Bribery, Corruption Also

by H. R. F. Keating

  So now he turned to Protima and explained what it was he had deduced from the words he had glimpsed.

  ‘If anywhere,' he added, 'Writers' Building must be the place where we can quickly discover what right of passage may exist through the compound of a Calcutta house. Plenty of legal wallas there, and public servants also.'

  ‘Yes, finding some person to look over the house can wait,' she said. ‘Writers' Building is not far. It is in BBD Bagh. What was once known by the name of Dalhousie Square. But we re-named it BBD. For Benoy, Badal and Dinesh, three heroes of the Independence struggle shot by the British. Calcutta has always known how to honour her martyrs.'

  Ghote let this new history lesson go in one ear out the other. Another time, perhaps. Now it was With right of passage unimpeded.

  In less than ten minutes, despite the exuberant honking and hooting traffic, they drew up in front of the great long brick-red building, with its row upon row of yellow-stone arched windows, surmounted by four tall statues, barely distinguishable in the hovering dust cloud of the city.

  But his Calcutta historian was still beside him.

  'Yes,' Protima said, gazing upwards, 'my father was telling me about those statues when I was eight-nine years old only. Wait. I can recite to you the names. Yes. Science, Agriculture, Commerce and.. . Yes, Justice. They are what Calcutta is about. Truly.'

  Well, Justice, he thought. Will that prove to be so? Will I even take the first step to Justice inside here?

  He led Protima to the nearest entrance. There was a sliding metal grille to negotiate manned by an armed guard.

  ‘Quite right,' Protima said. 'Chief Minister Jyoti Basu may be inside, the one man in India above all forms of corruption.'

  Together with the clerk Haripada, Ghote allowed himself to think. And how many others? How few others?

  Inside, they stood in line until they reached a table where a clerk laboriously entered the purpose of their visit - Requesting legal information on right of passage -in a heavy, crammed ledger. This entitled them to a chit to take to a long row of white-uniformed security men sitting half-hidden behind a counter surmounted by an elegantly curved wrought-iron screen.

  With a sigh for India's never-ending bureaucracy, Ghote pushed the chit through a small square hole in the short protective wooden strip at the bottom of the screen. The youngish round-shouldered security officer, earnest in black-framed spectacles, took no notice. He seemed to be writing furiously on a large pad. A memo to higher authority? Someone about to be arrested? For two minutes or more Ghote waited patiently - Protima beside him showing signs of not being so patient - while his chit lay unlooked-at and the rapidly writing young man scribbled on.

  But at last, peering through the wrought iron, it struck Ghote that the lines of florid Bengali script he could see, some shorter, some longer, could only be one thing. Poetry.

  Bureaucracy, he thought, I expected. But poetry from a security officer? Well, the fellow is a Bengali.

  He gave the elegant ironwork a sharp, ringing tap.

  Abandoning his poetry, the security man proved immediately helpful. Too helpful. As soon as he had grasped from the chit the nature of their inquiry he launched into a whole hymn of speculation about what right of passage might mean.

  'Yes, yes, an excellent phrase. A right of passage. You could set it beside the expression, rite of passage. Kindly notice the difference in spelling, R-I-T-E and R-I-G-H-T. The two are in contrast. I am thinking also that contrast might very well be the subject of a poem. You may know, sir and madam, that I am by vocation a poet. This is not at all my work.'

  He gestured largely round the high but dingy entrance hall.

  'No, no. It is necessary to earn. Sadly, sadly. Man cannot live by poems alone. Though he ought to be able so to do. He ought. When the political party of which I am honorary secretary - small as yet, some ten-fifteen members - when we are coming to power in West Bengal our first action will be to establish life grants for each and every one of Calcutta's poets.'

  He looked up at them.

  'Sir and madam, we are not only a political party. We are also highly active as a poetry society. Each Sunday on the Maidan we are holding a Mukta Mela. All are welcome to read out their poems. After we have read out ours. Sir and madam, will I see you there?'

