The Mammaries of the Welfare State (2 page)

She didn’t falter at all. ‘No. Why?’

‘I’m new to the city. I mean, I’ve been here before for meetings ‘n things, but I haven’t stayed here for more than
a couple of days at a time. Do you know anybody who can tell me where I can buy some good dope without being harassed by some cop? Either grass or charas? I’m old-fashioned.’

‘I’ll have to phone you back.’

She did, at about seven that evening, while he was vegetating in his office room, observing a tiny mouse scamper about from corner to corner, wondering i) how to extract a TV set for his office out of Protocol and Stores before the World Cup started, and ii) whether, since mice were cute and rats loathsome, it followed that compact men and women were more likely to enjoy better sex than jumbos, other things being equal.

‘There are pushers everywhere in the city, one per streetlight, i.e., for every thirty metres of road length. I understand that they usually sell lizard shit to novices. However, I do have a couple of friends of my age who still make believe that the sap gushes just as strong in their veins. They
order
their charas from Golinaal and Megham—so I gathered. One of them is here from Madna with the latest on the plague; he’s never been without dope in the twenty-seven years that I’ve known him. If you’re desperate, you could join us for a drink—or him for a smoke, I should’ve said.’

Agastya was elated at the prospect of meeting Daya again. If her spectacles are off, that’s a sign that God too thinks that I should sleep with her this month. By this weekend. Tonight. He returned to the Guest House to find his room empty and an eviction notice taped to his pillow. It declared that the Executive Engineer (State Housing) hereby gave the legal occupant of Bed No. 1 in Room No. 1206 five days’ notice to vacate the said bed and to remove his/her belongings from the said room, failing which action as deemed fit under Section 63c (ii) sub-clause 41 d of the State Immovable Properties (Maintenance, Protection and Preservation) Act
would be initiated against the illegal occupant (‘So help me, God,’ murmufed Agastya). Details of that action as deemed fit had presumably been too ghastly for the cyclostyling machine to bear, for the rest of the notice was a muddle of lines wandering off in unexpected directions, lurching over one another, often ambling back on themselves.

He prepared for war by threshing about all night in Bed No. 2, drafting in his head letters of resignation from the Civil Service. It had been one of his favourite pastimes in the last eight years. ‘I’m sick of the pointlessness of the work I do and the ridiculous salary that I get for it, you fuckfaces,’ was what he, by three a.m., finally settled on; he repeated the line till dawn like a litany just to check the rhythm, its fall. At eleven, fuzzy, unwashed, unexercised and rebellious, he showed up in Menon’s anteroom to learn that Smirker’d buzzed off for a week to attend, with the Housing Secretary, a seminar on Alternative Housing and The Coastal Regulation Zone.

‘I see. Where’ve they gone?’

‘The Seychelles, sir.’

‘So what should I do about this eviction notice? Should I sit on my arse and rotate until they return, and maybe tickle my balls with it while rotating?’

Menon’s PA pooh-poohed the idea. ‘The standard practice, sir, has been to avail of the shelter of the landmark judgement of the Supreme Court in the case of Bhootnath Gaitonde and Others Versus The Welfare State, wherein the Honourable Court has decreed that the need for shelter, though not a fundamental right of the citizen, nevertheless is so basic a necessity that it ought to be one of the Welfare State’s primary objectives, that is, if the State considers itself a Welfare State at all. The Honourable Court has demanded, sir, very pointedly, though rhetorically,
How is one to distinguish the Welfare State from the Police State?
It aptly quotes in this connection Tirupati Aflatoon quoting Kautilya:
Only the Rule
of Law can guarantee security of life and the welfare of the people.’
Menon’s PA paused for a moment for the exasperated look on Agastya’s face to change. ‘Sir. Bhootnath Gaitonde was one of the two million inhabitants of—’ he gestured towards the grimy, frosted glass of the window ‘—Bhayankar, which, as you know, is the world’s—’ his voice quivered with pride ‘—largest slum; it covers over two hundred and fifty hectares. Bhootnath Gaitonde was an advocate’s clerk, a quiet, well-behaved law-abider, a worm yet to turn, a model citizen but for his address.

‘Early one June morning, the Municipal Corporation showed up at his door. It had decided that week to clean up his part of Bhayankar—a routine exercise that it undertakes every month in different parts of the city, to tear down the shacks of those without clout, harass all who do not bribe to devastate the property of the unprepared. Under the noses of the police and the demolition squad, however, Bhootnath Gaitonde waved a stay order from the court. The worm had turned—and moved like lightning.

