The Travails of a Nonentity: In the Top Boss’s Chamber!

 

First thing in that nondescript morning, sometime in the late 1980s, as I entered my office room there was a letter from home waiting for me on the desk. I tore open the Indian inland letter eagerly. There’d been no news from my village home in more than a fortnight which was not normal, because my mother used to write me a letter every week, unfailingly. I got worried as I read through: my father had taken ill and it was to be decided if he needed to be taken to a hospital in the nearest city depending on the treating doctor’s advice. My mother wrote that she’d inform me at the earliest, and since that didn’t happen, I got restless, fearing the worst, knowing that even if the worst had indeed happened it was going to take days to inform me, because I had no direct telephone number either in office or at home or at any friend’s or at any neighbor’s place, they could possibly ring up from a post office. Apart from the hassles of various office extension numbers to reach me and the language problem it took a one-hour bicycle ride from my home to reach a post office that had those trunk-call lines.

There was a telephone in the village school principal’s home and I always thought of that as an emergency number, my home within a mile of the school and the principal being a good family friend. I desperately wanted to ring up that number immediately, somehow, and get to know what could be happening there with my family people. But that effort required an STD connection! Hell! Those days STD facility was extremely limited; only the most powerful bureaucrats or the most influential of the citizens could have that facility in their landlines. I knew, however, that the top boss of the organization I worked for had that facility in his telephone. But how to access it? I was not that kind of an officer having ways with all the bosses. But I wanted a way out, immediately! I couldn’t afford to wait till late evening for a visit to the post office, hoping to get connected through a trunk-call, always so delicate and so full of statics, testing the power of your vocal chords.

I asked the elderly and experienced office assistant as to what could possibly be done. He advised me to speak to the boss’s PS, telling me that the top boss was a nice person and would never refuse to help. Accordingly, I rang up the PS explaining the emergency. The friendly lady asked me to come in the lunch hour when the top boss was normally relaxed and would not mind letting me use his telephone. I thanked her and as there were still three hours to go for the lunch break, I tried hard to concentrate on the files on my desk and do some work.

Even before the wailing siren, signaling the lunch break, could descend to its lowest octave, I was out of my room heading toward the main admin block. I pushed the revolving glass doors to peep into the PS’s room. The lady officer was just about to open her tiffin box, set up nicely on her table.

“Please go in! Sir is there!” she said the moment she saw me.

I approached the heavy wooden door on my right, tentatively. With the tension of an impending uncertainty I managed to knock on the door, a feeble effort. Then, mastering up all my dare, I pushed the door in, uttering in a shaking tone, “May I come in, Sir?”

The middle-aged man with thick eyebrows who seemed to be sitting miles away from me or the door I opened in a high-back revolving chair housed in a huge rectangular chamber looked up at me, a little uncertainly. That was the first time I ventured entering the chamber of the top boss: not that I never met him, I did attend meetings presided over by him on many occasions held in the office auditorium.  

“Oh! Mr. Saikia! Please do come in!’ he welcomed me in, looking briefly up at me over the bundle of papers he was apparently setting in order. Oh! He knows me or rather recognizes me! I thought, instantly energized with something like a new lease of life, and definitely a lot of courage and hope.

The top boss turned his attention again to the papers as I did not count the steps up to his spacious mahogany desk and finally stood right before him.

His little shrouded eyes, over the rim of his high-powered specs, appraised me that seemed like an eternity to me.

“So, Mr. Saikia! What brings you here?” said he, again back to examining the papers through his glasses.

“Sir! It is an emergency!” I briefly explained my situation. “I really need to call up my village, sir! Sir, if you can allow me too…I’ll take only two minutes!”

“Okay! But why are you standing? Please take a seat!” he finished putting the papers neatly away on his right where a stack of in-files was waiting for his generous signatures, took off his specs, set it on the table and got up. He headed toward the attached restroom just behind his desk, entered and spent a very long time in there. Maybe, freshening up for his lunch! But he could’ve just told me to wait or excused himself for a moment! I thought, this time a bit disapprovingly, if that kind of behavior were permissible at all.

I stared greedily at the black instrument lying innocently there alongside a few white intercom instruments and felt like pulling that toward me, desperately wanting to hear that sweet special dial tone that could connect me instantly to my people.

Finally he came out and resumed his seat.

“See, Mr. Saikia! Such facilities are very expensive and so are given only for the most urgent official matters! You know, we have to account for the monthly bills, justifying every single call made using the facility!” he leaned back on his chair as a peon entered the chamber and began setting plates, spoons, forks and bowls on the glass-top table surrounded by a sofa set at the farthest corner of the chamber.

“But, please sir! It’s for only a minute…!” I mumbled incoherently, not at all expecting such an elaborate discourse on office expenses.

“No! no! Mr. Saikia! Don’t get me wrong! I’m not denying you the favor!” he continued as he started getting up from his chair, “we just have to do it in the right way, right? So, please go to the administrative officer, write out an application explaining your issue and submit it to him. Signed, of course. The application will then come to me, and rest assured, I’ll sanction it immediately! You’ll surely get a call from my PS! Okay?” he started marching to the cozy corner for his lunch.

I stood up like a perfect idiot. But indignation surged inside me as I headed for the heavy wooden door. I began cursing him, all safe and sound within my nondescript soul: to hell with your rules and justifications! Why! Had an officer, maybe just two ranks above me, come into the chamber at that moment for the same favor, s/he would just have picked up the phone, dialed and talked to his/her heart’s content, perhaps without even having to request the top boss for the favor! Damn it all! I maybe a nonentity strictly in the official way, but I’m no throwaway as a person! I can still have what my modest soul wants! Yes! I’ll have it my way!

I stormed out of the block, not at all bothering to report to the PS about what happened, and decided to visit the post office early, hoping for the best.