Twenty minutes later, Charlie inquired about his passport. "It is being signed," said the man. "The deputy has signed it. Now it is with his assistant. When he finishes, it will go to the chief immigration officer. Be patient, sir. It will not take much time."
Fifteen minutes later, Charlie asked again. "I will check for you, sir," said the man. He went into another office, and came back in five minutes. "The chief officer has signed it, and now it is being checked by the deputy and his assistant. They will initial it, and it will come back here to me." He sat down and began copying names into a book.
When another half hour had passed, Charlie got up to ask the man again. Just then, an office boy came through the door and handed the passport to the man. "One moment, sir," said the man. "I will just check it over once, and you may have your visa and go." He set the passport on the edge of his desk and went back to his book. He copied two more names, then sat back and lit a cigarette. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
"Will you please check my passport?" said Charlie.
"I am doing it, sir," said the man.
"Oh, so I see."
The man came forward in his chair and smiled at Charlie. 'It is hot today, don't you think?"
"Yes, I do think," said Charlie. "And I would like to get out of this office."
"Ah, yes, so would I. But it is not too hot this time of year. It sometimes is much hotter. Especially in the hot season. This is not the hot season."
"You don't say."
"Truly. The hot season will begin in, let me see, about two more months. You should see it then."
"I hadn't planned on it," said Charlie, "but at this rate I imagine I'll be sitting right here all through the hot season."
"That is all one can do in the heat: sit. But this heat is not so bad. It sometimes is much hotter."
"So you said. Look, could you please—"
"Your passport. I shall do it immediately. It is simply that one must not rush in this heat. Things must be taken slowly. It is very unhealthy to rush about in the heat." The man took Charlie's passport off the edge of the desk and set it in front of him. He opened it and went through it page by page, looking at all the stamps and visas and exit permits, and commenting from time to time on a particularly handsome stamp or a permit in a strange language. When he came to the Indian visa, he bent down over it and studied it in minute detail. "What a shame," he said.
"Oh, good God," said Charlie. What's wrong?"
"The deputy made a mistake. He signed his name in the wrong place. I shall have to send it back to him." He stood up and started to walk out of the room, but the look of pain on Charlie's face must have touched him, for he stopped and returned to his desk. "Wait," he said. "I may be able to fix it myself."
"I sure would appreciate that," said Charlie.
"You realize, of course, that such a thing is completely out of the ordinary."
"Of course."
"I could get in trouble for this."
"I understand," said Charlie, "and I appreciate what you're doing for me."
The man took a stamp from the box and placed it on the visa so that the signature line fell right below the deputy's signature. "There," he said. "No one could tell." He stood up, and with a courtly flourish, handed Charlie his passport. "Here you are, sir, and I hope your stay in India is a pleasant one."
"Thank you for everything," said Charlie, and we left.
After two days of dealing with Indians, Charlie and I were on the verge of madness. Our tempers were short, and we snapped unreasonably at everyone, including each other. Then gradually we began to accept it, and we calmed down. We decided to find out what it was that numbed everyone and everything in India and imbued the whole society with a "who gives a damn?" lazy lack of concern. We had an appointment with a man who was arranging passes for us to an audience with Prime Minister Nehru, and we asked him about it.
"Some of the fault is ours, I can't deny it," said the man. "But a lot of it is Britain's. I'll explain it as best I can."
First, he said, the "Yes, sir, I'm doing it" and then never doing anything attitude is an extreme illustration of the apathy that a quasi-socialist government can produce. The Indian government gives practically no incentive at all to more or better work. Technically, a man can advance, both in position and salary. But most government employees realize that they are limited either by lack of education or by the size and confusion of the bureaucracy itself. Their jobs, filling out ledgers, stamping papers, or filing reports are simple, dull jobs that are either done or not done—no one can stamp a paper better than anyone else. It is very easy to be perfect in their work, impossible to be outstanding. So why should they work hard? They are given a job and told that this is what they are fit for. They are paid a solid living wage, and they know it will never get higher. They take their time. If they can't have ambition or hope of success, they can at least have leisure.
The bureaucracy itself is a legacy from the British. When India was a British colony, the governors wanted the security of having all authority emanate from the top, from themselves. They gave no authority whatsoever to the Indians. A man way at the bottom of the scale could not even okay a check. He stamped it, passed it to a man who checked to see if the account existed and then passed it to a man who checked to see if there were sufficient funds in the account and then passed it to the head of the department, usually a Britisher, who checked all the figures and okayed it. It took then, and takes now, almost an hour to cash a check on one's own account in an Indian bank. An average of six or seven people to one job that could be done by one man is not uncommon. The system does employ many people, which is the only argument in its favor.
