The Mammaries of the Welfare State (41 page)

‘Where on earth’ve you been? Your hair’s wet and your eyes maroon.’ She looked irritable and tense. Without waiting for a response, she continued, ‘I’m fed up. Somebody—you, for one, instead of smoking dope and whining about gas in your tummy—could’ve warned me against how your meetings are run. Poor Jayati’s aged dramatically in the last two hours, like a creature out of myth that makes the mistake of coming down to earth. And I’m amazed—why’re they serving
food
to fifteen hundred people? I mean, is this a religious feast or the reunion of a committee?’

‘I say—what’re they serving? Where’s your plate?’

‘I sent it away, naturally. But don’t panic. The bearers’ll return, in these ghastly, frayed, off-white, khadi uniforms to show off their victory-tower red turbans.’

Scattered clapping from the bottom right corner of the auditorium distracted Agastya from his intention of settling down to wait for the waiters. Amidst the applauding hands stood the unsmiling speaker, much like a lighthouse amongst circling seagulls. The group was pro-or anti-PM, Agastya’d forgotten which, a set of powerless but noisy parliamentarians
and members of various regional assemblies that had slimed its way into the Centenary Committee by sucking up to he’d forgotten whom—Baba Mastram, probably.

‘Secondly,’ continued the speaker, reading in perfectly-official Hindi, shuffling the papers in his left hand about, ‘it is proposed that an extremely popular and as-yet-unnamed road in Lutyens’s City be named after Rajani Suroor. I speak of the alley behind the houses on Ganapati Aflatoon Marg, in which reside, among those present here, Honourable Minister Virbhim, Honourable Madam Kum Kum Bala Mali, Honourable Dr Kansal and, when he’s in the capital, Honourable Parliamentarian Bhootnath Gaitonde. On that alley—the honourable members mentioned will bear me out—stand a handful of eating houses that were once upon a time the servants’ quarters of Lutyens’s mansions. These dhabas are illegal, cheap and extremely popular with the less privileged population of the area. Their postal address unfortunately continues to be
Service Lane No 6/North/A/benind GAM.
Nobody here will deny that we all enjoy a fundamental right to a better address. How better to honour the memory of Gajapati Aflatoon than to improve the quality of life in the area around the street named after his elder brother, to make it—the area itself—
sound
better, and then to regularize, to make secure, the lives and vocations of those of our fellow citizens who inhabit that narrow alley, who provide necessary and cheap nourishment to the residents of the area and who are still officially described as ‘illegal occupants practising an illicit trade”? I therefore propose that the Centenary Committee immediately resolve that
Service Lane No 6/North/ A/behind GAM
be renamed Shahid Rajani Suroor Marg.’

Makhmal Bagai paused for the clapping of his myrmidons to subside. ‘I take this opportunity to respond to the doubt expressed earlier this morning about the propriety of discussing the institution of some memorials for a martyr who hasn’t actually passed away but is merely in the process of doing so.
I’m not surprised at this revelation of a national trait, a cultural characteristic that prefers procrastination to action, and that achieves fulfilment not in deeds done today but in fine-tuning its skills of postponement. ‘Whatever cannot wait even a moment will unfortunately have to be looked at tomorrow; push the rest into the agenda for next month.” Before these brakes on the nation’s progress, I plead: let us honour Martyr Rajani Suroor by being ready for him. If he finally decides to stop breathing, how embarrassing it’ll be if we
then
assemble to collectively wonder how best to honour his memory! On that occasion, when the nation whips around to ask of us, ‘Whatever have you all been
doing
these past few months?” we, hanging our heads in shame—and noticing how our paunches hide from view our dirty toenails—will have nothing to say. On the other hand, were Shahid Suroor suddenly to wake up, this Committee would welcome him with open arms and, with tears of joy, as it were, request him to be Chief Guest at the functions that’ll open to the public these memorials.

‘For we propose—naturally—more than one course of action in remembrance of a multi-faceted, many-dimensional man who was, fortunately, a bachelor. Had he been married, in keeping with the great traditions of our country, his widow would’ve been rewarded with a fat sum of money. It is submitted to the Centenary Committee that that amount of compensation—whatever it might be, whether symbolic or respectable, and keeping in mind these hard times, anything symbolic’d be a disgrace—be awarded at once to Vyatha, Shahid Suroor’s theatre group, that was to him—if one judges by the passion that he felt for it—parent, wife, second wife, child, in-law, neighbour and keep all rolled into one.