  'Right of passage,' Ghote, finally exasperated, banged in. 'Where can I find some person to tell me precisely what that is meaning?'

  'Ah, my dear sir, precision, exactitude. That is to be avoided. It is with inexactitude, with the finer shades, that the truth maybe— '

  'Where?'

  ‘Office Superintendent, Land Ownership Section, as it is stating here.'

  A thump with a rubber-stamp on the chit.

  ‘A peon will take you.'

  They followed then the khaki-uniformed peon along corridor after corridor, the walls streaked with the red spittle from numerous chewed and ejected paans. On then up dark, narrow staircases, through huge rooms, brown with the age-long accumulation of cigarettes smoked in the course of long discussions -going on still in each room they passed through - their long tables laden with pile upon pile of papers, as brown, many of them, as the rooms themselves, some tied in bundles, more sprawling helplessly in danger of tumbling unheeded to the floor. The clerks, only a handful of whom seemed to be at work, were mostly chatting animatedly to the occupant of the woodenarmed chair next to theirs, across the table to someone else. Occasionally, very occasionally, a few papers were turned over incuriously or one of the ancient typewriters was tapped at. Even sometimes someone wrote an added note to some document or other. Others unashamedly slept, heads on folded arms or lolling comfortably back, mouths wide. Through the tall windows slanted stray bars of sunlight, thick with dust motes stirred up by the long-bladed fans above.

  Perhaps, Ghote reflected as they went through yet another such room, perhaps in one of those piles of bundled papers may be the answer to my question. Some definitive statement of the meaning of right of passage.

  Well, that is what I seem to have here, he added with grim humour. The right of passage through one warren of bureaucracy. That, but no more. Never the right to an answer.

  But at last they were, in fact, ushered by the peon into the tiny cabin of the Office Superintendent, Land Ownership Section.

  Its occupant was sitting at a desk piled almost as high with papers as the long tables in the rooms they had passed through. A fat, round-faced man with a cigarette, almost extinguished, dangling from his full lower lip. The big knot of his dhoti, visible above the desk, perched slightly soiled on a spreading abdomen. A plaque on the desk named him as P V. Bagchi.

  As they settled on two of the three chairs lined up in front of the desk, he vented a barely concealed belch. A waft of the spices that had accompanied whatever last meal he had had assailed them.

  ‘How may I help you?' he said.

  Ghote told him. He was afraid he might have been too brief. But all the mounded and entangled bureaucracy he had passed through had filled him with sharp impatience.

  ‘Yes, I suppose,' P. V. Bagchi conceded, ‘I could provide an answer. A great deal of looking into files and references may, of course, be necessary. But one is here to serve the public. That is the sole reason for my existence, you should understand. To serve the citizens of Calcutta. However, that is inevitably requiring a great deal of work. A great deal, especially in a matter of this sort. Yes, work.'

  He showed no sign, though, of doing anything to begin that work. Instead he thumped the bell at his side and when a peon poked his head in at the door shouted for 'Half-set tea and one double plate singaras.'

  Then while they waited for that to arrive he sat without speaking, only from time to time puffing out a breath that was half a sigh, half a belch. Even when the peon returned, had been told he would be paid later and had left, sullen, all P. V. Bagchi did was to sip tea noisily and masticate one by one his savoury stuffed singaras. From time to time he mumblingly repeated how much work ans
wering their inquiry would mean, or protested again that he was there only to serve them.

  At last Protima undid her purse and brought out her money-clip.

  Yes, Ghote thought, I suppose she is right. Bribe is required. This idle fellow is no clerk Haripada.

  From the clip one by one Protima began to snap out twenty-rupee notes. An officer of P. V. Bagchi's standing- cosily entrenched in his own room - would require a good deal more than a typist like the clerk Haripada.

  P. V. Bagchi watched for a while. Ghote presumed he was counting. But in a little he was disillusioned. It seemed it had been merely a question of gathering up some necessary energy.

