The Mammaries of the Welfare State by Upamanyu Chatterjee Page B
Authors: Upamanyu Chatterjee
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Financial Advisor (Housing for Cultural Luminaries) Mrs Minu Tutreja, who faced each other, and Assistant Heritage Advisor (Pending Parliamentary Questions) Mr Govindarajulu, who shared his desk with Additional Counsellor (Delayed Pensions and Republic Day Parade) Mrs Govindarajulu. As per norms, each officer had been assigned one large Godrej steel almirah, one three-tier open wooden file rack, one heater, one wooden teapoy for his or her official water jug and glass, and a second teapoy for his or her telephone. At Annexure M of her memorandum, Miss Thomas has provided for the reader’s perusal a fairly accurate sketch of the room as it stood two months ago.
The sketch makes it clear that to reach the door from their seats, both Shri Sengupta and Mrs Minu Tutreja had to squeeze through between the wall and Miss Thomas’s chair. Shri Sengupta always preferred to rub his private parts against her shoulder while Mrs Tutreja liked Miss Thomas’s upper arm to knead
her
buttocks
en passant.
We all have our quirks. Miss Thomas complained in writing (Annexure N) aboutboth the private parts and the buttocks. They were consequently removed. Then there were five. Miss Thomas has always believed in the power of the written word to move mountains, what to speak of buns.
For the record—and for a clearer picture of the room— about a week before the plague, Shri Govindarajulu went to hospital and hasn’t returned yet—not at least to his old desk. During lunch hour one day, Mrs Govindarajulu reached across the files that they all found so convenient to use as table mats and whammed her husband on his skull with her steel lunch box. The others present couldn’t glimpse much of Shri Govindarajulu’s face, because of all that curry and blood. Domestic discord, no doubt, spilling over into office hours. A couple of days after, Mrs Govindarajulu availed of the Leave Travel Concession facility and undertook an apparently unending religious tour of the South. Then there were three.
Dr Srinivas Chakki’s sudden disappearance from the room was effected by the Disaster Management Cell. He left for Madna on plague duty. Then there were two. To quote from Housing Problem of Miss Natesan’s memorandum:
Dr Chakki is also my neighbour in the Prajapati Aflatoon Welfare State Public Servants’ Housing Complex Transit Hostel near the Pashupati Aflatoon Public Gardens. Does your good self know the Transit Hostel? Twelve hundred one-room fully-furnished flats built at breathtaking speed by the Ministry of Public Works four years ago for the
International Man, Woman and Child in Nature
Conference that was eventually held at Djakarta? Anyway, I stay in B-318 and Dr Chakki in C-401. We have been meeting almost every morning at six for the last four years or so because we both go and buy milk at about that time from the local Mammary Dairy booth. It was while we were returning from the booth on the morning ofNovember 27 that Dr Chakki revealed to me that he had received orders to join the Central Team of Experts that was being Rushed to Madna that very day.
I should add, to place matters in perspective, that he is an Assistant Director in the Ministry of Public Health (and thus, according to pay scale, half a rung senior to the undersigned).
He returned from Madna on December 7 with the plague and both a red alert and the police out for him. As one of our national newspapers puts it, he is truly the hero-villain of the Prajapati Aflatoon Transit Hostel. He is a hero for having gone to Madna to fight the dreaded disease and a villain for having returned with it.
He is an entomologist by profession. Entomology is defined as the science dealing with insects of public interest, much like a litigation. Dr Chakki has over twenty years’ experience in the field. He is a veteran of the Menugunta Typhus Epidemic of 1973, the Gaurangabad Malaria Scare of 1976 and the Phatna Encephalitis Rout of 1979. His open letter to four national newspapers, on which
The sketch makes it clear that to reach the door from their seats, both Shri Sengupta and Mrs Minu Tutreja had to squeeze through between the wall and Miss Thomas’s chair. Shri Sengupta always preferred to rub his private parts against her shoulder while Mrs Tutreja liked Miss Thomas’s upper arm to knead
her
buttocks
en passant.
We all have our quirks. Miss Thomas complained in writing (Annexure N) aboutboth the private parts and the buttocks. They were consequently removed. Then there were five. Miss Thomas has always believed in the power of the written word to move mountains, what to speak of buns.
For the record—and for a clearer picture of the room— about a week before the plague, Shri Govindarajulu went to hospital and hasn’t returned yet—not at least to his old desk. During lunch hour one day, Mrs Govindarajulu reached across the files that they all found so convenient to use as table mats and whammed her husband on his skull with her steel lunch box. The others present couldn’t glimpse much of Shri Govindarajulu’s face, because of all that curry and blood. Domestic discord, no doubt, spilling over into office hours. A couple of days after, Mrs Govindarajulu availed of the Leave Travel Concession facility and undertook an apparently unending religious tour of the South. Then there were three.
Dr Srinivas Chakki’s sudden disappearance from the room was effected by the Disaster Management Cell. He left for Madna on plague duty. Then there were two. To quote from Housing Problem of Miss Natesan’s memorandum:
Dr Chakki is also my neighbour in the Prajapati Aflatoon Welfare State Public Servants’ Housing Complex Transit Hostel near the Pashupati Aflatoon Public Gardens. Does your good self know the Transit Hostel? Twelve hundred one-room fully-furnished flats built at breathtaking speed by the Ministry of Public Works four years ago for the
International Man, Woman and Child in Nature
Conference that was eventually held at Djakarta? Anyway, I stay in B-318 and Dr Chakki in C-401. We have been meeting almost every morning at six for the last four years or so because we both go and buy milk at about that time from the local Mammary Dairy booth. It was while we were returning from the booth on the morning ofNovember 27 that Dr Chakki revealed to me that he had received orders to join the Central Team of Experts that was being Rushed to Madna that very day.
I should add, to place matters in perspective, that he is an Assistant Director in the Ministry of Public Health (and thus, according to pay scale, half a rung senior to the undersigned).
He returned from Madna on December 7 with the plague and both a red alert and the police out for him. As one of our national newspapers puts it, he is truly the hero-villain of the Prajapati Aflatoon Transit Hostel. He is a hero for having gone to Madna to fight the dreaded disease and a villain for having returned with it.
He is an entomologist by profession. Entomology is defined as the science dealing with insects of public interest, much like a litigation. Dr Chakki has over twenty years’ experience in the field. He is a veteran of the Menugunta Typhus Epidemic of 1973, the Gaurangabad Malaria Scare of 1976 and the Phatna Encephalitis Rout of 1979. His open letter to four national newspapers, on which
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