‘It is understood that the artistic community of the nation has proposed a major cultural happening on the fourth of December, the first anniversary of Shahid Suroor’s departure from the conscious life of the country. Our group of young,
forward-looking Parliamentarians and elected members of other assemblies strongly supports the event, no matter what the cost. Painters, writers, sculptors, singers, musicians, actors, directors, graphic designers, photographers, poets and other artistically-inclined souls have been invited, by the clarion call of art against politics, to the Pashupati Aflatoon Public Gardens where, from 4.46 in the morning onwards—a time auspicious for starting an invocation to the heavens, suggest the finest astrological minds of our time—they will pray, through the practice of their different arts, for the speedy and complete recovery of Shahid Suroor. That is to say—if the nitty-gritty of the happening is not yet clear to those who perhaps haven’t been paying attention—in different parts of the Gardens, all day on the fourth of December, till 7.13 in the evening, when the propitious hours end, singers will sing, painters paint, poets write, sculptors chip away, photographers click, potters—uh—potter about—pot—and gardeners water the lawns. Each act is holy when its impulse springs from the bottom of the cleansed heart.

‘This political group urges the Centenary Committee that it be allowed to participate in the happening for Shahid Suroor. We will orate. Politics is the heartbeat both of the nation and of the martyr in question. As an activist, he was unparalleled as a provocateur, as anybody who’s watched his plays will know. It has even been suggested that it was their subject matter—and his rejection of the suggestion made by the prominent members of a certain caste in my native place of Madna that they be allowed to participate in his productions—that offended and provoked them into arranging to teach him a lesson in the realities of castepolitik. Whatever be the truth of that theory—it’ll of course be improper to anticipate the findings of the Enquiry Commission in this regard—it is a fundamental principle that the repressed castes must not be denied their right to self-expression in any happening, cultural, political, economic, religious or social.
When you suppress their voice, you send the wrong signals both to Heaven and their constituencies—an axiom with which Honourable Dr Kansal up on the stage will agree, naturally. In fact, I should frankly add here that if we aren’t permitted to join the anniversary celebrations, we’ll consider it to be an insult to the social interests and castes that we represent and—rest assured—we’ll respond with appropriate measures. I pause merely to ask Honourable Dr Kansal whether he wishes to comment at this point.’

Reluctantly, Dr Kansal rose from his chair. He was tall and looked taller because he was terribly thin, loose-limbed, with flapping arms and legs in a flapping safari suit. His walk to the microphone was almost directionless, as though, endowed with independent lives, his feet, knees, forearms and elbows wished to shrug off his will and wander off on their own. He was fumbling in his various pockets for inspiration when the collective attention of the bottom right section of the auditorium swivelled to the nearest door to welcome the new batch of snack-laden waiters that entered just at that point. A low, extended rumble of approval moved like a wave across the rows, a growl in the belly of some enormous dormant beast, obliterating from the air any hint of pleasure at—or any thought of—waiting for the wisdom of Dr Kansal. ‘
Pssst!’ ‘Pssst!’
hissed out like the tongues of a hundred snakes from the agitated occupants of various seats nearest the door, commanding the burdened waiters to pivot uncertainly—as a Bharatnatyam danseuse does to convey indecision—not sure whose greed to satisfy first; greed and not hunger, because they’d already served the hissers once in their earlier round, when too they’d intended to begin with the central section of the auditorium and move back in successive trips towards the exit, but had been gobbled up at the start by the wolves at the door, these sea monsters that waited for Odyssean ships.

