The Mammaries of the Welfare State

by Upamanyu Chatterjee

  They aren’t one family at all, certainly not in the sense of being linked to one another by blood and genealogy. A couple of hundred years ago, a migrant family from the North-West—origins unknown—did settle down at Aflatoonabad and engage itself in one of the two professions traditional to that town—the confectioner’s, the other being, of course, the conjuror’s. Across the generations, some of its descendants did take to public life—the names Pashupati, Ghatotkach, Trimurti, Prabhakar, come readily to mind—but they would account for only a fraction of all the Aflatoons after whom have been named the thousands of buildings, monuments, institutions, gardens, shopping arcades, residential areas, stadiums, community toilets and other public places of the land.

  The reason is quite simple—and rather peculiar to the Welfare State. At various significant moments in the history of the nation, both before and after its cataclysmic independence from colonial rule, in different regions of the country, any able aspirant to political power, quite early in his career—and overnight—simply became an Aflatoon. Documentation collectively being both the backbone and the memory of the Welfare State—it being altogether a different matter that individually considered, each one of those files, records, statements and accounts is as flimsy and fleeting, as fickle and provisional, as a used wrapper in a gale—documentation being paramount, each political hopeful produced at the right time, like a rabbit out of a hat, the required proof of identity—a hospital record, a school certificate, a Municipal extract, a court entry. Lo and behold, yet another Aflatoon! Except that at the moment of the manifestation of the new magician, there usually stood by no audience to witness the miracle because one doesn’t come by audiences that cheaply, not even in an overcrowded country. However, by the time that the parvenu Aflatoon, of whichever political hue, came to be noticed in Municipal, district and regional circles, a decade or so would have passed and the assumed name would have become as snug as a second skin—peelable, of course, in moments of grave crises.

  Bhanwar Virbhim, for instance, had once been an Aflatoon and it was rumoured of Sukumaran Govardhan too (not to forget Makhmal Bagai, who a couple of times had toyed with the notion as with a gun, but had been sternly rebuked on each occasion by his father for even thinking of tarnishing a fair name by adopting it). Compelling caste factors—votes, in brief, ‘national emergencies’, to use Virbhim’s own compelling phrase—had guided him in his choice of various aliases. In general, he had picked wisely, having become Chief Minister of the regional government twice and between the two tenures, Deputy Minister for Information at the Centre.

  However, ambitious and astute that he was, he did sometimes wonder whether in the long run, he’d played well his cards—and indeed, whether for him the game was over—because in the seven decades since Independence, the nation’s sixteen Prime Ministers had all been Aflatoons.

  These Aflatoons popping up, time after time, like boils all over the country—what did the original first family think of them? Not much, really. In the first place, it wasn’t even certain of its own existence; however could it have the collective strength of purpose to reflect on and reject these obscure, small-town, provincial pretenders? It questioned itself but rarely; when it did, its examination was myopic. No two family members could agree on which line of descent constituted the main trunk of its tree—it couldn’t possibly be Tirupati’s, for instance, for his eldest had in the early twenties decamped with his Chinese masseuse and apparently died utterly content running his restaurant in Hong Kong. A trunk after all has to be rock-like, solidly respectable. We are a banyan tree, asserted those of the clan that could be bothered; with the years we spread and thrust down new trunks. In the vast area that we provide shade to (and in which in general we prevent any vegetation of worth from growing), it is quite possible that now and then some bastard sapling, resilient, doughty, survives to attain a respectable height and indeed, with time, comes to resemble one of our offshoots. Doubtless because it has imbibed some of our qualities, some—if you permit—of our magic.

  Thursday evening. In the fifty-by-forty lobby of the Madna International Hotel, the players of Vyatha, some ten in all, led by their deputy, lounge about, awaiting Rajani Suroor’s return from his round of the offices of some of the senior bureaucrats of the district. Headless, the players have spent the day roaming around the town, avoiding certain localities like the plague, searching for alternative sites for their shows. They now quaff tea before the TV, placed at a loose end by the day-and-night cricket match on it having been interrupted first by a duststorm and then, more permanently, by acts of arson in the stands.

