The Mammaries of the Welfare State by Upamanyu Chatterjee Page A

processions and petitions, of course, was to assert that one too was a respectable employee of the Welfare State, and not just a wastrel of the streets picked up for one’s smile and one’s tight brown skin. Officially, in different files, Chamundi was a Commissioner’s-Residence-Telephone-Answerer, a Tribal-Quota-Daily-Wage-Gardener, an Eldest-Eligible-Male-Family-Member-Granted-Employment-on-Untimely-Death-of-Only- Wage-Earner-of-Selfsame-Family, a Reserved-Category-Class- IV-Transferee-from-the-Prime-Minister’s-Grant-Project and a Hidden-Beneficiary-of-the-Integrated-Tribal-Development- Plan. ‘ . . . And Makhmal Bagai Saab dropped in minutes before you arrived. Murari showed him into the camp office, from where he made a couple of phone calls, one even to Madam Saab in Navi Chipra . . .’
    His camp office, regrettably, was not the room wherein Raghupati could officially indulge in camp, but instead, a specimen of a venerable colonial institution—simply the office away from office, set up at home or anywhere else, sometimes temporarily, but more often, like several other creations of the Welfare State, for a season that spanned for ever.
    Triplespeak:
    i) I, being such a senior officer, need a gang of lackeys at home to cook, wash up, wash the clothes, massage me, knead my wife’s feet, look after the children, scrub the floors, scour the toilets, tend to the lawns and the grandparents, buy vegetables, drive the family around, switch on the television. However, I am too senior to be so foolish as to actually pay these lackeys out of my own (truly meagre) salary.
    ii) The office, the Welfare State, should pay for them because, as per our Civil Service General Regulations (No. VI. 74. a.xiv. in conjunction with No. VII. 22.f.ix.), since I may be summoned for official work at any hour of the day ornight, I am on duty every second of my life till I retire or die, whichever is earlier; every moment of my existence is therefore official, thus the State should cough up for every breath of it. Naturally, the more senior one is, the more indispensable one becomes—experience and all that; if the earth doesn’t tremble when one walks, at least the downtrodden do.
    iii) I am well aware that the welfare of its senior civil servants must not be seen as a priority item on the agenda of the Welfare State. It is therefore suggested that a) to justify the presence in one’s official home of several office employees,
    b) to pass off various kinds of domestic work as official and
    c) to fork out official wages for the same, the simplest course would be to carry on a colonial tradition and open a camp office in the bungalow—a telephone with national and international dialling facilities, severe wooden chairs, a couple of photos of some Aflatoons, discoloured jute matting, a heap or two of grey files and casually-strewn, rough, off-white paper.
    The Joint Secretary of the Civil Service Welfare Association had forwarded to Raghupati for comments and ‘a preliminary reaction’ a handwritten novella of complaint from Miss Lina Natesan. Her letter was addressed to the Union Cabinet Secretary and some half-a-dozen other senior bureaucrats. With an eye seasoned in scanning bilge, Raghupati riffled through the pages of near-hysterical prose. He’d have to try again to arrange for her transfer to a post under his thumb. His hooded eyes watched Chamundi thwack and pummel his left thigh. He shifted so that his tumescent penis could be bang under the boy’s nose. The boy shifted too. Raghupati saw red. He reached out, grabbed Chamundi by the scruff of his neck and yanked his head down so that it bobbed inches above Tumescent, which, in welcome, began to perk upquite a bit. That restored Raghupati’s good humour. He lifted his bum off the mattress and swayed his hips and his tool to the whines of Mutesh. Chamundi remembered to giggle nervously. He, however, knew that Raghupati wouldn’t actually bugger or assault him in any other