Everything's Official About This

The first person who spotted me was Mr.Thiruvarasu (this is his real name, I’m not changing it because I like saying it. Another bureaucratic name I like is Chitti Babu), the librarian of the hugely busy library in RGNIID. The library has four computers- state of the art technology, mindddit- and several hundred spotless books which are as good as new because nobody has the heart to borrow them and make them dirty. Of the four computers, two are used strictly for recreation purposes by the staff bus driver and his cronies. The other two are used strictly for recreation purposes by the cronies and the staff bus driver. The computers are put to a variety of uses- Hearts, Minesweeper, MGR movie screenings, and occasionally, pictures of RGNIID staff children with tonnes of powder and dhrishti pottus would be scanned into the system so everyone could take turns to gasp in admiration. The library also has a phone, in case of an emergency, you could always call your family and find out what was happening on KTV.

Mr.Thiruvarasu directed me to the Administrative Officer’s room. You must understand that RGNIID has a combined staff strength of 40 persons (including grass-cutters, ayahs, security, and all the random persons who come every day to drink tea in this poor man’s Mahindra Resorts) and it is extremely tough to administer an institute of this size unless you have an Admo with superhuman abilities. And that, is precisely what RGNIID’s Admo, Mr.Chandrabeku, had. Mr.Beku was so full of it that he entered rooms through windows and ignored doors altogether. While I was waiting for him to enter the room, he made an appearance. The curtains parted and there was Mr.Chandrabeku, clambering through the window, an amiable smile lighting up his feverishly able face. Some curtain-raiser, this old boy!

Mr.Beku spent some time looking through pink, yellow, and green files. I was impressed. Then he took out a yellow file with my name on it. I was impressed all over again. He filed my CV in it and then asked me, “Oh you studied in foreignaah?”

I nodded.

“What course?”

“Gender Studies.”

“Oh General Studies. Okay Okay. Very good. Come ma, we’ll go see Director!”

I followed Mr.Beku to the Director’s office. I was made to wait till the secretary finished going through her pink, yellow, and green files. A grey man with a grey file sat next to me. He had come to attend the interview, too. I was suddenly struck by the fact that the average age of persons in the institute was fifty. What, I asked myself, was I going to do in the midst of such Wisdom?

When I was finally called inside, I saw that the interview panel consisted of the Director, Vambumathi, and a bored looking man called Dr.N. Everybody looked through their respective files and I waited, highly impressed. Then, the Director asked me, “What is gender?”

I assumed this is how he generally says Hello. So I smiled in silence. He persisted and I began nervously my grand speech on What Is Gender. After I was done, he looked through his files for comfort and then said, “Dr.N, Dr.Vambumathi, why don’t you ask her what is gender?”

Dr.N was bored of all this hello-ing. So he asked me if I were part of the NCC or the NSS in school or college. I answered brightly that I never was. “Why?” he asked. “Because I was not!” I answered, a beatific expression on my face. Dr.Vambumathi stepped in at this point and asked me how I would go about conducting a training program. I had already prepared a manual for gender sensitization and I gave it to the Director. He scanned through it rapidly and looked remarkably intelligent. I expounded on how I would conduct a training program on gender sensitization. Dr.N butted in and said, “Why do you keep saying gender-gender? Tell us something more general!”

You see, I knew nothing about General Studies but I still managed. Gender was a four letter word in the room, never mind if I was an M.A Gender Studies candidate being considered for a post in the Gender Cell. Like the Director kept reminding me, what is gender, after all?

After the interview, I was convinced that I wouldn’t get the job. I had killed all my prospects by joining Aerobics instead of NCC or NSS for Games credit in college. Aerobics had its pluses, mind you. We had two guys (who sincerely wore tight t-shirts and multi-coloured jeans with embroidery) teach us to dance to Britney Spears at 7 in the morning. They also had coloured hair to complete the happening look. But Aerobics couldn’t make an Officer out of me, could it?

