‘… If tyranny exists In India, the despots are those mild- mannered, well-meaning men who hold endless meetings and churn out hour after hour sheets of foolscap smudgily typewritten and illegibly signed as secretary-something – deputy or joint, additional or special, private or principal, and the like…’
Clerks,
Peons, soughs of rumour, surround
His presence – South-Block idol
Who stares at us
Through his stone-eye –
A pupil of basalt in an iris of granite.
The top of his table is the back
Of a tortoise balancing files. Watch him
Hold meetings, dictate memos, fire bromides,
Masquerade gerrymandering
As superior argument – his gobbledegook
A plantain-spadix, spathes
Upon spathes of words with varying
Shades of purport and intent. Pelf
Draws him as a gnat attracts a lizard.
Ask the PA, it’s blue chips and real estate
During office-time. Toadstool
Sprouting upon my land’s
Mixen of poverty who flees the capital
In May and June
To cool his rump in the hills – Srinagar
Simla, Darjeeling. His consanguinity
Well-placed through manipulations
of the usual kind
One day, Ram Nath the peon, as he opened the office door
Found a rat in a trash basket, which lay toppled on the floor.
He told it to the head-clerk who was sunk in a file,
He half-heard the peon and dismissed him with a smile.
The female typist spied one in the drawers of her table
She screamed. The head-clerk advised her to be stable.
When they ransacked almirahs, like commandos well-trained,
The whole staff surrounded him and complained and complained.
They showed him mice droppings, several typed-paper scraps,
The old man raised his head, said, ‘Time for action, perhaps.’
So he went to Engineer Sa’ab, who listened but didn’t care,
His head buried in files, he gave him a blank stare.
The pest became brazen, pranced through legs of the staff,
Nibbled away carbon sheets, bit typing ribbons into half.
The beadle, he turned pale, despite the ripeness of his age,
Reappeared before his boss, stuttered, ‘Sir, rodents are on rampage.
The latter looked up calmly, he had dealt with funky chaps
‘All right’, he said, ‘I’ll sanction a couple of traps.
‘From which grant, Sir?’ the Babu, he queried back straight
It non-plussed his superior, ‘Well, if it isn’t too late,
Write to the Chief Engineer. Their office is next door.’
But things are not that simple. There were problems galore.
The headquarters’ staff was a very experienced lot
They insisted on a rep to study the problem on the spot.
Cyclostyled forms and memos, meanwhile,
And kilos of stationery were crunched away in style.
A sunmica table-top, five cane-backed chairs,
Two double window curtains, the jute mat on the stairs.
Three months passed thus, and when the contraptions appeared,
The rats sniffed a rat, and totally disappeared.
Lately it’s rumoured their murine forces are loose
In the Chief Engineer’s office which sanctioned traps for use.
But the PWD clerks beam with beetle-chewing smiles
They have little work now because of rat-bitten files.
If not the honourable court, it’s the rats in every nook and corner of the Townhall office at Chandni Chowk that drive MCD officials into a tizzy. As soon as the clock strikes 5 pm, time to leave, all MCD babus and employees shut their files and ensure that every important file or document is locked away safe in drawers and cupboards as the rodents seem to have developed a taste for MCD files. Rat traps and poison don’t seem to help. Leader of opposition and BJP councilor Subhash Arya is, however, quite attached to the only rat in his chamber which he insists has never given him any trouble. The trick, Arya says, is to leave behind something edible for the rat to nibble on, thus protecting all the files. The rat appears every day at five in the evening, just when Arya is about to leave. Indian Express 11 Dec 2006
Prayers Of A Municipality Clerk
(Against whom disciplinary action was taken for frequently availing unauthorized leave)
O Lord, land me such a job where there is sweet nothing to do,
High salary and lots of perks – and holidays, quite a few.
*Prabhu chakri aisi dijiye, kaam kachu no hoye
Muh mange vetan milay, har din chutti hoye.“
Downstream system
Not yet designed
A dam is planned
It’s the usual clandestine
Technocrat-politico
combine
Gelt released
By willing banks.
Payolas flow
In well-defined
Channels down the spillway
Eased
By a helping hand.
Folks call it
The Engineer’s Millway
That turns cement into sand.
* ‘The problem is that our Civil Engineers after obtaining an engineering degree get into the habit of eating cement and stone.” Anna Hazare (Indian Express 6 Oct 1998)
Director – National Highways of India
My post draws fat, shady offers,
We chaired drones lap up all the honey
I have sworn to stuff my personal coffers
With all I can of public money.
Ministry
‘This’, he said, ‘is the corridor of clout.
You’ll come to know of it bit by bit,
Who is high or who is low, it is all about.
For where you stand, depends on where you sit.
Joint Secretary, Defence
You may float a global tender
You may do your tests and trials
Naught will move till you tell your vendor
’It’s us alone who move the files.
Your deal is truly done
Be it Barak or Denel Missile
German sub or Bofors gun
Just grease our palms with a smile.
Additional Secretary
His occupancy of the swivel chair
The face averted in a half profile
His conversation on the telephone
The drawl, the gag, the corrugated smile
Preclude you from an anfractuous world
To enter which you must become a file.
Babu’s Song
I blame the chap in Gandhi cap
I tie him all up in knots
His many vices save me in crisis
It’s I who call the shots.
My craft is like a nimbus tract
High and dense and dim
I jigger figures, I fog the facts
I fool you folks, and him!
My strength lies in the book of rules
Rules to deprive, defeat you
Rules multiplied, rules misapplied
Rules I bend to cheat you.
Call a bribe by any name
Commission, pay-off, kick-back
Honour and shame are one and same
What matters is the kitty you stack.
Cabinet Secretary
(Words of a steno working in his office)
He is too big, we are too small
We know nothing, he knows all.
If Samson’s strength lay in his hair,
It is in the pending file, the power of his chair.
An IAS Advises His Son
Money wipes out the wrinkles of old age
Money wipes out the colour of the skin
Money wipes out the stigma of caste
Or the ignominy of crime and sin.
It’s the chair that brought me such wealth;
The coffers of the state are so deep,
Graft is all sycophancy and stealth,
And it burgeons where poverty is steep.
‘Let our wretched poor always starve,
Don’t care a damn if their kids malnourish,
Your own kingdom is what you must carve,
Just send them to hell. You flourish!
Free Workshop
* It has been reliably learnt that these ringing words of the IAS officer have so appealed to India’s defence brass, corporate honchos and even the judges of superior courts that they, too, have resolved to counsel their progeny similarly. The politicos, however, have taken such an exhortation as ‘old hat’, and accused the IAS bureaucrat of plagiarizing their ideas.
Rafflesia – a tropical flower that looks and smells like rotten fish
