The Mammaries of the Welfare State (13 page)

‘Careful with your rod, prince,’ warned a cohort. ‘It’s more potent than acid in their faces.’

Makhmal giggled. He loved filthy talk. He preferred it to sex. For him, in fact, filthy talk
was
sex. Ever since that genius Rani Chandra had thought up and launched her
Listen to Love
series of CDs and cassettes, and Bhupen Raghupati had gifted him a box set of them on his joining his father’s political party, he, Makhmal, had lost interest in ogling, abducting and molesting the women on the streets of Madna. Instead, with a Walkman in his lap and headphones in place, he, calm of mind, all passion spent, had begun to beatifically wave, through the windows of the Tata Safari, at all the women that his motorcade had ploughed past. When the
windows had been down, startled, puzzled, some of them had even waved back.

Makhmal was short, pale and soft. He had long, elaborately fluffed-up hair, hooded eyes and a thick moustache that half-hid pink lips and a gap-toothed mouth. At the age of thirteen, he’d failed his Fifth Standard school exams for the third time in a row and in passing, knifed his Social Studies teacher in the Teachers Only toilet. The Teachers Only had been the only toilet in the school with an intact mirror and young Makhmal had been in front of it, combing, inspecting and recombing his hair. For him, these moments of self-examination had always demanded extra concentration. Unfortunately—particularly for the teacher—Social Studies had peremptorily interrupted him—with a thwack on the back of his head—at the very moment when he’d been trying to get a lock to swing down over his forehead and flip back across his ear.

His conduct in general was one of the reasons why his father found it crucial to have as Madna’s Police Superintendent an officer that he could trust. Over the years—first, when Bhanwar Virbhim had been an intelligent, ambitious, determined, ageing, frightful hoodlum, and later, when he’d risen, in stages, to become a Member of the Legislative Assembly, then Member of Parliament, Regional Minister, Guardian Minister, Principal Minister, Chief Minister and finally Central Deputy Minister—over the years, the outrageousness of Makhmal’s offences against society and the law had kept pace with his father’s increasing clout. It was almost as though the insecure son needed to continually test the range of the influence of the father.

It is one of the functions of the munificence, the kindness, of the Welfare State to allow within it the worst rogues to become utterly respectable. It is the macro view, the Hindu view. All is Maya, Salvation lies in Forgiveness,
Da, Dayadhvam, Damyata.
Thus a murderer like Bhanwar Virbhim
could rise to be Central Cabinet Minister. Thus another killer, a depraved near-rapist like Makhmal could notify his candidature for a seat in the Regional Assembly from the constituency of Madna. Upon his announcement, the
Dainik
had asked him whether his criminal record would embarrass him in his political career.

‘Not at all. Why? Look at our Parliament. One hundred and seventy-four Honourable Members have criminal records. I think that you want the State to discriminate against criminals exactly the way in which it discriminates against the lower castes. What is your caste by the way, may I know? We are innocent until proved guilty. Our Freedom Fighters went to jail, so you can say that they too have criminal records. Learn to give the downtrodden a chance to rise, to make good. Only then can the nation become great. May I have your card, please . . .?’

Near-rapist because Makhmal ejaculated too early. To prevent him from becoming depressed and therefore even more violent, wise Baba Mastram had pointed out to him that he was fortunate in that he could release his energy on all the women that he saw without being caught out by any subsequent silly medical examination of the victim. The idea elated him and kept him going for years on end. Not a thinking man. His modus operundee (a terrible, tasteless bilingual pun there, Bhupen Raghupati’s, of course—
rundee
being Hindustani for whore) was to cruise the poorer quarters of Madna for flesh, snatch ‘n grab off the streets, maul the mammaries of in the air-conditioned Tata Safari for half a minute or so (till he Miltoned, as it were), thrust between them a fifty- or a hundred-rupee note and shove out the possessor of a few kilometres down the road, shocked, in tears, but richer. Modus Operundee had stopped with Rani Chandra. Raghupati had suggested to Bhanwar Saab that the Ministry of Culture recommend Rani Chandra for the Revered Silver Lotus, the ninth-highest honour of the land, for her
Commitment to the Improvement of the Quality of Life. Bhanwar Virbhim hadn’t responded. He never did. Silence was wisdom and energy conservation and took you places.

