The Mammaries of the Welfare State

by Upamanyu Chatterjee

  Smiling intelligently, Suroor departed soon after for dinner with his dear friend the Governor. He sweetly left behind for Agastya his Yin-Yang dope box. ‘You look as though you need it, friend.’

  Despite the Hindi Top Ten sort of music that drifted in through the French windows, the apartment, all at once after Suroor’s departure, began to feel cosy and restful. His nervous energy disturbed others; it clamoured all the time to be the centre of attention. Agastya followed Daya into the kitchen for a refill of watermelon juice. She was busy with the ice bucket when he held her by her shoulders and lightly kissed the nape of her neck. She paused to smile at him before returning to the drawing room with their drinks. He felt a bit silly.

  Gingerly, he sat down beside her on the sofa and grinned at her with stagey bashfulness. ‘I need to improve my style.’

  An exhausting night. No dinner till three in the morning. After the watermelon juice, Daya had without warning bobbed up and vanished into her bedroom. A few minutes later, through the closed door, Agastya had heard some terrible Shirley Bassey kind of music. Then the door had opened and she’d called him. He’d all at once felt nervous, as before a job interview. With reason, boy, he’d realized at the doorway. For the room was dark and Daya naked, legs crossed, in a rocking chair by the window. Serves you right, fucker, for trying to be so cool.

  ‘Please shut the door, Agastya and take off all your clothes . . . Could you leave your shoes outside, please? . . . Thanks . . . you could put away your jeans etc in that almirah on your right . . . there are free hangers in it . . . hmmm . . . could you please wash yourself, Agastya, as a courtesy to me? . . . thanks . . . the light switch—no, up . . . up and left . . . no, you can leave the door open . . . ahh, come, come . . . now lie down . . . the sheets are cool, clean and blue . . .’

  He continued to feel nervous and depressed as he adjusted the pillow beneath his neck. You deserve this, you Dildo King, he told himself again as he watched her toss her hair off her shoulders and straddle his stomach. He’d generally lived his life according to two dictums: Finish what you start, and Don’t start what you can’t finish. He couldn’t quit his job, for instance, because of his dictums, just as because of them he now had to swallow whatever this middle-aged bomb was going to dish out. He was nervous because he would have preferred to be in control. Couldn’t she’ve asked him first whether he’d relish being suffocated by her pussy? Wasn’t he too a human being, with feelings? She wriggled about a bit till her vagina was split wide and tight against his solar plexus. She then began to ride back and forth, slowly at first, then with gathering momentum, lazily but irrevocably sliding up over his chest towards his face. With her hands, she fondled her breasts, teased her armpits, kneaded her stomach, played with her hair, adjusted the sound from the stereo by the bed. Rhythmically, she groaned and gasped, deep but subdued, and licked her upper arms, her breasts. By the time that she’d crossed Agastya’s nipples, his spunk was flying all over the room like Casper the friendly ghost. You don’t even know the surname, Arsehole, of this juggernaut who’s pussy-lathering your neck. Now that he’d spent himself, he would have liked to relax a bit, smoke a cigarette or something, but she’d just finished warming up. He made a move to rise but quick like a cat, she slid up and clamped her pussy down on his face. She then began to bloody gallop. Soft whoops of near-hysterical rapture, thinnish Casper in half an hour, the creaking bed marking time, quickening rhythm, his jaws unhinged, till at last from her a succession of deep, slow, sated moans, wrenched out, as it were, from the bowels of the earth. From where she’d last squatted, Daya, now drained through and through, abruptly flopped back and lay down on her lover, writhed about a bit to make herself comfortable, her hair a ticklish, silken tangle about his loins, crooned a few bars along with the Shirley Bassey type and miraculously fell asleep. He palmed her breasts, idly wondered whether she’d ever get up and allow him to go for a piss and then dropped off too.

  He awoke at two. He was alone in bed and the stereo was mercifully off. A blue night light above the bathroom door. Daya, still naked, sat crosslegged on a rug on the floor, arms outstretched, back of wrists poised on her knees, her index fingers forming circles with her thumbs, the other fingers pointing down at the floor; she was meditating. He sleepily watched her till he nodded off again. At three, hunger and a bursting bladder dredged him up out of sleep. She hadn’t stirred an inch from the floor. What about damn mosquitoes? he wondered. Her fridge stocked only grim health food. Zonked, not believing what he was doing, he chomped on a carrot and some sprouted thing in a bowl, and slurped down a jug of buttermilk.