Apparently, it could. I got a call from Mr.Chandrabeku asking me to “Report for Duty” on November 1st, 2007. I was part of the Government of India.

Yay. Jai Hind.

Like all parents, my father is highly equipped to speechify about his children. Especially when they are in the favoured ‘abroad country’ category. So he told Vambumathi about this child of his who had gone away to a cold place to do a course called Gender Studies (“General Studies?” asked Vambumathi, “No, Gender Studies!” corrected my father gently). Vambumathi recognized the Ancient Mariner before her. She, therefore, decided to stop narrative mode and make it a more conversational mode (“Did you know albatrosses can sleep fly?”). In her eagerness to stop my father from graciously expanding on the subject of his progeny, Vambumathi blurted out that RGNIID had a Gender Cell. She thought her chance to speak had arrived. She could now bore my father about the institute (her sons aren’t in ‘abroad country’ and offer no competition) and he would nod politely and sign the papers fast and then she could go back in her ‘Govt. on Duty’ car in peace.

But the Ancient Mariner doesn’t give up that easily. My father popped the question. Vambumathi squirmed in her chair. Would she or wouldn’t she?

Would the institute possibly be interested in employing the foreign-return in the Gender Cell?

Vambumathi told my father that she would speak to the Director of the institute and let him know. The Director of the institute is a man who has struggled much in life to learn three alphabets- I.A.S. Words that extend beyond three letters numb his brain. Vambumathi, therefore, had to ask, explain, ask, explain, and ask, and explain several times [because my father was doing the Ancient Mariner act over phone now] to Mr.Director before it struck him feebly in the mind that a foreign-return candidate for the Gender Cell had made her appearance in the horizon.

Much jubilation followed at home when I was asked to go and meet Mr.Director. My father drove me from Perambur to Sriperumbudur and I felt a bit like Ulysses. We drove past millions of engineering colleges and I was stunned by the number of engineers this country produces every year. I momentarily considered the possibility of becoming a GRE book publisher. All these children who are terrible at writing compositions in school [why else would one become an engineer?] harbour the secret wish to use words like pusillanimous when they are grown-up. I would become their Mentor and help them overcome their complex (I still haven’t abandoned the idea).

When we finally reached RGNIID, I was impressed. The place was huge and the national flag waved at me in a very becoming way from a pole on the gateway. This was it. Bharat Mata Ki Jai.

My father and I met Vambumathi and she took us to Mr.Director. I was feeling highly optimistic. If they had let me, I would have romped around the several acres like the Energizer Bunny, screaming slogans. I greeted the Director politely and took my seat. My first thought was that the thatch of hair on his head must be a wig. He spent some time looking through pink, green, and yellow files to impress me. I was impressed.

Then, he asked me, “What is gender?” In all my naivety, I began a discourse on gender. How it’s a social construct and how it’s all socialization and how male isn’t masculine and female isn’t feminine and how gender is everywhere and hurrah. He looked at me thoughtfully and then spent some time looking through pink, green, and yellow files.

Then he asked me, “All that okay. But what is gender?”

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say. The alarm bells were ringing. ‘Moron alert’ went my brain, but I stifled the uncharitable reaction. Perhaps he was testing me. I repeated whatever I said previously a lot more slowly. Mr.Director spent some time looking through pink, green, and yellow files.

Then he said, “I don’t know what is gender. See, we have a gender cell here. Actually because no, we have a gender cell here. But nobody is inside the cell. Can you be inside the cell?”

A charming prospect. I nodded. I could be inside the cell. Why ever not?

After this meeting, Vambumathi followed me to the car and told me that RGNIID was not the best place to work in if one wanted to work. She kind of gave me the idea that this was a Mahindra Resorts place. You know, you-happy-we-happy, everyone’s happy, so why save the world?