Uncertain about whom to shoot—Rajani Suroor or the female attendant in green and gold, and tense because uncertain, diffident about whether to fire at all, unsure whether everybody in the lobby was openly or secretly laughing at him, whether he’d impressed even one soul, and growing more peeved by the second, Makhmal Bagai lifted and aimed his .22 right between the faces of his two potential targets at a wall clock on a pillar some twenty feet away. He liked that Suroor had stopped smiling but nevertheless felt that that wasn’t enough.

‘Chocolate walnut chip, sir?’

‘Stop flashing your rod, Prince. I think the Collector’s on his way down.’

So was Makhmal’s gun arm when in witless relief, Suroor’s smirk reappeared. So Makhmal pulled the trigger. ‘You rat,’ he grunted beneath the bang; an epitaph of sorts for a strolling player in a small town unofficially beset by the plague.

Rodents and firearms feature as well in Miss Lina Natesan’s memorandum, for they are equally prominent elements of the official life in Aflatoon Bhavan. We kick off at
Housing Problem
of her novella.

Last Wednesday, when I entered my office chamber at 8.59 a.m., I smelt a rat.

In our chamber at that time, there were two. I do not believe that Shri Dastidar and I have any quarrel with each other. On the very first day of our professional relationship, I dispatched to him a note stating my
terms of reference: All communications with the undersigned, I represented to him, must of necessity be formal, official and recorded; there was neither scope nor need for informal exchanges in our chamber. I must add here that he understood my position immediately and admirably. We exchange memos infrequently but they are invariably terse and to the point. For example:

To

Junior Administrator (Under Training)

From

Under Secretary (Gajapati Aflatoon Centenary Celebrations, Our Endangered Tribal Heritage and Demotic and Indigenous Drama)

Good Afternoon. While you were out for five minutes or so before lunch, I received on my extension number an obscene phone call for you. The caller was keen to have your extension number, so I gave him Nilesh’s. He snorted on hearing it—perhaps it was Nilesh himself. Otherwise, all is well, by the grace of Allah.

However, I should point out here that our exchanges are easier for him because he has personal staff. He just has to buzz for his peon and order him to summon his stenographer, to whom he dictates his memo. He was gracious enough in one of his very early notes to offer me the services of his personal staff, but naturally I had to refuse. The offices of the Welfare State do not run on charity. I have consistently maintained that there are limits to welfare.

In fairness to Shri Dastidar, he did formally seek my permission (in a beautifully-phrased note) before he started his tai-chi exercises in our room. I suspect that it was his tai-chi that spurred him to evict with such zeal the furniture of all our ex-colleagues from our
chamber. Since Stores did not help us in the least, Shri Dastidar and his peon, a crafty, middle-aged shirker called Dharam Chand, dumped those cupboards and racks in the adjacent Gents’ Toilet.

The notes that we exchanged last Wednesday were, in brief, as follows:

I smell a rat. Any ideas?

I smell a rat all the time. It is the odour of corruption.

Which particular file do you have in mind?

I should add here
—
parenthetically, as it were
—
that because Shri Dastidar firmly believes that every file and paper in the Welfare State stinks, he has levered out of Stores six rubber stamps to push all his official papers, memos, notes, minutes, reports, statements, documents and files around with. They are:

1) Please examine.

2) Please re-examine.

3) Please put up.

4) Please link up with previous papers.

5) Please process

6) Please forward with compliments to
—

However, to continue with the events of last Wednesday. I set about whisking and rearranging the dust on my table. Pretty soon, I unearthed a dead rat the size of a small cat in the second drawer.

‘A plague upon thee, Madam Junior Administrator!’
ran Shri Dastidar’s note.

For this crime and for several others, I suspect Shri Dastidar’s peon, Shri Dharam Chand. The fellow has no manners and does not like women. I have requested Shri Dastidar a million times (in writing, of course) to instruct him to knock on the door before he enters but to no avail. Each time, he buffets the door open; it
slams against the side wall and brings down some plaster while he dramatically pauses in the doorway to leer at me before sliding in like a fat snake. I surmise that Shri Dharam Chand disapproves of me because he stood to gain in the only file that I have received in my tenure here, the proposal of which I rejected because of its patent absurdity.

