dialect; in any case, nobody around him could have followed the coded talk of money, accomplices, hits, dry runs, his Durga suit and weapons. After the talk, he had looked happier, more confident. With his ambition rising, he’d felt on top of the world, quite the emissary of the gods.
It took Makhmal a couple of seconds to place the vaguely familiar face. ‘Ah—it’s you.’ He’d o
f course forgotten the name. ‘Settling down here?’ Dambha blushed, pleased at being recognized. Makhmal stretched out a regal hand. Dambha touched it, then abashed, dropped to his knees and touched his feet. He hesitated for a moment, then got down on all fours and brushed Makhmal’s toes with his forehead. Makhmal grunted in appeasement, reached forward and proprietorially squeezed the youth’s anus and all of a sudden, guffawed, ‘I hope Jayati Aflatoon responds the same way with my father!’
Red-eyed and abruptly pensive, he gazed searchingly at Dambha’s face, at the adult, knowing mien that had emerged from behind the artlessness.
Efficiency Bar
The following October. Early in his career, while examining the junk in the official pen tray on one of the desks, Agastya had come across an ear-cleaning pen. Steely-grey in colour, it was made of some aluminium-like metal. Its nib, about an inch long and made from the same material as the body of the pen, was like the end of a ball-point refill, only more rounded, considerate, more moulded to the intricate inner spaces of the ear. When he’d realized what it was for, Agastya had been touched by the wisdom and the courtesy of the Welfare State. Instinctively, in each new office, he’d looked for it first thing on his desk and had never been disappointed. Tickling one’s earwax with it was a wonderful way to unwind when the tensions of office became insupportable.
It was in his left ear and he in the midst of his pre-lunch office crash (that is to say, with eyes wide open, body behind his desk swaying in sleep, mind at home, files open before him, hand jotting and signing away) when the door opened to admit a man who looked as though he expected Agastya to spring out of his chair to receive him. He was tall, fiftyish, slim, with gold-rimmed spectacles, a trim jet-black wig, well- fitting dentures and bottle-green safari suit and no moustache. While Agastya struggled to wake up, he, not a man to waste words, strode up to the desk and introduced himself. ‘Mr Sen? Good afternoon, I’m Dr Harihara Kapila, the Regional Finance Secretary. You’ll recall that we were in Labour together three years ago. I’m in the city for a dozen meetings with the Centre, but I thought that perhaps we could lunch together, that is, if you’re free?’
The Mammaries of the Welfare State Page 28