  'Madam, if, as I think, you are producing that ever-increasing sum of money with a view to speeding my necessary inquiries and investigations, then let me inform you that there are officers of the administration here who are above sordid corruption. Yes, they may not be many. But they exist, and I humbly put myself in their ranks. Others' ability in office may be judged by the amount of the bribes they are known to take. I prefer to be considered lacking in efficiency.'

  And, yes, Ghote thought with a jab of bitterness, no doubt you are lacking in efficiency. So far you have made not one move to consult any of the books or files on that shelf behind you. All right, I am knowing bribery is not good but, by God, I would prefer a man with a mattress stuffed with what Protima called in Bengali the other day dui-nambari money than this bloody pompous honest man.

  ‘Mr Bagchi,' he broke out, ‘are you even able to tell us what it is we are wanting to know? Are you able to say what exactly is meant by right of passage? If you are not we would go. Now.'

  P. V. Bagchi swallowed the last mouthful of singara in one hasty gulp, choked, reached for his tea, found the cup was empty and finally managed, with an explosive belch, to straighten out his digestive system.

  ‘My dear sir,' he said, singara spice issuing from his mouth in clouds, ‘kindly give a public servant his due. Of course I am able to say.'

  ‘What? Now? Without consulting any of legal tomes etcetera?'

  ‘Of course, my dear sir. Do you think I have achieved the position of Office Superintendent, Land Ownership Section, without knowing what restrictions and prohibitions apply? Do you think I was bribing my way to my seat?'

  ‘Not at all, not at all.' Ghote said hastily, fearing that the answer he wanted was about to get lost in a sea of self-justification.

  ‘Very well then.'

  P. V. Bagchi seemed disposed to accept the apology.

  But not disposed to say more.

  Protima joined battle now.

  'Please, Mr Bagchi,' she said, bestowing on the pudding man her sweetest smile. 'Please, tell myself, someone who has never had your experience, just what is this right.'

  'Madam, simple. Where right of passage is held to exist, and this is almost always with long-established properties in the city, it must imply that, although the title to any piece of land may not allow its owner or proprietor to devote a portion of same to a right of way, nevertheless when such passage may be in the public interest in certain circumstances this right may be alienated.'

  Ghote had been following closely as a wheeling kite follows a sandwich in the hand of a careless open-air eater.

  'What circumstances?' he asked.

  'Oh, my dear sir, you are entering now upon a field of great complexity, and— '

  'No. Let me ask one question. If one was in possession of a house with a large compound, say somewhere in South Calcutta, and there was possibly some reason why, say, a road might go through that compound, could right of passage then be granted?'

  'But, my good sir, one would need to know full circumstances. Right of passage in this particular context is an almost obsolete concept. In many cases the right has existed so long in some particular area that it may be held to have fallen into total disuse. Very serious complications are most likely to exist. Legal proceedings would have to be undertaken. One cannot say. One cannot say.'

  ‘But,' Ghote persisted, ‘this right might be able to be granted in some properties in, say, South Calcutta now?' .

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, of course it might. However, observe, my friend, that, although I have attained a certain position in the administrative hierarchy here, I am not a barrister. I would not lay claim to such dignity. I am, I hope, a humble man. I cannot give an authoritative opinion.'

  ‘But you can say what is likely?'

  ‘Oh yes, my dear sir. How else would I have risen to sit in this seat if I were not able to do such?'

  P. V. Bagchi began to puff himself up, frog-like.

  ‘And it is likely future right of passage would exist still in the compound of some South Calcutta house, yes?'

  ‘Oh, yes. But— '

  But Ghote did not wait to watch the spectacle of the frog puffing still more, or collapsing. He took Protima by the arm, almost brutally, brought her to her feet and with a curt goodbye left.

  ‘What are you doing?' she snapped as soon as P. V. Bagchi's door had closed behind them.

  ‘Doing? I am taking you to somewhere where I can explain without us being overheard why Mr Dutt-Dastar is trying to make you sell your house.'

  ‘But— But why? Why? What is this?'

  He looked all round. In the dim high corridor with its red paan-spattered walls there was for the moment no one in sight.

