The Mammaries of the Welfare State (34 page)

Not when he described, just as an example, the routine crisis that all of last week had convulsed the office, truly a place of no illusions. A fine morning, the sun had promised to be clean and warm, it had looked as though the West Indies would lose the cricket, so one-half simply hadn’t turned up at office and another quarter had melted away after attendance. Dr Bhatnagar had been tied up—literally, Agastya liked to imagine—in the Home Ministry. Kalra and Agastya therefore had settled down on the sofa before the
telly in Dr Bhatnagar’s office room. Agastya had been feeling particularly good all morning because the office car had picked him up from home on time—well, almost, give or take an hour.

Those were his principal moments of office-related tension during the day. Would the bugger show up or not, or would he have to phone Footstench only to learn that none of the cars were free because Sherni Auntie and Bitiya had commandeered one each? Three times a week on the average, when the car failed to turn up, he, cursing the life that he led, would drive to office in his uncle’s falling-to-pieces Ambassador. Apart from the moments when the traffic frightened him to death, the twenty minutes that he spent behind the wheel tended to be self-harrowing. Just why are you, in your fucking middle-age, wasting your life away, driving a kerosene tin that’s going to break down on you right now, in the next five minutes, even though you spend five thousand rupees every month on it and a further five thousand on petrol? And just where’s all that money coming from? Why aren’t you outside this car, begging on the streets, on crutches at a traffic light, importuning the windows of cars that contain suckers like you? However, when you think of where you’re heading to, of the smog-like, grey blankness of the day to come, can you will yourself to change gears, steer this wheel, pump these brakes? Quite often, in a routine traffic jam, he’d got out of the car, lifted the bonnet, feigned a breakdown and pretended to fiddle with what he thought were called spark plugs simply because sitting behind the wheel had become unbearable, because he needed to have something to do, even if it was only to add to the chaos by accidentally, in passing, touching and disturbing a wire or tube that would actually lead to the car not starting up when the snarl at last showed signs of letting up; it seemed as good a way of passing the day as hanging around in office. So low had his self-esteem been on such occasions that he’d distinctly
heard disembodied voices snickering to one another:
Aha
—
the arsehole’s on his way to office
and
The monkey’s prick is down and out and blue.
The voices had made him feel like Joan of Arc till he’d realized that they’d snickered in Hinglish, the language of tomorrow.

In office, they hadn’t expected Dr Bhatnagar to show up at all. Not only because of the West Indies, but also because of the successful official dinner that he’d hosted three evenings before, to which he’d invited, inter-alia, to be frank, the key Additional Secretary in External Affairs who dealt with UN postings, along with some of the chaps in Commerce. At the dinner, he’d drunk one Scotch rather quickly under the cold fish-eyes of Sherni Auntie, got high more on nervousness than alcohol and wolfed down the food with both hands because it’d been both sumptuous and free. All evening, Sherni Auntie had as usual supervised with eagle eye the loading of the tiffin-carriers that had been dispatched home at regular intervals of half-an-hour to satisfy the nutritional needs of her expanding children. The office mini-van, dubbed the Gravy Train by Agastya and the Dining Car by the cooks, had been specifically assigned to the kitchen for ferrying the food. Overseeing the stewards during the filling up of the tiffin carriers was essential, so Sherni Auntie had learnt through bitter experience. For on the occasions that she hadn’t been around, the poor things at home had received what she indignantly called stepmotherly treatment—to wit, two compartments of curry but no pieces of mutton, dal but no fried fish, boiled rice but no chicken biryani, potato chops but no paneer tikka, potato fingers but no devilled eggs, chapatis but no methi parathas, a couple of tins of condensed milk but no carrot halwa. ‘It’s the greed and vulgarity of these lower fellows,’ Dr Bhatnagar had clarified, sucking gravy off the fingers of his left hand. ‘You see, they’re simply not used to good food and all that.’

At these dinners, the duties of Agastya, Kalra and
Footstench were to wear ill-fitting suits and hang around. Periodically, they’d fade into one of the anterooms of the Liaison Suite and sort of bathe in Glenfiddich and Royal Salute. After each Patiala peg, they’d munch mouthfuls of cardamom and walk out slowly and carefully to check on things, particularly Sherni Auntie, short, white, snub-nosed, not especially fat elsewhere but with the fattest, jelly-like arse that the Liaison Suite had ever seen, complete with a subcutaneous life of its own. Time and again, Agastya watched the faces of the guests when it traversed them; there was not one head that did not swivel to observe its gelatinous passage. It petrified the entire office, her husband most of all. In front of it, he behaved as nervously as, to use Kalra’s carefully-chosen simile, a child before its stepmother. ‘He’s an orphan, didn’t you know?’ The omniscient PA had revealed. ‘Which goes to show, doesn’t it, that even orphans can be bastards.’

