NOTIONAL SERVICE
A funny take on the whimsical realm of bureaucratic India through the life of a PA
Awelcome successor to Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August, Amitabha Bagchi’s The Householder is more than a thoroughly enjoyable novel. It is also a primer for those who find they can make neither head nor tail of the powers that govern us and the way our anarchic bureaucratic system functions. If ever you’ve been mystified by the whimsical rules framed by the ‘ sarkar’ from time to time, take heart from the fact that “these rules and codes serve only two purposes— one is to make all of us feel like our government is regulating things, and the other is to give them a big stick with which to beat us”.
Naresh Kumar, the protagonist, who has been PA to Mr Asthana, an IAS officer for some 20 years, has stoutly upheld the regulatory nature of the bureaucracy and is destined to feel the stick in all its stinging humiliation of a public servant who has fallen foul of the powers that be. Through the ups and downs of Kumar’s career, Bagchi paints an entertaining picture of life in bureaucratic India. The bribes he takes as well as hands up the ladder with an engaging amorality, the sycophantic grovelling he doles out dutifully as well as receives righteously, his fatalistic acceptance of the lowering of his status in the eyes of his peers and inferiors when he is ordered suspended by a perfidious minister— all of these rites of passage are recounted with warmth, empathy and a delightful sense of humour by a writer who sees bureaucratic India for what it is and refuses to be judgmental about its flaws.
The set pieces in which stock characters and situations make their appearance are funny, all the more so for being narrated in a deadpan manner— the preoccupation with whether to address someone as ‘ ji’ or ‘ saheb’; the ritual visits by Cabinet ministers and Opposition leaders to a Babaji who prescribes gemstones to improve their fortunes; the sweat- drenching fear that a call from a minister can induce in a member of the ‘ steel frame’. But even as you chuckle, you begin to understand the real reasons why we Indians are, in the ubiquitous phrase, like that only. Amitabha Bagchi has held up a mirror in which we can see ourselves— warts and all. It is a tribute to his open- mindedness that we don’t despair of ourselves as a result.