The Department had mooted that seven of its peons be paid an Overtime Allowance of twenty-four rupees a day for the months of August, September and October. For what? I had asked and sent the file back.

The file returned the same afternoon (Overtime files move like lightning) with some bilge-like explanation. Shri Dharam Chand, who was the file carrier, clarified to me that after office closed at 5.30 p.m., he always drifted over to the Minister’s office to help with the work there.

I cross-examined him for close to an hour and learnt that he
—
along with the like-minded hopefuls that would’ve benefitted from the Overtime proposal had it slipped past Ms Argus the Undersigned
—
had been trying for the last six months for a transfer to the Minister’s office. And how had they been trying? When the Minister, along with his Private Secretary, Officer on Special Duty, Personal Assistant, four Black Guard Commando Bodyguards, one daftary, one naik and three peons would debouch from his chambers to waddle the hundred feet to the lift, Shri Dharam Chand & Co., bowing and scraping to the Minister’s heraldic peons in the first row of the cortege, would shoo stragglers out of its path even as the heralds were shooing
them
out of theirs. Then, with heads bowed and buttocks projected at the right sycophantic angles, they
—
the Overtimers
—
would wait, grimacing with tension at the mere glimpse of power, beside the lifts until their doors shut. Then they would all careen down the stairs from the fourth to the ground floor to
gape at the Minister and some of the riff-raff jam themselves into three white Ambassador cars. Car doors slamming shut one after the other like gunfire, sirens wailing, red lights flashing on car roofs, horns honking at the heavens to command them not to dare let their attention stray, hooray, they’re off and away! Then, by degrees, a profound, welcome peace would descend on Aflatoon Bhavan. Shri Dharam Chand would blink, wake up and tot up his Overtime for that day.

I had asked Shri Dharam Chand on that occasion whether he had any idea how much the Minister’s trips from his chambers to his cars alone cost the Welfare State every day and whether he, Shri Dharam Chand, felt no qualms at all about adding to that daily expenditure of over four hundred thousand rupees.

While on the subject, I should like to draw the attention of your good self to my representation at Annexure O wherein, inter alia, I have objected to the grave lapses in conduct of the Black Guard Commando bodyguards of our Minister. On more than one occasion, when I have either been striding to or coming away from the Ladies’ Toilet on the fourth floor, which is two doors away from the Minister’s rooms, I have had them brusquely waving their automatic weapons at me. I presume that that is not their customary way of saying Good Morning. On each occasion, I have ticked them off for conduct unbecoming with, and before, a Junior Administrator of the Welfare State, but they don’t seem to understand any language. Instead, they vigorously prodded me aside with their guns. Undeterred, with my back against the wall, I continued to complain as the ministerial retinue approached me and then
—
wonder of wonders!
—
passed me by! However, I persisted in loudly pointing out to that group of processionally receding buttocks that if it
permits a lady officer to be manhandled in the corridors of power in broad daylight, if it doesn’t attend to the legitimate complaint of a Junior Administrator of the Welfare State, then
—
well
—
she is left with no recourse but to formally petition the higher authorities. My representation to the Prime Minister on the subject of the conduct of our Black Guard Commando bodyguards is at Annexure P.

Shri Dastidar frequently breakfasts in our room (He always invites me to join him but I usually decline). It is for this reason that large empty cartons of Kellogg’s Breakfast Cereal (Wheatflakes. Whole Grain, Whole Nutrition) are freely available around his desk. Into one of these was stuffed the dead rat from the drawer. Shri Dharam Chand packed it quite professionally and we dispatched it to where it belonged, the office of the Municipal Commissioner, Madna. We feel that, for the time being, it can substitute for me.