  In the morning, radiant, renewed, she explained to him that for the last decade or so, she’d meditated in different yogic postures instead of sleeping. ‘Are you at all familiar with Yoga?’

  Agastya, who felt as though every pore in his skin had been buggered non-stop for a year by some bleak, unforgiving Jehovah type of person, said, no, not beyond the occasional magazine article.

  ‘Oh dear . . . The loss of innocence, I believe, more than anything else is the loss of sleep. One can’t regain innocence, of course, but one can accept its loss. I don’t try to empty my mind—that’s virtually impossible—but I relax, lie down or sit, stock-still—and allow whatever it is to enter my head. A free for all! Anxieties, fantasies, dreams, longings, plans, images of the day—the doors remain wide open for all, all the clutter. Sooner or later, however—after half an hour, perhaps— the clutter decants, settles down. I then begin to see what is of worth, to separate the salt from the litter of my life. Over the years, I’ve noticed that whenever I’ve succeeded in focusing on the essential, in meditating on the truly important, I’ve achieved it. Are you with me?’

  ‘What about mosquitoes? The ringing of the telephone? . . . And don’t you at least eat eggs? There are none in the fridge.’

  He in part solved his housing problem by spending three to four nights a week at Daya’s. Strange nocturnal assignations, redeeming, releasing, with the blurred, magical quality of a dream, as though he wore spectacles by day and routinely left them behind in the Secretariat for the night. They never met by day—for lunch or for a film, somehow never, They fell into a pattern—crazy, gruelling sex that began at the door and lasted till Daya’d finished with him; then dinner, not enough conversation, followed by a numbing sleep for him in bed, alone. Early in the morning, he’d awake exhausted, with cold aching joints.

  His constant, silent wide-eyed bewilderment at her taste in music and food led her to relent a bit. The Shirley Bassey types gave way to Gordon Lightfoot and Warren Zevon, whom he unwound with after Casper had flown round for a while. Daya postponed dinner till after midnight because he was with her only as long as he didn’t sense any food; once he began to stuff himself, the single other thing that he could think of was sleep. Indeed, on certain evenings, the two were separated only by one stupendous burp. Dinner started to vary—dates, almonds, grapes, honey—but only up to a point; in Daya’s kitchen were forbidden frying, baking, stewing, roasting, even liquidizing.

  ‘But what about palak paneer and masala dosa—don’t you miss them?’

  Their attitudes to their affair differed. In her own way, she wanted a romance—a lover, some music and conversation—whereas he simply wished to get rid of his day. Yet they were happy together—and the surroundings, the atmosphere of the flat, encouraged happiness. Through the open French windows of the bedroom, for example, through half the night, they could hear the occupants of the other flats in the building converse with one another from their verandas about their daily lives. One female even played Hindi film songs on her recorder for the others on request. Now and then, she hollered for Daya to pop out to her veranda to yell back her choice of song; Daya’d even obliged a couple of times, leaving the bed, pulling on a robe, cursing under her breath, shoving her head past the curtains and politely, embarrassedly, asking for the song Ek Do Teen from the film Tezaab because Agastya liked it.

  ‘How can you not dr
ink tea in the mornings, Daya? I’m zapped.’ So she began to stock tea, Lipton’s Green Label. ‘How can anyone not read a newspaper in the mornings? I mean, Daya, where did you grow up?’

  ‘Bombay.’

  ‘I ought to have guessed.’

  She refused to subscribe to any newspaper for him. ‘You don’t love me,’ he concluded bitterly. She maintained that she’d managed very well without newspapers for forty years. She worked in—headed, in fact—a small, arty and successful ad agency. He started to bring along with him The State of the Times and the crossword from The Statesman and pore over both over tea the morning after. He was more enthusiastic than successful with the crossword. He devoted most of his attention to an old addiction of his, the Wanted ads.

  ‘There’s a vacancy for a Junior Technician (Electrical) in the Regional Engineering College at Roorkie. I say, Daya, should I apply? . . . And the other interesting one today is: “Wanted two Hair Stylists for a Star Hotel at Cochin. Apply with references Box 345 etc.” Does that mean prostitutes or not? I’d like to write in.’

  His tea lasted till Daya was ready to leave for work. Her chauffeur-driven air-conditioned Cielo dropped him off at the Secretariat. Agastya looked rather scruffy in comparison to the chauffeur. ‘If I join your ad agency, what’ll I do, precisely?’