‘Honourable Madam Chairperson, Honourable Minister
Virbhim . . .’ started Honourable Dr Kansal in his deep and lethally slow voice, mind milky with fog, till that moment undecided what to say, but tranquilly confident that when he gave his voice the long rope, as he gave his limbs, it would deliver, and the words of wisdom emerge, all in proper order. ‘ . . . Culture has always needed the patronage of kings . . .’ The ‘
psssts!’ ‘Hey yous!’ ‘Payṇchos!’ ‘C’meres!’ ‘Hurry ups!
and ‘
Let them pass, Payṇchos!’
that’d now begun to pop, like toy pistols aimed at the waiters from different parts of the auditorium, didn’t faze him in the least. He
liked
confusion. He’d spent almost forty years in churning his passage of personal advancement through it, freshening and heaping it up in his wake. He pleasantly sensed—though one couldn’t be sure—that these excited, peremptory orders being hissed and shouted by his audience were directed not at him but at the bearers, whom he was certain he knew closely as types, even though they barely existed for him as individuals. The decades that he’d spent studying—amongst hundreds of others—their castes and classes, their economic ascent, their lateral movements from village to town to megalopolis, the erosion under pressure of their caste preoccupations—those years’d developed in him an attitude towards his subject matter much like that of a feudal lord towards his lowliest subjects—of contemptuous, affectionate, intimate, paternal and parasitical disdain. Nothing that they could do would ever surprise him; when it did, the act’d be ignored till it was twisted and squeezed to fit theory. ‘ . . .In our time, a painter has as much need of the clout of a Minister as of his brushes and oils . . . Hierarchy is fundamental to our system and even in the Welfare State, it’s no surprise that the unimportant are cut dead and trodden over in the race for power and privilege . . .’

Practically supine in the chair alongside Daya, gorging on madly-spicy samosas, cashew nuts and Parle Monaco biscuits, dripping tomato sauce onto the makeshift tray of the open
agenda on his chest, about to suggest marriage as soon as he finished eating and the mood of the object of his desire became more receptive to a proposal, Agastya realized, with stoned surprise, that he really didn’t want to be anywhere else. For one, the civil war around him was extremely interesting because it was a bitter struggle over fundamentals—namely, over food in a developing country—fought, as in a model case study, under the uncaring eyes of a self-serving elite; he himself d gained his share by simply marching down to the nearest waiter and snatching two plates off his shoulder, pointing out to himself in the process that he too was merely enacting a basic economic and social law, as it were: however could a member of the Steel Frame become a have-not?

For another, trying to follow Dr Kansal’s chain of thought was sure to be intellectually stimulating, like trailing a charged electron as it bounced off the knotty matter of Rajani Suroor, collided with the complexities of caste reservations in the various spheres of government and touched, en passant, the ostensible subject of the meeting—Gajapati Aflatoon and what to do with him. As far as Agastya could sense—and tell from past experience—the last hadn’t been discussed at all in the first couple of hours of the day. It wasn’t really meant to be; the point was not to exchange views and reach conclusions but to assemble the whole world, like a show of strength, and to allow whoever wanted to, to hold forth on whatever interested him, constrained only by the condition that he should, every now and then, like Formula One cars grazing one another on the track, touch the theme of the centenary. At the end of the day, everyone felt drained and fulfilled, as at the close of a rigorous session of scream therapy, and the implementers got on with whatever they’d decided on beforehand with the figureheads on stage.

Agastya didn’t much like an agenda with dollops of sauce on some of its pages. It looked frivolous. He therefore
flattened and placed his empty paper plate between the Section on the Archaeological Survey and the Statistics of the Southern States on Expenditure on the Disappearing Performing Arts in the Last Five Years, shut the book with a magisterial hand and exchanged it with its duplicate on the seat two places away, well in time before its possessor triumphantly returned with
his
second plate of snacks.

Magically, abruptly, leaving the very few in the auditorium who’d been listening a little bewildered, Dr Kansal finished and flapped his way back to his chair. Long before the Master of Ceremonies could invite the next speaker up to the stage, and well before Makhmal Bagai could finish stuffing samosas into his mouth and start up all over again, Member of Parliament Bhootnath Gaitonde had reached one of the standing microphones that dotted—more accurately, exclamation-marked—the auditorium.

‘Honourable Madam Chairperson, honourable ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, friends,’ began he in sonorous Hindi, his fluency in which—it not being his mother tongue—he was quite proud of, ‘I’m
not
the next speaker on the agenda. However, even if you don’t permit, I
will
present my views from here, this insignificant spot in the auditorium, from amongst the audience—the people, if you wish—for this is where I belong. You would have noticed of course that I haven’t bothered either to register with the Committee for an official turn at the mike or to wait for Honourable Shri Makhmal Bagai to finish eating and speaking. The reason is that I simply did not want to waste any more of one of our most precious resources—namely, time.’