  ‘Why,' he said in an urgent whisper. ‘I will tell you why in just only one word.'

  'What— What is it? What is this?'

  Then he spoke his one word.

  'Wetlands.'

  Chapter Seven

  Passage from where to where, Ghote had asked himself when P. V. Bagchi's blatherings had begun to make sense to him. Yes, taking into account those just-seen words with right of passage unimpeded, it was clear that Protima's house must lie across some route to somewhere. A route that somebody very much wanted to be able to use. And one perhaps subject to some right or other. It must start at the house, he had told himself. At its very gates, once, as Protima remembers them, guarded by two darwans night and day, now rusted and unable even to be closed. But where would it end, this passage? Why should anybody want passage through the gates of the house to . . . where?

  Answer: to the wetlands.

  ‘What you were saying?' Protima whispered hoarsely in the dimness of the long corridor. ‘Wetlands? What wetlands?'

  ‘Wetlands, I am saying. Just only wetlands. You were telling before, remembering from your childhood days visiting your house and going up on to the roof. You were saying you could look far, far out into the countryside. It was all green. So there must be some wetlands beyond the house.'

  ‘What if?'

  ‘We were hearing also from that taxi driver when we were going to the house about what he was calling U-traffic lakes, and— '

  'What are you talking?' Protima's voice rose, reverberating in the high corridor. 'U-traffic. You full-scale idiot. It is eutrophic. It is eutrophic lakes that are supplying the good freshwater fish all Calcuttans so much love.'

  He swallowed a small quota of resentment. Why did she never give him credit for knowing more English? Did she think only Bengalis were first-class English-speakers?

  'The Sikh in that taxi was telling why there were protesters there at the Maidan,' he ground out. 'Because they are objecting to some plan to fill in more of those eutrophic lakes. And if that plan is carried out, there would be a need for a good road to those wetlands, first for taking whatsoever is needed to fill the lakes, then for access to each and every house they will build there. Yes?'

  'Yes. If you must be talking this.'

  'I must. I am thinking that road will start at your house itself.'

  And now Protima did pay him her full attention.

  'Start at the house? You are saying they want to drive a road through the compound? My compound? So that is why they are wanting my house. But they cannot have it. It is my house. I will not allow it.'

  'Well, I am supposing they would b
e doing utmost to obtain. If you are not willing to sell, they may invoke this right of passage. And use whatever of corrupt methods they may find to enforce same.'

  'Then what can be done? Something must be done.' He saw her tense with concentration.

  ‘Yes,' she burst out after a moment. ‘Having the house inspected must wait. Now it is a question of finding out just exactly how they could take it from me. Tell me what must be done.'

  More Bengali demandingness. For an instant he wondered if he really could endure staying in a city filled with such people. A down-plunge of misery overwhelmed him.

  ‘Perhaps,' he said, ‘we could insist to examine the document Mr Dutt-Dastar was taking so much of care not to let us see. That would be one first step.'

  ‘Yes,' Protima answered at once. 'Yes, that is what must be done. That is what you must do.'

  'But why not you also? It is your house.'

  'No, no, no. That is man's work. Definitely. You are an inspector of police. Bombay Crime Branch. For you it would not be too difficult.'

  So at ten o'clock next morning Ghote found himself at A. K. Dutt-Dastar's chamber once more. He felt a little aggrieved. Protima had announced as they breakfasted- the only Indians there to tackle the British fare - that she was going to shop for saris.

  'Saris? But— But you also could be coming to see Mr Dutt-Dastar.'

  'No. Calcutta saris are the loveliest in India and I have not got a single one.'

  Of course, he had thought. The loveliest, the best. Bloody Calcutta.

  And myself left facing her not too difficult task of insisting to see that document.

  But at least, he found, he was not now confronting the sort of obstruction put in his way on their first visit. The clerk Haripada was no longer, it seemed, under orders to refuse permission even to meet with his employer, despite the sharp exchanges of their last meeting. The upright, crop-haired, ballpoints-laden, inky-fingered old man abandoned his typing the moment he was asked if his master was free.