The Mammaries of the Welfare State

by Upamanyu Chatterjee

  ‘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 poin
ted 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.

  Never before either had he sat in front of anybody who’d snivelled in this manner two evenings running. And he hated food being wasted, particularly in a developing country. On Thursday, therefore, while waiting for his order, he reached over and began helping himself to her chowmein. Quite tasty. Her smallish eyes focused and flickered a bit. Almost mechanically, she pushed the pickled onions across to him.

  ‘No thanks, we’re to utter sweet breath tonight.’ He waved to Thais and, when he strutted over, asked him for cigarettes, Wills Filter Navy Cut.

  He felt stuffed by the time he’d finished with her chowmein and his own chholey-bhaturey, keema dosa and alu-pooris arrived. ‘Developing country,’ he explained to her as he attacked the keema dosa. She smoked a cigarette. ‘As in a marathon, one must pace oneself in life, with people, with food,’ he clarified to her as he pitched into the alu-pooris. ‘Anything is possible at the right speed.’

  She rose unsteadily from the table. He beamed enquiringly at her. ‘Looking at you, I want to vomit,’ she mumbled in Hinglish and lurched off towards the stairs. As her first words, they didn’t augur well for their romance.

  He was torn between her and his chholey-baturey, between sex and food, love of woman and love of country. Hating her for winning, for making him waste both money and nurture, he followed her.

  The world’s largest slum had its virtues. One could, for example, puke anywhere and you couldn’t tell. When he emerged from Krishna, a voided Kamya had her arms wrapped around one of those wizened mongrel trees that abound in the city, that survive against awesome odds, that offer neither shade nor flowers or beauty, the trunks of which are too flinty for the nails of advertisers’ boards, dour, self-centred, enduring without growing.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked in Hinglish—’Aap all right hain? While waiting for her to unwrap herself, he realized that he liked the rhythms of Hinglish. It was a genuinely national language, as truly mirroring the minds of the people as Benglish, Tamilish, Maralish, Punjlish and Kannalish. He told himself that when he returned to his boarded-up veranda, he should note in his diary the following items as food for thought: i) Why can’t Hinglish be the Official Language of the Welfare State? and ii) Why don’t you translate into Hinglish or Benglish some of your favourite English poems? Jhe Alphred Pruphrock-er Laabh Song? And Shalott Ki Lady?

  ‘I stay right here.’ He pointed vaguely in the direction of the Secretariat. ‘Main right here stay—’

  ‘Main English follow karti hoon, thank you.’ She was tall. ‘Hmmm, so aap right here stay karte hain.’ Her eyes had widened and brightened with interest.

  At the gate of the Secretariat, he advised her. ‘If the guard asks, just say, Night Duty. If he acts tough and argues that women are exempt, scoff and enlighten him, New Policy, Women’s Quota.’

  She liked the room. She drifted about in it, touched the kettle and his skipping rope on the wall, gazed out of the window at the night lights and asked how come. Feeling safe with her, he explained how he’d solved his housing problem. She was more impressed than amused. ‘Ek dum top-class idea, Tiger,’ she lolled on his lumpy sofa, now covered with a brightly-patterned counterpane, ‘Ek dum top- . . .’ Her head slumped to one side as she fell asleep.

  I should unhook her bra as a beau geste. Then, feeling old, lonely, morose, washed out, tired of his own jokes, he too bummed around the room, brewed himself some tea, flopped down behind his desk, now and then watched her breast rise and fall in sleep, and finally bedded down on the jute matting between his computer and his kitchenette. I should get married now to any one of those decent, horny Bengali dullards from Calcutta that Manik Kaka’s been dying to line up for me for the last eight years. Enough of this hepness of being single. After a while, one just felt sick of books and music and cinema and being boss of one’s time; one wished instead for human company and the warmth of another body in bed, for everyday domestic clutter and social completeness, for the outward tokens of an ordered life—a sofa set in the drawing room, a washing machine, a magnetic remembrancer on the fridge.

  A little after six, he woke abruptly to find himself alone in the room. He waited for a minute or two. Then he crawled over to the sofa and nodded off again in the faint aroma of perfume.

  The preceding Thursday. Daya’s flat had been a fifteen-minute walk away from the Secretariat. Upmarket, downtown, one of the backlanes behind the new steel-and-glass Stock Exchange. The backlanes were quieter, greener, pseudo-colonial and comprised some of the world’s costliest real estate. One square foot of flat cost eighteen thousand rupees, i.e., more than twice Agastya’s monthly salary. It could cost more if, from it, one could glimpse a corresponding squ
are foot of the sea. ‘Not worth it, honey,’ he cautioned himself as he crossed the street to avoid a knoll of garbage that stank— whew! like a government permission—and to which had been drawn a zoo of cattle, pigs, curs, cats, crows and rats.

  Daya was on the third floor and her doorbell a sexy chime. She took some time to answer it. He heard her trill to somebody, presumably the dope-provider, ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree,’ before she opened the door. She looked like Ageing Raw Sex Incarnate. No spectacles. She’d touched up both eyes and hair. She wore an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot—a luxurious peacock-blue-and-amber salwaar kameez. She beamed at him and offered him her cheek (facial) for a peck. He was a bit taken aback at how happy he was to see her.

  ‘I’m so glad that you don’t have your blue jeans on, otherwise I’d’ve had to smother the entire flat in dust sheets . . . I didn’t notice how you’d fouled up my salwaar till I came home that evening . . . for a while, I couldn’t even figure out what’d happened . . . and then I imagined that you’d done it on purpose, for some perverted reason . . . was it your way of making a pass? . . . I even fancied that you might’ve been a sort of walking ad for a, you know, detergent or something . . . that’d’ve been clever . . . or an anti-depressant . . . Don’t spread the blues . . .’

  A spacious, lamplit living room, French windows at the far end, a veranda beyond. Arty, uncomfortable furniture, bric-à-brac, tribal statuary, richly-coloured rugs on the floor that Agastya kept tripping over and apologising for; white bookshelves with sleek tomes on Modernism, Reductionism, Margaret Mead, The Death of Tragedy, Russians in Exile, Rilke; a colour TV before a settee, on, on the settee a tall, darkish, handsome, hairy, bespectacled, generally groovy man with long, wavy salt-and-pepper hair who rose with a commanding smile to shake his hand.