‘ “Me-laard,” argued he before the judge, “I don’t
want
to stay in this slum, I didn’t
choose
to live surrounded by several varieties of excrement, used sanitary napkins, the rotting refuse tossed out every day by a thousand neighbourhood eating-houses, soiled bandages, broken syringes and bottles chucked out by clinics, dispensaries and hospitals, the rubbish of a thousand and one shops, cottage industries, backyard factories, workshops—and rats, stray dogs and vultures—I didn’t select them as my neighbours. Of course, I had no choice; in any other city, with my salary, I would have been staying in a two-room flat in a lower-middle-class area with trees, a playground and perhaps even a municipal school—but I work in this city, and I’m one of the millions that make this city work. We’re all here in Bhayankar, me-laard, we clerks, taxi-drivers, autorickshaw-walas, bus-conductors, peons, postmen, delivery boys, shop assistants, waiters, porters,
cleaners, dhobis, telephone linesmen, electricians, plumbers, painters, cobblers, tailors . . . If the Welfare State is the driving force, me-laard, then we are the wheels, and each one of hundreds of thousands of us stays—each with seven-to-ten members of his family—in a ten-by-ten tin-and-jute box; we all troop out and crap every morning amongst the vultures and dogs. Our women queue up at the water taps by four a.m. We shell out five rupees a bucket to whichever hoodlum’s taken over the taps.

‘ “I’ve been in Bhayankar now, me-laard, for twenty-two years, in which time the Welfare State’s done nothing for me for free—which is as it should be. I’m not a freeloader, and I’m not complaining. I’ve paid in bribes for my ration card, my photo pass and my electricity metre. I’ve been bribed in return for my vote—but that’s all fine, it’s the proper procedure. Self-interest is the only commandment—naturally—of the Welfare State, the rest is waffle.”

‘Bhootnath Gaitonde, sir, held forth in court for weeks. He reasoned that if the Welfare State was at all humane, it wouldn’t dishouse him just before the monsoons, which, as me-laard well knew, could be awesome in this region. Me-laard agreed completely and at the end of a forty-four-page judgement, ordered the Municipal Corporation to not even dream of going near Gaitonde’s shack till the winter.’

‘Oh you bewitching storyteller, may I cuddle up in your lap like a rapt grandchild, tickle your navel and ask you what happened next?’

‘No thank you sir. Instead, you could with profit cite the Gaitonde verdict in your appeal against your eviction notice. The cases are very similar, the same city ward, seven-to-ten persons per room, versus a heartless Welfare State, the same season of the year, give or take a few months. On the coast, one really can’t tell winter from the monsoon . . . You should submit your application quickly, sir, to the Housing Secretary.’

‘At once. Tomorrow, anyway. I shall draft it tonight
during Night Duty. Can you check it . . .?’

‘With pleasure, sir, I’ll be honoured. Who knows what the future has in store for us? Bhootnath Gaitonde, for example, sir, abandoned Bhayankar long before that winter. He became an active member of the New Vision Democratic Party at the Centre, so enthused was he by his performance in court.’

Night Duty was in the Secretariat Control Room. Up and down the sixteen floors, out of the Annexe and into the East Wing, withdrawn from the New Extension and eased into the Old Basement, over the years, the Secretariat Control Room had changed venues in the manner of a file being tossed about from Home Affairs to Labour to Finance to Employment to Personnel to Home Affairs. When Bhanwar Virbhim had been Chief Minister the first time, the idea of a Control Room in the Secretariat had been suggested by his Principal Secretary to ‘convince the electorate, sir, that yours is a government committed to delivering the goods.’

The Secretariat Control Room was supposed to monitor and sift the information relayed to it by the thousands of Police-, Earthquake-, Flash Flood-, Cyclone-, Typhoon-, Fire-, Landslide-, Other Acts Of God-, Communal Riot-, Festival Mishap-, Special-and General-Control Rooms located all over the region. To show that the Bhanwar Virbhim government was serious about the Secretariat Control Room, they set up the first one on the sixteenth floor itself, within the Chief Minister’s Secretariat, just a few doors away, in fact, from his suite of rooms. After three months, however—‘It’s a security risk,’ opined the police on the basis of the evidence that began to be discovered there in the mornings: an empty bottle of Old Monk Rum, a couple of used condoms, a page or two of adult literature. It was then decided to shift the Room to the Ladies’ Lunch Room on the third floor; the Ladies’ Lunch Room sank into the basement to dislodge the
Court Receiver of Smuggled Goods, who trudged up to the eighth floor to evict the Controller of Cattle of the Dairy Development Commissionerate, who in turn drifted onto the ninth floor of the Annexe to unhouse the Joint Chairman of the Committee for the Welfare of Nomadic Tribes . . . and so on. At any point of time, at least one Department in the Secretariat is transferring one of its offices from one room to another; since movement is action, a permanent housing problem is itself proof that the government works.