By keeping all authority out of the hands of the Indians, the British neglected to prepare them to run their own government—a lapse which some people consider subtle revenge for having lost a colony. The Indians are still unused to authority and/or responsibility. Most of them know nothing more, and care to know nothing more, than the old process of passing everything upstairs to have the decisions made. And until that process is changed or remodeled and streamlined, until the six unnecessary people for every job are put to work in other, more productive areas of government employ, the Indian bureaucracy will remain a great obstacle in the path of the country's progress.
Another reason the man gave for the crying inefficiency in all areas of governmental and business operation is the lack of technological equipment. In banks and in businesses, where operations are already slow because of the ladder of authority, they are slowed further by having all recording, computing, and checking done by hand. Whereas in a modern American or European railroad station a ticket is issued and confirmed by a machine, in Indian railroad stations employers still use handwritten ledgers. It takes up to five minutes to buy a ticket. The man finds the ticket, stamps it, enters the sale in one ledger, then in another, takes the money, writes the amount on the ticket, and finally hands it to you. And you still haven't got a reservation, just the ticket. From all but the largest stations (Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta) it takes seventy-two hours to confirm a reservation. A cable requesting the reservation has to be sent to the point of origin of the train, and an answer, also by cable, must be received before the space is confirmed.
The question is not whether the necessary improvements will be made, but whether they will be made fast enough. India is outgrowing herself: her population, nearly four hundred and fifty million at last count, increases by more than ten million every year—this in a country less than half the size of the United States. Her supply of foreign currencies, which is one of her most dire needs, dwindles every year. She is growing in size, but economically she is not keeping apace of herself. And she cannot hope to achieve what the Chinese call the "great leap forward" until her people somehow manage to shake off the lethargy that decades of British rule instilled in them. India is no longer a colony, but many Indians still think of themselves as colonials.
"We are in a difficult
position," said the man. "It is not a problem of changing the government and getting more food so much as a problem of changing the people. We have to change everyone, from clerks to government officials, have to instill in them a whole new way of thought. And If we don't succeed, we may well have on our hands one of the most complex and unsalvageable economic, social, and political disasters in recent history. We will not be able to maintain our industry, we will not be able to defend ourselves, and most important, we will not be able to feed our people. We will gradually lose our independence by becoming more and more dependent on other countries for food and protection." He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands under his chin. "Do you know what India is?" he said. "India is a balloon, a balloon that grows daily nearer to bursting. And if she bursts, God knows what will happen to the rest of the world."
The audience with Nehru that we had was part of the prime minister's daily program. Every morning, on his way to the office, he held a half-hour reception in his house. Mostly, the people given passes were those who wished to make a presentation of a plaque or a scroll to Pandit Nehru, or those who had a special plea to make, or representatives of groups who wished to state a cause or express gratitude. Occasionally, however, foreigners such as us, with no purpose but to meet and speak to the prime minister, were admitted.
By simple bad luck, the day we were to go turned out to be a holiday, so more people were there than on a normal day. We arrived at eight-thirty, and twenty or twenty-five people, all of them Indians except one woman, were milling around in the living room and on the terrace. We were disappointed, because a friend of ours had gotten a pass for an odd Tuesday and had had Nehru to himself for the full half hour.
The living room was a large rectangle of dark Indian wood, furnished with simple, squarish couches and chairs, all upholstered in dark reds, dark browns, or grays. Signed photographs were on every table—Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, Kennedy, every major political figure of the last twenty years. A life-size head-and-shoulders portrait of Gandhi hung over the door that led upstairs to Nehru's living quarters.
As we stood looking at the pictures and gazing idly around the room, a short, stout woman in a green sari came up to us and asked our names. We told them to her, and she checked them against a list. Then she asked us where in the United States we were from, where we had gone to school, and what we were doing in India, all of which information she scribbled beside our names on the list. She thanked us, told us she was Nehru's private secretary, and moved off to talk to the others. As she passed by the groups of Indians, they all gave her the Indian sign of respectful greeting—palms together, fingers pointed upward in a prayerful gesture, a slight bow with the upper body. She smiled benignly and nodded. When she had spoken to everyone in the room, she went out through a door at the far end of the rectangle and started up the stairs.
At quarter to nine, she reappeared in the doorway. She said nothing, but raised her hand. Immediately, all talk stopped. Down the stairs and through the door, walking slowly and wearing a wide, peaceful smile, came Mr. Nehru. He was dressed in a maroon jacket and white hat, and he wore a pink rose in a buttonhole. All the Indians put their hands together and bowed. We just bowed. He strolled casually through the groups of people, stopping at every one to say a few words. One group presented him with a flowered lei, which the leader, a big Sikh, put around his head. Nehru bowed, thanked the man, and took the lei off and gave it to an attendant. The only other non-Indian, a European woman, stopped Nehru as he moved through the crowd, and in halting English made a plea for his support of a school project in the Benares area. He said that he would do everything he could to help the woman, asked her how she liked India, and moved on. She tried to pursue the matter further, but he was already speaking to someone else.