  ‘Oh, you could be Senior Vice-President, Client Servicing . . . ha ha . . . if you’re serious about accepting the offer, then give me a couple of days to mull it over.’

  It seemed that everyone in Softsell, Daya’s ad agency, was a Senior Vice-President. Agastya was invited to become one too and handle the Public Affairs portfolio. He’d be given a three-bedroom apartment downtown, an air-conditioned car, a chauffeur, a salary of thiry-five thousand rupees per month, a bonus of about two hundred thousand rupees a year and a domestic servant. Further, the ad agency would pay his electricity, petrol, car and cooking gas bills.

  He became so suspicious that he immediately knew that he wouldn’t be joining them. He’d always travelled light—a grip, an overnight bag, a cassette recorder—ready to escape in a wink from one life to some other. With the years, however, flitting had become increasingly difficult. The baggage of age—self-doubt, caution, a contempt for impulsiveness and the drag of the allure of material goods— had slown him down. ‘Now let me see . . . this sounds great . . . my resignation from the Civil Service will take some time . . . believe it or not, it’ll have to be accepted by the President of the Welfare State . . . what fun . . . I’ll draft a letter out tomorrow . . . positively by the end of the week . . .’

  The very next morning, in his office, he’d actually begun composing a letter of resignation—namely, had written down Dear Sir and crossed out Dear when his PA informed him that Housing Deputy Secretary Menon wished to see him. Agastya rushed.

  The Seychelles hadn’t pleased Menon in the least. ‘There was too much sun,’ he complained, ‘I had to wear a hat everywhere, even to the bloody loo.’ Losing his pinkness would’ve been as catastrophic as—and tantamount to—losing his caste. He whined for a while to dissolve Agastya’s envy, then slipped in a googly. ‘Where’re you staying now, by the way?’

  ‘With friends. Why?’

  ‘This is you, isn’t it?’ Menon heaved a thin file across to him. Its root was a thank-you letter addressed to The Sweet Officer Who Lives in the New Secretariat, Fourteenth Floor, from Ms Kamya Malhotra, Senior Vice-President (Public Affairs) of TV Tomorrow. The notes that preceded the letter marked its sluggish, tortuous journey within the Secretariat:

  What’s this? Sd/-Secretary (Administration General)

  Please speak with previous papers. Sd/-Deputy Secretary (Administration)

  Is this ours? Please forward with compliments to Home Affairs. Sd/-Under Secretary (Desk VIII)

  ‘This is a Government Buildings matter. Pl fwrd cmplmnts to Public Works. Sd/-Deputy Secretary (Home Affairs)

  Missent. Pl fwd to Information and Public Relations. Sd/-Deputy Secretary (Public Works IV, Watch and Ward, Additional Charge)

  Redirect to Housing. Sd/-DS (I&PR)

  Agastya tried to beam with calm intelligence at Menon. ‘Let’s say that I’ve done more than my share of Secretariat Control Room Night Duty.’ From the letter, he jotted down Kamya’s telephone numbers.

  ‘You’d better move out of the Secretariat . . . what if a terrorist blows the place apart or some clerk, warming up his lunch rotis on the electric heater in his room, sparks off a devastating fire? . . . searching for scapegoats in the post-fuckup Clean-Up-the-System scenario, won’t we just love unearthing you on the fourteenth floor! . . . tell you what— cart your bags back to Raj Atithi Guest House, I’ll order them to book you in as Deputy Secretary of a different Department. You’ll then technically be a different person. If you can show them pieces of paper to prove that you’re being transferred about every ten days, you should be able to hang out—or in—there for a year or so . . . find a good locksmith—there are about a thousand in Killi Galli in Bhayankar—and periodically change the lock on your door . . . and also get a stay order from some court . . . that should be foolproof . . . for the sake of form, however—to ensure that the file doesn’t sort of lose its momentum—I’ll have to issue you a Show Cause Notice Why the Welfare State Shouldn’t Take Disciplinary Action Against You for Your Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer of the Civil Service and for Trespassing on Welfare State Premises After Duty Hours . . . but it’ll be purely routine . . . write us back some bilge . . . and we’ll close the file.’

  Agastya returned to his room peeved at his own impotence and amused by how powerless even his resentment was. His letter of resignation would have to wait until he voided his spleen in a reply to the proposed Notice. Which, since it was intended to fuck somebody’s happiness, arrived within the hour. He meanwhile phoned TV Tomorrow and left a message for Kamya in Hinglish with a female retard.