  Makhmal Bagai and Suroor arrive simultaneously at the hotel. Suroor is in the private taxi that he’s hired for the duration of his stay in Madna, a sad, dusty, hot, noisy, off-white Ambassador, Bagai in his lorry-like Tata Safari, steel- grey, black-glassed, air-conditioned, monstrous. It augurs ill for Suroor that his Ambassador doesn’t realize that it has to allow the Safari to precede it up the fifteen metres to the porch; Suroor moreover debouches and mounts the steps without so much as a backward glance. The third thing that puts Bagai off is that the single parking space available under the porch has been taken up by the one kind of vehicle that he cannot dislodge, an official car, again an off-white Ambassador but this one altogether from a different planet—gleaming, with wraparound sun glasses, an aerial, a siren and a large crimson light on its forehead.

  The fourth thing that miffs Bagai is that Dinkar Sathe doesn’t receive him in the lobby. Indeed, no one does. In contrast, a large gang has abandoned the TV and is milling around that long-haired joker from that seedy car. ‘See to things,’ Bagai commands one of his cohorts who, smirking in anticipation, stalks off towards the reception counter. From where, a few minutes later, he returns, looking apprehensive.

  ‘No one’s available, Prince. The Collector of Madna dropped by on a surprise inspection and everyone’s scurrying around after him.’

  Bagai subsided into a sofa and glanced across at Suroor smiling intelligently at whatever his Deputy was telling him. On an impulse, he snapped his fingers at and beckoned to him. To his horror, Suroor, continuing to smile intelligently, snapped his fingers at and beckoned to him right back. Somewhat at a loss, Bagai then took out from his kurta pocket his father’s gun, a .22, and aimed it at Suroor’s face. ‘Prince, no!’ hissed a cohort in panic. Suroor, dramatic to the last, acted out being shot and with a moan and a hand over his heart, toppled back into the sofa behind him, perhaps to avoid further conversation with the Deputy.

  ‘Find out who he is and whether he knows who I am.’ Without enthusiasm, a cohort shuffled off in Suroor’s direction.

  Bagai weighed the gun in his hand. It was terribly unmanly to take it out, wave it about and finally not to use it, particularly when everybody was gaping at it. Both depressed and nervous, he placed it between his thighs on the sofa and covered it with the end of his kurta. To the female attendant who timorously tripped up to him to repeat that the entire hotel merely awaited the Collector’s departure to focus all its attention on Bagai’s wishes and to add that until then, whether there was anything in particular that he and his companions wanted, he calmly said, ‘Ice cream.’

  ‘Of course sir.’ She was short, dark and pretty, in a sari of green and gold. ‘Which flavours would you like?’

  She was not servile enough. She spoke her few English phrases too facilely. She didn’t look as though she was physically being attracted to him. She was about to spark off his notorious frightening temper. ‘Who are you, Madam, to ask me questions? Why do you lie when you claim to know who I am? Has not the hotel been instructed time and again to phone my house every weekend to find out whether I’m free and likely to drop in with my friends for a drink, a snack or dinner? Yet nobody calls!’ He had raised his voice and begun to glare at her but he would have preferred in the circumstances to deal with a male attendant. With a man—waiter, steward or porter-bouncer-concierge-lobby manager—he could in a matter of seconds begin
his reviling, his pushing in the chest and cuffing about the head, his glancing over his shoulder to see if he was impressing any females in the vicinity with his manliness, his refusal to let an imagined insult slip by, his concern for, and support of the social order.

  ‘Tutti-frutti-vanilla, sir?’

  ‘And after the Collector leaves, whiskey,’ suggested Suroor, beaming with confidence in his own endearing ways. He’d returned with the cohort and stood beside Bagai’s sofa. He thrust out a hand. ‘I had certainly been hoping to meet you during our stay in Madna.’