He seemed to know a few of the visitors, and he stopped to chat with them about their families or their pet projects. When he lingered too long, his secretary whispered something to him and guided him to some new people. Charlie and I were sure he'd never get to us, and we began to feel foolish standing with our hands clasped behind our backs.
He worked his way through the crowd, then turned toward us. The people between him and ourselves had already had their audience, and he nodded to them as he passed. He stopped in front of us and performed the palms-together gesture. We started to respond in kind, but he recognized our uneasiness with it, and held out his hand instead. "Harvard, eh?" he said.
"Yes, sir," we said in unison.
"How do you like India?"
"It's fascinating," I said.
"We haven't been here very long, only a couple of days," said Charlie.
He smiled. There was a pause, and Charlie and I both struggled for something to say. Before coming, we had prepared questions that we were going to ask if we got him alone. I was going to ask him about Menon's role in shaping India's foreign policy, Charlie was going to ask something about India and the neutral countries as a group, and there were three or four other questions that we held in reserve in case we had time to raise them. We couldn't think of any of them.
Suddenly Charlie spoke up. "Sir," he said, "I'd like to ask you a question. I'm going into politics, and I've got this chance to go around the world. What would you suggest that I concentrate on, what should I learn, what should I try most to appreciate?"
Nehru looked stunned. "Well," he said slowly, "all politics are based on economics. The first thing that a man should have for politics is a solid background in economics. Also, it is always terribly important to search out the truth in every situation. Unfortunately, much depends on geography, on who your neighbors are."
I said, "But we've found, sir, that there never really is any absolute truth in a given situation. There seem always to be two sides to every question, and to an observer who lacks intimate knowledge of a situation, the two sides don't instruct as much as they confuse."
"There are even more than two sides," said Nehru. "There are often a great many sides to a question, a great many facets that must be taken into account in searching for each particular truth. But in searching for all truths, it's important always to try to look at the problem from the other man's point of view. The most important thing is an understanding. One must try to understand the other man's position."
"But—"
His secretary whispered to him. He bowed, shook hands, and said, "Enjoy your stay in India." He turned away and walked over to someone else.
It was, of course, impossible for us to form any definite impression of the man, for we had had too little time with him, and neither Charlie nor I had had a chance to relax and think about what he was saying. But if one quality of the man did come across more than any others, it was his serenity. In his face, in his whole demeanor, there was nothing but calm. He smiled or he did not smile, he spoke or he did not speak, yet there was never a real change of expression. His voice was soft, and what he said always appeared to have been thought out, mulled over, and released from somewhere deep inside him to float to the surface. There was nothing hurried about anything he said or did. We felt that his vitality was all far within him, to be spent not on us but on his thoughts.
At exactly nine-fifteen, he was escorted to the front door of the house. He turned and bowed to the people in the living room, then walked out of the house and got in his car.
We had been in India almost a week and had met not one Indian girl. We had met wives of friends and sons of friends but never daughters of friends. Finally, one night at dinner, a man introduced us to his daughter, and she asked us to visit her school, in Delhi University, and said she would introduce us to her friends.
We met the girl after one of her classes, and she led us around behind the building, where ten or fifteen girls and two or three boys sat on the ground in a circle. We were introduced all around and told to sit wherever we could find a place. Charlie walked to the other side of the circle and squeezed in between two young girls. I sat beside a lovely girl in a blue and gold sari.
/> For the first few minutes, the conversation was a political symposium. One person spoke at a time, and when he was through, someone else either disagreed with him or elaborated on what he had said. They fired questions about America at us one after another, and Charlie and I passed the buck back and forth until one or the other of us said something that made a bit of sense. Slowly, the group began to split up into smaller conversational groups, and to my delight I found myself talking to the girl in the blue and gold sari. She was very formal, though not cold.
"What interests you most about India?" she said.
"Social customs," I said.
"What social customs in particular?"
I released the first test signal. "Mostly among young people," I said. "Fm interested in knowing how customs have changed, how much tradition still remains, and how Indian customs differ from European customs. For instance, at what age do girls start going out in India?"
"Going out?" said the girl. "What do you mean, 'going out'?"
"Seeing young men on their own. Going to films or plays, or even just having dinner with young men."
"I see what you mean," she said. "No, in India girls do not 'go out,' as you say."
"Never? Not at all?"
"No."
"Then how do they get to know the person they're going to marry?"
"They don't, usually. That is not important."
"You mean they just marry the first person that comes along?"
She laughed. "No, of course not. It is all arranged by the parents."
"I see. So you never even meet the person you're going to marry."
"Certainly we do! Times have changed since the days when a girl met her husband at the wedding for the first time. Nowadays a girl sees her husband at least two or three times before they get married."
Time and a Ticket Page 15