The thousands of Control Rooms in the region had been instructed to inform the Secretariat Control Room of anything important that happened in their areas. But what was unimportant? Naturally, nobody could tell. Thus it was that the two phones in the Secretariat Control Room were kept permanently off the hook. The Night Duty staff could therefore better concentrate on the telly. The staff comprised one Deputy Secretary, one Desk Officer, one clerk, one peon, one bearer and four cops. For all of them, the bearer provided dinner (pooris and dal) and snacks (pooris and tea).

Being English-speaking, the seniormost present and a man of the world, Agastya strode up to the TV and switched to BBC. The Look that the others gave him turned his insides to jelly. From eight to eight, he too then watched, in fits and starts, four-and-a-half benumbing, cacophonic, brutal, gormless Hindi films—and a sluggish rat that he’d spotted beneath one of the almirahs and that was plainly invisible to the other TV-watchers.

In the wee hours, when he was in a catatonic trance on the settee, skull twitching to the thwacks, thuds and shrieks from the TV, God pointed out to him that his housing problem’d been solved, hadn’t it; all that he had to do was to smuggle in, in his file boxes, his clothes, his tape recorder, cassettes, his books.

By Friday evening, he’d begun to feel at home in his boarded-up section of veranda. Being slow and secretive, he
told nobody—not even his PA or his peon—that he’d moved into his office room. He knew that nobody cared where he stayed as long as he didn’t formally inform them or ask for permission. ‘Say No till Kingdom Come, then deflect to Finance’ was a guiding principle for Personnel.

He was shocked to discover that the Secretariat had neither showers nor bathrooms. He had to bathe in the loo with a bucket and plastic mug. In the mornings, therefore, after his traumatic Canadian 5BX workout, he began to dress appropriately for his journey down the corridor, in once-white sleeveless vest and blue-and-green striped, loose drawers. Swinging his red bucket in one hand, whistling and humming sixties’ Hindi film tunes, he indeed felt like his assumed role—a carefree carpenter or plumber who’d been up all night toiling away somewhere in the Secretariat and was now going to refresh himself after a job well done.

He breakfasted, lunched and dined at Krishna Lunch Home, a dreadfully crowded two-storey eatery on the fringe of Bhayankar. Fanatical account-keeper that he was, he’d calculated that on his disgraceful salary, in that frightfully costly city, he couldn’t spend more than a hundred rupees a day on food. With its thirty-rupee thalis, Krishna Lunch Home suited his budget. So did its atmosphere him. Women, for example, both young and of a certain age, dined singly there without attracting even a second glance, leave alone being harassed by leers, salacious suggestions, obscene gestures or sudden lunges. The waiters too were uniformly pleasant, usually adolescent, with ready smiles. Their shorts, though, tended to be tiny and tight, making them reveal many inches of thigh and strut more than walk.

Booze was swigged only upstairs at the Lunch Home. The ground floor hall, a forty-by-thirty crush of tables, customers, waiters and food, was for those madly pressed for time—a soup, two idlis, an uthapam, some halwa, a coffee and away. The first floor was smaller, windowless, always
tubelit and cosier despite the cold white light, quieter, with a quarter bottle of gin or rum on almost every decolam top. Single customers generally shared a table with lone strangers. Conversation was not obligatory, but sharing the pickled onions, chillies and mango was. One could strike up a romance if one wanted to fall in love with, say, a bald fat man with bulldog jowls and yellow teeth who looked as though he planned to drink himself to death, alone.

Or one could hang about a bit to see whether one got a seat opposite a human being. Thus it was that two evenings in a row, Agastya sat across from a very beautiful, thirtyish woman with open, shoulder-blade-long jet-black hair. He hadn’t known that hair dye could be that black. Throughout both evenings, she pecked at veg chowmein, soaked up rum ’n Pepsi and wept silently. While fashioning her face, God had contemplated shaping a stunning pink pig; seconds before the finishing touches, however, He’d plainly been called away. Ah well. In her jade-green salwaar kameez, she looked like a radiant emcee from an outlandish Zee TV set; she spoke Hinglish too in a charming Zee TV-Puppie way. Agastya’d never piled on in his life before to anyone in Hinglish. It was rather a challenge, like trying to babysit an unfamiliar infant of another race.