  Makhmal was confused. Almost in reflex, he lifted up his kurta and retrieved his gun. He didn’t like in the least the way things were unfolding. In a typical soiree at the International, within the first fifteen minutes, after the hotel staff had scampered about enough to appease him, the beers would’ve arrived and been rejected for not being chilled—and the pakodas for not being spicy—enough; a succession of hotel staff (in increasing order of importance) would’ve tried, as in a vignette out of myth, to pacify his anger. In the midst of the mess, sullenly munching, quaffing and eyeing a female receptionist or two, stone-deaf to the entreaties of, say, a Chief Food and Beverages Manager, he, having learnt a trick or two from his father, would’ve played the caste card. It had never failed to thicken any plot. He’d’ve fixed his maroon eyes on the Manager of the moment and mumblingly accused some other hotel employee of having affronted his, Makhmal’s, caste; how would never be made clear and in the circumstances wasn’t required to be. It would’ve been in very bad taste to enquire—and moreover, not of much use, since over the years, the wide canvas of politics had compelled Bhanwar Virbhim and his family to own up to, and feel responsible for, a thousand castes. I am the voice of the downtrodden, I am the soul of all the depressed, backward, repressed, suppressed and unrecognized castes. Any imagined insult to any of those millions is an arrow in my heart. No matter what that poor innocent hotel employee might have thought behind his tits or expressed in his eyes, it insulted me. I know it, because caste is in the marrow of my bones, just as it is in his and in yours. You might want to shush it away and get on with it into the next millennium, but you won’t go very far without having to return for it. It is integral to our lives and our state; however can you dream of welfare without understanding caste?

  ‘Careful with your rod, prince,’ warned a cohort. ‘It’s more potent than acid in their faces.’

  Makhmal giggled. He loved filthy talk. He preferred it to sex. For him, in fact, filthy talk was sex. Ever since that genius Rani Chandra had thought up and launched her Listen to Love series of CDs and cassettes, and Bhupen Raghupati had gifted him a box set of them on his joining his father’s political party, he, Makhmal, had lost interest in ogling, abducting and molesting the women on the streets of Madna. Instead, with a Walkman in his lap and headphones in place, he, calm of mind, all passion spent, had begun to beatifically wave, through the windows of the Tata Safari, at all the women that his motorcade had ploughed past. When the windows had been down, startled, puzzled, some of them had even waved back.

  Makhmal was short, pale and soft. He had long, elaborately fluffed-up hair, hooded eyes and a thick moustache that half-hid pink lips and a gap-toothed mouth. At the age of thirteen, he’d failed his Fifth Standard school exams for the third time in a row and in passing, knifed his Social Studies teacher in the Teachers Only toilet. The Teachers Only had been the only toilet in the school with an intact mirror and young Makhmal had been in front of it, combing, inspecting and recombing his hair. For him, these moments of self-examination had always demanded extra concentration. Unfortunately—particularly for the teacher—Social Studies had peremptorily interrupted him—with a thwack on the back of his head—at the very moment when he’d been trying to get a lock to swing down over his forehead and flip back across his ear.

  His conduct in general was one of the reasons why his father found it crucial to have as Madna’s Police Superintendent an officer that he could trust. Over the years—first, when Bhanwar Virbhim had been an intelligent, ambitious, determined, ageing, frightful hoodlum, and later, when he’d risen, in stages, to become a Member of the Legislative Assembly, then Member of Parliament, Regional Minister, Guardian Minister, Principal Minister, Chief Minister and finally Central Deputy Minister—over the years, the outrageousness of Makhmal’s offences against society and the law had kept pace with his father’s increasing clout. It was almost as though the insecure son needed to continually test the range of the influence of the father.

  It is one of the functions of the munificence, the kindness, of the Welfare State to allow within it the worst rogues to become utterly respectable. It is the macro view, the Hindu view. All is Maya, Salvation lies in Forgiveness, Da, Dayadhvam, Damyata. Thus a murderer like Bhanwar Virbhim could rise to be Central Cabinet Minister. Thus another killer, a depraved near-rapist like Makhmal could notify his candidature for a seat in the Regional Assembly from the constituency of Madna. Upon his announcement, the Dainik had asked him whether his criminal record would embarrass him in his political career.

  ‘Not at all. Why? Look at our Parliament. One hundred and seventy-four Honourable Members have criminal records. I think that you want the State to discriminate against criminals exactly the way in which it discriminates against the lower castes. What is your caste by the way, may I know? We are innocent until proved guilty. Our Freedom Fighters went to jail, so you can say that they too have criminal records. Learn to give the downtrodden a chance to rise, to make good. Only then can the nation become great. May I have your card, please . . .?’

