Upamanyu Chatterjee - The Mammaries of Welfare State

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Upamanyu Chatterjee was born in 1959 and joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1983. He has written a handful of short stories and two novelsEnglish, August (1988) and The Last Burden (1993). He is married and has two daughters.

In memory of friends:
Alok Roy, Vikram Malhotra and Anuradha Chopra

A gastya was so enervated by his life in the city that ever so often, when he was alone, he found himself leaning back in his desk chair or resting his head against the armrest of the lumpy sofa in his office that served as his bed, shutting his eyes and weeping silently. The cry generally made him feel better.

His office was his home, so hard-working a civil servant was he. Just a week ago, hed been placidly content in his position of a Joint Commissioner, Rehabilitation (on Leave Not Granted and Without Pay), snugly afloat on the unplumbed murk of the Prajapati Aflatoon Welfare State Public Servants Housing Complex Transit Hostel in the countrys capital. As an illegal occupant of flat A-214, he had felt in those days cocooned and distanced from the swirl around him. Marathon power cuts in summer, a cleanish Municipal swimming pool a minutes cycle ride away, great dope, no sex thoughall in all his life on leave had been okay-minus. Then out of the bluePersonnel always moved like lightning when it wanted to fuck somebodys happinesshed received his transfer orders to this fifteen-by-fifteen boarded-up section of veranda on the fourteenth floor of the New Secretariat in the western provinces capital city.

The grimy, once-orange, lumpy sofa was for VIP visitors. His predecessor had won it from Protocol and Stores after a stimulating five-week struggle. Beneath the windows lay the plain wooden bench that Agastya had stolen from down the corridor. It was his kitchenette; on it stood his kettle, cafetire, electric stove and tea things. Beside the door, on a desk, sat a personal computer swathed in dusty dust sheetsthe Ultimatum System Configuration Module 133 Mhz Intel Processor 8MB RAM 1 GB HDD 1.44 FDDSVGA Megachrome Monitor Skylight 99 was entitled to air- conditioning, so it had to remain. The windows of his section of veranda offered a breathtaking view of the worlds largest slum undulating for miles down to the grey fuzziness of the Arabian Sea.

Agastya spent three to four nights a week at Dayas, a forty-five-year-old divorcee whom hed met on the luxury coach that hed caught out of the Transit Hostel on the occasion of his transfer. Theyd found themselves sitting side by side at the rear of the hot and crowded bus. Luxury simply meant that its tickets cost more. Daya was bespectacled, and had been dressed in a whitish salwaar-kameez. Agastya had been in his valedictory present from the staff of his Rehabilitation office, his new blue jeans. After eight years in the civil service, hed come to dread farewell gifts chosen by subordinate office employees; after the tearful speech-making, theyd routinely, on each occasion, given him a clock.

So that even though time flies, youll remember us, theyd explained when theyd felt that he hadnt looked grateful enough. At the Rehabilitation Commissionerate, therefore, hed summoned the Office Superintendent and asked:

Do you plan to collect some money for a farewell present for me? Yes? How much will it be? If you dont mind, Ill accompany whoevers going to buy the thing...

The long last seat of the bus had been intended for six bums; eight had been a disgraceful crush. Agastyas right thigh had virtually fused with Dayas left; thus the ice had been broken. The heat had helped too.

Shed taken off her glasses rather early in their relationship. She had large, tired eyes and a wide mouth. Agastya had immediately yearned to go to sleep with his face restful between her ample, firm breasts. Only repressed homos, his soul had pointed out to him then, long to fuck women old enough to be their mothers, especially when their own mothers are dead. Ah well, que sera sera.

Shed wanted her sunglasses and some tissues from her travelling bag and hed got up to take it down from the overhead rack when hed noticed an uneven dark blue strip running down the outside of the thigh of her whitish salwaar, like a ribbon down a bandmasters trouser leg. His new blue jeans had been shedding colour like a snake its skin. Destined To Fade, ran their ad; they were called Eff-Ups. Hed died of embarrassment for four seconds, then had plonked down with her bag on his lap, determined not to get up till journeys end, or till she lay down on the floor of the bus, wriggled out of her kurta, peeled off her salwaar, sighed and begged him to gnaw off her panties with his teethwhichever was earlier. Hadnt she noticed how hed touched her up? Ahh, her spectacles were off. Ohh, the blessings of imperfect sight.

Where in the city will you be staying?

Oh... at the Raj Atithi State Guest House. Daya had looked blank, reminding him that the world of the city encompassed much more than the universe of the Welfare State. Thats on Pandit Samrat Shiromani Aflatoon Mahamarg. Shed continued to look blank. On Cathedral Road, between the Secretariat and what must be the worlds largest garbage dump.

Her face had cleared. Ah. The Secretariat was a splendid colonial structure before they boarded up those verandas and installed those Freedom Fighter statues.

The Raj Atithi Guest House was a fourteen-storey building crawling with low life. A five-foot-high wall separated its compound from the worlds largest garbage dump. Atop the wall stretched four rows of barbed wire, from various points of which sagged torn polythene bags of diverse colours. These contained human shit in different stages of decomposition. Theyd been flung, of course, at the dump and hadnt made it across the wall. They in fact looked pathetic, like POWs in a Hollywood movie ensnared in a vain attempt to escape from a concentration camp.

Hmmm... breathe deep, my dear, this fragrant, invigorating air, said Agastya to himself as he crossed the covered car park towards the stairs.

Amongstand inthe twenty-odd white Ambassador cars there nested the low life with its charpais, kerosene stoves, lines of washing and racing children. It included some of the drivers, peons, bearers, attendants, cooks, orderlies and sweepers who worked in the Guest House and the Secretariat. Like a million other servants of the Welfare State in the city, they faced a housing problem. Theyd got themselves enrolled in the list of those needed for Emergency Services and in almost every other list for priority housing that theyd heard of, namely, Priority Housing List, Top Priority Housing List, Chief Ministers Quota, Housing Ministers Quota; Scheduled Castes Percent, Scheduled Tribes Percent, Backward Classes Segment, Other Backward Classes Segment and Depressed Groups Reservation. They collected receipts, notifications, stamped documents, resolutions and photocopies of illegible forms as a kind of substitute for brick and cement; nobody had either land or houses for them.

On the first floor, Reception was a noisy ceiling fan, a decolam-topped counter with an abandoned dinner thali on it, a flickering tubelight, a vacant armchair, and behind it on the floor a snoring maid in a blue sari. Agastya rapped on the counter, and Koi hai? he hollered in his were-the-Steel-Frame-thats-kept-the-country-together voice. The maid snorted and briefly opened one eye. She stopped snoring.