We have sound precedents for our decision. The kind attention of your good self is drawn to a news item on the plague that appeared in
The State of the Times
on December 3, a photocopy of which is placed at Annexure Q. The rats of Madna have not yet been tested because many of them, the newspaper reports, drowned in the recent floods. Many others have been, well, resettled along with the 1400 tonnes of garbage that is being lifted every day from the various quarters of the town. More to the point, since the hospitals, dispensaries and clinics in the district do not boast of all the medical facilities required to test for the plague and other similar epidemics, several other dead rats have been sent by post to Navi Chipra and New Killi for analysis. This interesting fact came to light at more than one post office in the country when, while sorting out mail, postmen began to complain of a breathtaking pong emanating from some of the packets. Several of
the aggrieved postmen have gone on a lightning strike and till date, have refused to return to work until, to quote from their distributed memorandum,
‘
the State makes adequate provision for their welfare and safety from the plague.’

On the subject of their strike, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases has been approached by more than one newspaper to confirm whether the decision to remit by post dead rats all over the country has its approval. The Institute, however, has been silent on this and other issues for more than one week, perhaps because all its telephone lines are dead.

I would like to submit at this juncture that the dead telephone is emblematic of the quality and extent of communication between different Departments of the Welfare State. In this regard, the attention of your good self is drawn to the news item on
Housing Problem
of yesterday’s edition of
The State of the Times
entitled:
Plague Patient on the Loose.
I quote:

A ‘definite’ patient of pneumonic plague, according to the doctors of KLPD Hospital, is loose in the capital. He would have been in quarantine had the telephones of the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Swannsway Camp not been out of order.

A spokesman of KLPD stated last evening that a middle- aged man reported at the hospital on Saturday with all the ‘classic symptoms’ of the disease. He was diagnosed as having the plague by the doctors on duty but unfortunately, ran away while arrangements were being made to transfer him to Swannsway Camp.

Very little is known about the patient. His name is Chana Jor Garam Rai; he is a labourer from Bihar; he is now footloose in the city. He arrived from Madna on the Shatabdi Express on Saturday with a couple of friends. The train pulled in at about 7.30 p.m., that is, five hours late, so what’s new. Shri Chana Jor Garam had been feverish for the past two days and was delirious for the
entire train journey. A male Belgian tourist in the same compartment was galvanized into near-hysteria at the sight of the patient’s delirium. Suspecting the worst, he immediately dusted himself and Shri Chana Jor with Gamaxene powder. He meant well.

Shri Chana Jor collapsed on the platform. His group had intended to carry on to their village in the Champaran district of Bihar and was infuriated because its plans had to be changed. The patient was taken to KLPD in a three- wheeler. The doctors there point out that all the hospitals in the capital have received instructions from the Ministry of Public Health not to take in any plague patient but instead to immediately dispatch them to the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Swannsway Camp. Therefore, they tried to contact the IDH to direct it to send its special vehicle meant for transporting plague patients. When they couldn’t get through, the Medical Superintendent of KLPD, Dr L. Majnoo, decided to transfer Shri Chana Jor Garam to Swannsway Camp in one of their own hospital ambulances. However, while the vehicle was being lined up (repair the puncture, where’s the damn driver?, try the self, push start the Neanderthal, go fill up some diesel), the patient and his friends slunk off in the three-wheeler that had all the while been waiting outside.

After his escape, KLPD Hospital officially decided to minimize its significance. Even though plainclothes men are on a twenty-four-hour lookout for Shri Chana Jor Garam at all the railway stations, no official red alert has yet been declared. ‘But that is just a matter of time asserted one of the younger doctors of KLPD on the condition of anonymity, ‘it cannot be otherwise; the patient had all the “classic symptoms” of the plague and had just arrived from Madna. What more proof does one need? I will burn my degrees in public if he doesn’t have the disease.’

That will indeed be a small price to pay for the relief. That apart, it is needless to add here that the mood of the Emergencies Department at KLPD is feverish. With reason,
since Shri Chana Jor Garam was there for some time and might well have infected anything that he touched or exhaled upon. A sobering thought. Because of an acute, yet routine, shortage of the drug, the hospital staff has been dosed with tetracycline but not the patients.

In short, even though it is clear that the matter is being hushed up to avoid ‘unnecessary panic,’ get ready.