But young blood, ah, the spirit of young blood! How doth it gush in the veins! I wouldn’t give up. I wanted to be inside that cell. I was going to be in the Gender Cell and soon we’d have a Gender Body, and soon, I’d be the CM firing inefficient people like Vambumathi.

Too many Shankar movies have I watched in the formative years of my life.

Ah well, since someone is squatting on my previous blogspot and writing passionately about Kapil Sibal of all things, I’m forced to lay the foundation stones for a new blog. And no, if you think you are going to read satirical posts about Stella Maris, its canteen, its delightful professors, its crows, and its tired sentries, no. The Brownie has grown up (in soul, if not in stature) and this blog is solemnly dedicated to satirical posts about my illustrious career. Gounder Brownie goes to office these days and gets paid, too. Which means, comments about my present occupation will be painfully polite. Karl Marx might be our family guru, but money hai toh honey hai [see, I can even exhort in Hindi if needed, such is the wickedness of the capitalist world]. But I’ve worked in and with other places which no longer pay me and hence, I am free to give them my focussed attention.

After my sojourn in the UK, I shocked myself by realizing that I’m one of those Swades Shah Rukh Khan types. Kiss your motherland, break into song, weep into the tricolour, and eat some chicken that’s not KFC, for god’s sake!! My moment of epiphany arrived when I was on a bus in Brighton. I fell off the seat in my eagerness to get up and run towards the shawarma shop (the best thing about Brighton is that it has very little British food). Brought up in the glorious tradition of Kaundamani-Senthil and nourished by the charming ‘vada pochey’ Vadivelu, falling (from anywhere, chairs, buses, buildings) represents to me the ultimate form of sophisticated comedy. I, therefore, burst into laughter. To my utmost consternation, I was laughing at my own joke. Not a single soul joined in. Instead, several wizened ladies looked at me in deep concern. Had the child fallen and lost its mind, perhaps? Pass me the marmalade, for Pete’s sake. The stiff upper lip is enchanting on Jeeves, but not very comforting when everyone around you has no lip but plenty of lipstick.

So then, I came back to India. Descended into darkness and lived the wild days of my youth (if I am ever going to be a grandma, I want to be in the cool category). And then, my father found me this mind-blowing job. If he had given me a revolver, it couldn’t have blown my mind into tinier pieces. I was all set to leave to Delhi and become a revolutionary under this scary lady called Madhu Kishwar (she comes on NDTV all the time, vigorously voicing her opinions about having opinions). But daddy short legs had other plans. Delhi, he declared, was an unsafe city. No place for innocence to flower in. Since I was such a babe in the woods, he found me an office just there…in the woods.

In the hinterland of Sriperumbudur where dust turns into dustier, there lies the famed Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Incompetence Development [RGNIID as I shall refer to it]. The institute was started by the Congress government to plant on the landscape an inescapable monument to their departed leader.If only the LTTE had laid their plans in a more accessible place, life would have been infinitely better. But if you want to save the world, you either have to be Jack Bauer or you have to travel from Perambur to Egmore, catch a train to Guindy, catch a bus from Guindy and land in Sriperumbudur. Bauer gives up 24 hours of his life (every single day), I needed to give only 4. What’s 4 hours of life to save the world, huh? Jujubee, as Thalaivar would undoubtedly say.

When my father sent me the link to the RGNIID website, I was mighty impressed with the plans that the government had for the youth of the nation. I imagined myself marching down the poor, ravaged streets of India with the tricolour in one hand and homegrown chicken (spicy and oily, the Rajkiran variety) in the other. I would overturn gender imbalance overnite and little girls would run over their brothers’ barbies with their trucks in celebration. And I would do all this from within the system. I shall cut through the redtape like Vijaykanth dancing despite his advanced state of pregnancy. Nothing, I told myself, is impossible when you are a GOI Jane. Government of India, oh sweet life!

And so I said yes. I said yes, I would join RGNIID. Little did I know that I was dangerously close to saying Yes, Minister.

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