The Liaison Suite of course was the set of rooms on the second floor of the office building where the Commissioner threw his official parties when they, the rooms, were not occupied by some V∞IP from the regional government. Kalra had explained that during the Golden Age, the Liaison Suite had been built and christened by the-then Commissioner Bhupen Raghupati. A rare combination of vision and drive, he’d needed a place where he could fuck in peace the whores that were procured for him. Since he paid for them out of the office contingency fund, it was only fitting that the State pay for the place too.

At these official dinners, alcohol greatly increased Agastya’s appreciation of Dr Bhatnagar’s qualities, prominent amongst which was his skill at name-and-designation-dropping.’It is with pride, sir,’ Agastya had declared after a few weeks under his tutelage, ‘that I wish to report that I’m learning to pick up your droppings.’ Thus, through the evening, whenever he felt Dr Bhatnagar’s pink eyes on him, he bent his head and stuck his bum out at the correct sycophantic angle and began
to nod his agreement with whatever bilge Doctor Saab was trilling out at that moment.

‘Yes, it was Geneva—Captain Chandra was rather keen on the post, but you know, to be frank, he’s an ex-airlines pilot, so low IQ and all that, and to quote Ambassador Saleykhan—he has too much ego-sheego. In fact, Ambassador Saleykhan’d proposed my name—Ambassador Saleykhan—’ it was clear that Dr Bhatnagar liked to pronounce the word ‘ambassador’. He lolled it around on his tongue like a dildo and his mouth remained open in an O for a second after each emission—‘I speak of ’85, when I was learning the ropes in Geneva and Ambassador Saleykhan was being tipped for Brussels—for which I’d been sounded out, of course—it’s no secret that Ambassador Saleykhan was rather grateful that I’d refused—declined, I should say—my sabbatical, you know, at Harvard—so Ambassador Saleykhan and I’ve been together for donkey’s years—brothers-in-arms, partners-in-crime and what have you . . .’

Usually, for close to a week after each official dinner, Dr Bhatnagar would withdraw into the Home Ministry to confer with Sherni Auntie, to analyse and dissect each move and utterance of the evening and thus to tot up his chances of a rosy future. Periodically, of course, in those days of retreat, he’d order Kamat the Residence peon to phone and harass the office.

‘Bakra Saab’s on his way over. An emergency, Kamat said. Must’ve run out of food.’ Gupt the Hindi stenographer thus interrupted Agastya’s and Kalra’s session before the telly. Gupt’s post was an Official Language Requirement. He doubled up as Kalra’s PA because he had absolutely no work. ‘Bakra Saab wants an in-house meeting immediately.’

In-house meant Agastya, Footstench, Madam Tina, Kalra and a couple of others. A disgusted Kalra refused to go downstairs to receive Dr Bhatnagar—a policy requirement—and dispatched Gupt instead, certain that the sight of the
PA’s PA beside the car door would infuriate the Doctor no end, but he was past caring.

If there was a point to Dr Bhatnagar’s meetings, it was usually well-hidden. They tended to be long, incomprehensible, soporific pep talks centred around his cherished Management themes: the Modernization of Administration, the Techniques of Negotiation, the Human Factor: Means Or End? The Will to Change, Strategies for Objectives and the Bottom Line. Someone, usually Kalra, took notes at each of these sessions. They generally stopped all of a sudden, most often when Dr Bhatnagar began to feel hungry. Each of them ended in a flurry of telexes and faxes, aimed at whoever it was that week that Dr Bhatnagar wished to seduce by the power of his positive thinking.

Just a handful of comatose subordinates around his battlefield of a desk, but one could actually nod off under his nose if one wished to, he being too senior to stoop to officially notice such insubordination. He didn’t much like any interruptions of his flow and all questions had to be reserved for the end. Not that his inferiors had worked out any tactics beforehand, but skill and experience alone had devolved upon Footstench the responsibility of encouraging Dr Bhatnagar to meander on for the duration of the session without disturbing the peace. At every third or fourth phrase therefore, Footstench’s goatee would bob up and down in agreement, or his black eyes would gleam in admiration, and even when, during the post-lunch sittings, they threatened to close and his rhythmic rumbles of approval began to sound like snores, he’d still continue to emit his steady murmurs of appreciation: ‘ . . . absolutely . . . we’ve to keep an ear out for their demandments . . . yes, to come to the nuts and bolts of your grassroots . . . get down, of course, on the brass staff . . .’

