What is your name?" "Naam se kya matlab hai?" "We need to identify someone when reporting." "There's no need for that." A fatuous smile. And if a reply is forthcoming, it might or might not be true. Hey, welcome all, to the free and open world of Indian bureaucracy. This is where a port chairman and a development commissioner, equivalent to the post of an additional secretary, isn't allowed on board a ship that was allegedly ferrying missile parts to Pakistan. And that's in his own port. But foreign officials can walk on and off as if they were prospective buyers. But what for the mystery? Oh, because it involves matters of national security. Here you have one official denying any knowledge of his department having filed a case against certain people while other officials in the same department -- who also refuse to be identified -- claim they have indeed filed a case. If you ask what kind of missile was on the ship, the officials claim they don't know themselves. But hadn't the MEA already announced there were surface-to-surface missiles? We just wanted to know what type? "Had they?" The official quickly smiles to kill offence and ruefully says he's no expert. Naturally he won't know. And then he adds that it's all there in the newspapers. So he does stand by the veracity of those reports... Oh no, that he isn't either. You can call the commissioner time and again and he'll be away; and if you finally plonk down in his office the minions will paste you outside on a chair outside. The clock will spin in timeless circles while the PA and the PRO peer at you and titter away self-importantly. "Oh god," one slavey says, shaking his head in disbelief and smiling in wonder when you insist on meeting his master. He's enjoying every minute of it. You speak to one official and forget to catch his first name. But you needn't ask the next man. He'll certainly claim he doesn't know. So what do you do? Just call up the office of the man you want and casually inquire. You get an honest reply -- all by accident, of course. The idea is not to appear interested. This is one time the term Kafkaesque can be honestly used -- for you can try to get your message across but you will be blocked and parried time and again till you tire and collapse in sheer exhaustion. The idea is clear -- you shouldn't reach your goal but they shouldn't be seen as the cause for your failure. If you do get some rare dollop of encouragement, it is only to exacerbate the despair that's certain to follow. But you still find people huddled in corners discussing things that presumably cannot be discussed in an office. Others bitch about their bosses in public. And still others chivvy and scatter queues of businessmen so their senior officers can walk in unhindered. All this, clearly, has no bearing on national security. So comforting to know you are in safe hands. Anyway, you end up pacing up and down the stretch outside yet another official's room, whittling away the hours while the guard outside decides how far down the circuit you go and when. You watch a little rodent scurry up and down freely in the dingy corridor with the cracked false ceiling, curtain rods without curtains and spit curving down the walls. You watch in admiration him dart uncertainly in and out of the room you are seeking entry to -- and you can't help envy him: It's only a rat that has freedom of passage here. P Rajendran does not suffer fools, and bureaucrats.
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