  Reference your Show-Cause Notice No. Soandso dated Soandso, it is humbly requested that the undersigned cannot he accused of indulging in Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer because it is respectfully submitted that the undersigned is not an Officer. Had he been an Officer, he would have been treated like one and provided accommodation worthy of an Officer. May kindly see please.

  A non-Daya evening, Krishna Lunch Home as usual at seven, he ordered the thali of the day and watched the off-duty female prostitutes drinking up and gobbling down at the other tables and the on-duty male prostitute waiters strutting about, displaying their wares. Feeling safe, he smoked some of Rajani Suroor’s dope and desultorily struggled with The Statesman crossword till Kamya breezed in, dazzling like a searchlight, grinning from ear to ear, at ten-thirty. Her teeth scintillated like large pearls, a bit like being gagged by a necklace.

  ‘Hello dear, sorry main late hoon . . . shooting thi . . . how are you? . . . aap ne my letter receive kiya? . . . baap re?’ Agastya’d risen to his feet and kissed the necklace.

  She couldn’t, however, accompany him back to the Secretariat. She laughed embarrassedly at the notion, as at a disagreeable memory of adolescent foolishness. She had a carload of soul mates waiting downstairs, for one thing . . . she wouldn’t’ve turned up at all because the retard hadn’t given her Agastya’s message till about an hour ago . . . the retard couldn’t really be blamed for the mix-up because there were three Kamyas in TV Tomorrow and Necklace Kamya’s official, real name wasn’t Kamya, but (grimace) Sunita . . . a few years ago, she’d renamed herself Kamya after her all-time idol in Hum Log . . . she couldn’t quite believe that Agastya didn’t know Hum Log, the mother of all epic TV soaps . . . he apologized and asked whether she’d rather join him later at the Secretariat.

  She giggled at the idea but she couldn’t because of her Friend . . . he owned the car waiting downstairs, was a Gujarati venture capitalist (‘That sounds like a buccaneer, Kamya, what is it?’), had two flats downtown and was thus the solver of her housing problem.

  Oh. That sounded like the end of a chapter. ‘But don’t you hav
e a family? Parents?’ Just for something to say.

  Yes, she did. They stayed in the—she sobered up here, even paled a bit—suburbs; she journeyed to meet them whenever she could, about once a month. It wasn’t that she didn’t get along with them, but, you know, the suburbs, well . . . she had to be off then . . . nice to’ve met you . . . ’bye . . . ’bye.

  In office the following afternoon, Menon was in a great mood because he’d successfully intrigued all morning for Agastya’s transfer. He hadn’t enjoyed in the least the rejoinder to the Show Cause Notice. He took a dim view of wit when it wasn’t his own. When it was all settled, he couldn’t resist sending Agastya an Unofficial Reference that would fuck his happiness for a while.

  I’m dashing off this UR to let you know that the powers-that-be weren’t overly pleased with your reply to the SCN. There are plans afoot to pack you off to the boondocks. Not in itself such a ghastly idea since it’d definitely solve your housing problem!

  In brief, I learn from the grapevine that you’re going as Collector, Madna to fight the plague on a war footing. We couldn’t find any other fat cat for the rats. Congratulations.

  If you blanch at the prospect, rush to your godfathers before the transfer orders are issued and grovel right right now. If you don’t have any, see if you can make do with me.

  Your choice is to push off to the Centre as Special BOOBZ Officer, snug in the lap of Finance. Aren’t you excited, you lucky thing, you!

  Conduct Unbecoming of

  a Civil Servant

  In different parts of the country, people reacted differently to the news of the plague in the district town of Madna. In Madna itself, for example, the Chief Revenue Divisional Commissioner and Agastya’s boss-to-be, on scanning the headlines in The State of the Times, merely said ‘Hmmm’ and focussed with more intensity on the Love-Like-Hate-Adore game that he was scratching out on the side on a memo pad. Whereas fourteen hundred kilometres away in the capital, in marked contrast, Miss Lina Natesan Thomas, Junior Administrator (Under Training) in the Ministry of Heritage, Upbringing and Resource Investment—and eventually Agastya’s subordinate-to-be—submitted, on the subject of the plague, a thirty-page memorandum to the Head of her Department. To each his own, particularly in a vibrant democracy.