  Near-rapist because Makhmal ejaculated too early. To prevent him from becoming depressed and therefore even more violent, wise Baba Mastram had pointed out to him that he was fortunate in that he could release his energy on all the women that he saw without being caught out by any subsequent silly medical examination of the victim. The idea elated him and kept him going for years on end. Not a thinking man. His modus operundee (a terrible, tasteless bilingual pun there, Bhupen Raghupati’s, of course—rundee being Hindustani for whore) was to cruise the poorer quarters of Madna for flesh, snatch ‘n grab off the streets, maul the mammaries of in the air-conditioned Tata Safari for half a minute or so (till he Miltoned, as it were), thrust between them a fifty- or a hundred-rupee note and shove out the possessor of a few kilometres down the road, shocked, in tears, but richer. Modus Operundee had stopped with Rani Chandra. Raghupati had suggested to Bhanwar Saab that the Ministry of Culture recommend Rani Chandra for the Revered Silver Lotus, the ninth-highest honour of the land, for her Commitment to the Improvement of the Quality of Life. Bhanwar Virbhim hadn’t responded. He never did. Silence was wisdom and energy conservation and took you places.

  Uncertain about whom to shoot—Rajani Suroor or the female attendant in green and gold, and tense because uncertain, diffident about whether to fire at all, unsure whether everybody in the lobby was openly or secretly laughing at him, whether he’d impressed even one soul, and growing more peeved by the second, Makhmal Bagai lifted and aimed his .22 right between the faces of his two potential targets at a wall clock on a pillar some twenty feet away. He liked that Suroor had stopped smiling but nevertheless felt that that wasn’t enough.

  ‘Chocolate walnut chip, sir?’

  ‘Stop flashing your rod, Prince. I think the Collector’s on his way down.’

  So was Makhmal’s gun arm when in witless relief, Suroor’s smirk reappeared. So Makhmal pulled the trigger. ‘You rat,’ he grunted beneath the bang; an epitaph of sorts for a strolling player in a small town unofficially beset by the plague.

  Rodents and firearms feature as well in Miss Lina Natesan’s memorandum, for they are equally prominent elements of the official life in Aflatoon Bhavan. We kick off at Housing Problem of her novella.

  Last Wednesday, when I entered my office chamber at 8.59 a.m., I smelt a rat.

  In our chamber at that time, there were two. I do not believe that Shri Dastidar and
I have any quarrel with each other. On the very first day of our professional relationship, I dispatched to him a note stating my terms of reference: All communications with the undersigned, I represented to him, must of necessity be formal, official and recorded; there was neither scope nor need for informal exchanges in our chamber. I must add here that he understood my position immediately and admirably. We exchange memos infrequently but they are invariably terse and to the point. For example:

  To

  Junior Administrator (Under Training)

  From

  Under Secretary (Gajapati Aflatoon Centenary Celebrations, Our Endangered Tribal Heritage and Demotic and Indigenous Drama)

  Good Afternoon. While you were out for five minutes or so before lunch, I received on my extension number an obscene phone call for you. The caller was keen to have your extension number, so I gave him Nilesh’s. He snorted on hearing it—perhaps it was Nilesh himself. Otherwise, all is well, by the grace of Allah.

  However, I should point out here that our exchanges are easier for him because he has personal staff. He just has to buzz for his peon and order him to summon his stenographer, to whom he dictates his memo. He was gracious enough in one of his very early notes to offer me the services of his personal staff, but naturally I had to refuse. The offices of the Welfare State do not run on charity. I have consistently maintained that there are limits to welfare.

  In fairness to Shri Dastidar, he did formally seek my permission (in a beautifully-phrased note) before he started his tai-chi exercises in our room. I suspect that it was his tai-chi that spurred him to evict with such zeal the furniture of all our ex-colleagues from our chamber. Since Stores did not help us in the least, Shri Dastidar and his peon, a crafty, middle-aged shirker called Dharam Chand, dumped those cupboards and racks in the adjacent Gents’ Toilet.