City of Djinns. William Dalrymple

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СКАЧАТЬ are still a force to be reckoned with in the fifteen hundred metres, and sometimes our cricket team …’

      ‘No, no,’ said Mr Singh. ‘Still you are not catching me. You Britishers are not sporting.’ He twirled the waxed curlicues of his moustache. ‘All men should be sporting a moustache, because all ladies are liking too much.’

      He indicated that I should get in.

      ‘It is the fashion of our days,’ he said, roaring off and narrowly missing a pedestrian.

      Mr Singh’s taxi stand lay behind the India International Centre, after which it took its name: International Backside Taxis. The stand was run by Punjab Singh, Balvinder’s stern and patriarchal father, and manned by Balvinder and his two plump brothers, Gurmuck and Bulwan. There was also a rota of cousins who would fill in during the weekends and at nights. Over the following months we got to know them all well, but it was Balvinder who remained our special friend.

      That first week, and the week following it, Balvinder drove Olivia and myself through a merry-go-round of government departments. Together we paid daily visits to the rotting concrete hulk known as Shastri Bhavan, nerve centre of the Orwellian Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Here, in the course of nine visits, I deposited four faxes, three telexes, two envelopes of passport photographs (black and white only) and a sheaf of letters from my editor in London, all in an effort to get accredited as a foreign correspondent.

      In due course, as the slow wheels of bureaucracy turned, my application did get processed—but not until about a year after the newspaper I represented had ceased publication. Undaunted, to this day Shastri Bhavan still refuses to acknowledge the downfall of the Sunday Correspondent, and continues to send its India representative daily press releases detailing the reasons for the decline in the production of Indian pig iron, or celebrating the success of the Fifth International Conference on the Goat (theme: The Goat in Rural Prosperity).

      More depressing even than Shastri Bhavan is the headquarters of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited. The Telephone Nigam is India’s sole supplier of telecommunications to the outside world. Without the help of the Telephone Nigam one is stranded. This is something every person who works for the organization knows; and around this certainty has been built an empire dedicated to bureaucratic obfuscation, the perpetration of difficulty, the collection of bribes and, perhaps more than anything else, the spinning of great glistening cocoons of red tape.

      It was a hot, dusty late September morning when I first entered room 311, home to Mr Ram Lal. Mr Lal was sitting beneath a poster of Mahatma Gandhi on which was written: ‘A customer is the most important visitor to our premises. He is not dependent on us, we are dependent on him.’

      As if in deliberate subversion of the Mahatma’s message, Mr Lal held in his hands the Times of India, open at its sports page. The paper formed a barrier between Mr Lal and the asylumful of supplicants who were bobbing up and down in front of him, holding out chits of paper, arching their hands in a gesture of namaste or wobbling their turbans from side to side in mute frustration. A Punjabi lady sat weeping in a corner, repeating over and over again: ‘But I have a letter from the Minister of State for Communications … but I have a letter … a letter …’ Menials passed silently to and fro through the door, carrying files and sheaves of xeroxes. Behind Mr Lal, placed there for apparently purely decorative purposes, sat a dead computer.

      When Mr Lal eventually deigned to lower his paper—which he did with infinite slowness, folding it into perfect quarters—he rang a bell and ordered one of his peons to bring him a cup of tea.

      ‘Right,’ he said, looking up for the first time. ‘Who’s first?’

      A hundred hands were raised, but one voice stood out: ‘I am.’

      The speaker pushed himself forward, holding together his bulging dhoti with one hand. He was an enormously fat man, perhaps seventy years old, with heavy plastic glasses and grey stubble on his chin.

      ‘My name is Sunil Gupta—please call me Sunny.’ He strode forward and grabbed Mr Lal by the hand, shaking it with great verve.

      ‘I am a nationalist,’ said Mr Gupta. ‘A nationalist and a freedom fighter. I am also an independent candidate in the forthcoming municipal elections. My election office will be opposite Western Court, adjacent to the paan shop. I want a temporary telephone connection, and would be most grateful if you could expedite.’ He stroked his belly. ‘Early action would be highly appreciated.’

      ‘Have you already applied for a connection?’ asked Mr Lal.

      ‘No, gentleman,’ said Sunny Gupta. ‘This is what I am doing now.’

      ‘First applications Room 101. Next, please.’

      ‘But,’ said Mr Gupta. ‘I have to maintain contact with my constituents. I need a phone immediately. I would be very grateful if you would expedite a VVIP connection without delay.’

      ‘Are you a member of the Lok Sabha?’

      ‘No. I …’

      ‘In that case you must contact Mr Dharam Vir …’

      ‘Gentleman, please listen …’

      ‘… in Room 101.’

      With a great flourish, Mr Gupta pulled a much-pawed piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket. ‘Gentleman,’ he said. ‘Please be looking here. This is my manifesto.’

      Across the top of the piece of paper, in huge red letters, was blazoned the slogan: A NATIONALIST TO THE CORE AND A FREEDOM FIGHTER. Mr Gupta straightened his glasses and read from the charter:

      ‘I was a Founder Member cum Chairman of the Religious and Social Institute of India, Patna Branch …’

      Mr Lal was meanwhile studying the application of the weeping Punjabi lady. He read it twice and, frowning, initialled it at the top right-hand corner: ‘See Mr Sharma for countersignature. Room 407.’

      The woman broke down in a convulsion of grateful sobs. Beside her Mr Gupta was still in full flood:

      ‘… I am ex-member of the Publicity Committee of the All-India Congress I, Bhagalpur division. Ex-Joint Secretary of the Youth Congress Committee, Chote Nagpur, Bihar. I am a poet and a journalist. A war hero from the 1965 Indo-Pak war, Jaisalmer sector …’

      ‘Madam,’ continued Mr Lal. ‘Please make payment with Mr Surwinder Singh, accounts, Room 521.’

      ‘… I was the founder editor of Sari, the Hindi monthly for women and Kalidasa, the biannual literary journal of Patna. I have donated five acres of land for the Chote Nagpur Cow Hospital. Four times I have been jailed by the Britishers for services to Mother Bharat.’

      ‘If you think it is bad now,’ said Mr Lal, taking my application. ‘You should see this office on Fridays. That’s the busiest time.’

      I left Mr Lal’s office at noon. By four-thirty I had queued inside a total of nine different offices, waiting in each for the magic letter, seal, signature, counter-signature, demand note, restoration order or receipt which would, at some stage in the far distant future, lead to my being granted a telephone.

      ‘Phone will be connected within two months,’ said Mr Lal as he shook my hand, the obstacle course СКАЧАТЬ