The Wednesday of the near-debacle of the West Indies, Dr Bhatnagar surprised his in-house team with his black wig, his soft contact lenses and his new go-getting manner. ‘If four
baskets of the very best mangoes have to be picked up from the West Coast and personally deposited in Hyderabad for a marriage positively by Sunday, what’s the best way to do it?’ The new Dr Bhatnagar had come straight to the point of the meeting, except that his in-house team took half an hour to realize it. Finally, Agastya suggested that they fly Sarwate the Dispatch Clerk out for the mission because in any case, he’d be disappearing a week later, on leave, to get married in Hyderabad itself. If they packed him off by plane—at the State’s cost—
and
a
few days earlier, it’d be the ideal wedding present from the office. Everyone applauded the idea. Dr Bhatnagar actually said, ‘Bravo’ and shot off a fax to the Additional Secretary, External Affairs, repeated to about six other people:
Apropos our emergency telecon this morning at my residence re Operation Hyderabad Mango, am completely in control and charge of the situation. Consider mission accomplished. Any other fruitful interface desirable, please convey the needful. Regards.

The very next day, the new Dr Bhatnagar sent Footstench off on the first flight after the mangoes. Kalra later explained that the Doctor—that is to say, Sherni Auntie—had had an afterthought. Apparently, the Additional Secretary had been so pleased with Dr Bhatnagar’s promptness that, at the latter’s suggestion, he’d upped the baskets of mangoes to five, the fifth being a gift for the Doctor himself. However, on Wednesday afternoon, while reviewing his plan of action, Dr Bhatnagar had suddenly realized that the last basket would take a long time to reach its destination since Sarwate the Dispatch Clerk would be away for a month. In a panic, he’d phoned the Home Ministry on the hotline, the red phone on his desk that Kalra had been instructed to use only to contact Sherni Auntie.

From the official dinner to the wig and contact lenses, Operation Hyderabad Mango, all in all, cost the Office of the Liaison Commissioner about eighty thousand rupees. Money well spent, since Dr Bhatnagar got his UN assignment shortly
after. It made Agastya curious to see the UN, where the civil servants of the world congregated; the scope would be breathtaking.

The costs of the wig and contact lenses were borne by the Welfare State under Medical Expenses. They should not, strictly speaking, be computed along with the expenditure on Operation Hyderabad Mango since they belong to a larger strategy. They were in fact the fallout of a policy decision of the Home Ministry, taken keeping in mind the highest level, namely, Prime Minister Bhuvan Aflatoon, at that point about twenty months old in office, and his coterie, youngish, full of ideas, forward-looking. Whatever would their expectations be from the few successful, go-getting, experienced, yet mentally alert members of the Steel Frame? No spectacles, certainly, just sleek reading glasses. A decent-looking pate. What else?

No black Ambassador cars, because it’d been rumoured that during his autumn break on one of the Nicobar islands, Bhuvan Aflatoon had referred to his motorcade as a group of fat black dung beetles too stuffed with shit to more than crawl. There must’ve been some truth to the rumour because it will be recalled that not long after Dussehra, the motorcades of the V
^∞
IPs of the Welfare State switched from black Ambassadors to steel-grey Contessas.

What else was in? Signing files, looking at papers, like the PM only on Thursdays so that decisions could be announced on Fridays and effected—things could get cracking, in Dr Bhatnagar’s words—on Mondays. On Thursday afternoon, therefore, Kalra on the intercom to Agastya:

‘Good afternoon, sir. About the resignation letter that you handed in, Bakra Saab wants to know whether you’re serious or whether you’re fed up.’

‘I’m fed up. It’s my mother who’s serious.’

‘Well, he’s finally decided not to do anything about it, except that he isn’t yet sure whether he should tell you. You see, he and Sherni Auntie have been advised not to rock the
boat until the UN assignment comes through. Thus, in the past few days, on top of that enormous burden of the affairs of state that rests on his wide, steady shoulders, has come to perch—and rock—in his words, a new Beast of Anxiety. Am I rocking the boat when I send a fax to our High Commissioner in Australia congratulating her—inter-alia—on her fifty-fifth birthday? When I allow Sherni Auntie to have a second office car for the day since my revered mother-in-law is visiting? When I sign the letter forwarding, three weeks late, our Performance Budget, to the government? And when I decide to attend in person the General Body Meeting of the Gajapati Aflatoon Centenary Celebrations Committee—with Shri Agastya in tow, of course, in case I need someone to glare at when somebody more senior glares at me—which of my decisions can rock the boat? . . . To quote him again, in any decently-managed organization, one is paid, as the years pass, for the width and steadiness of one’s shoulders.’