A KAFKAESQUE TALE FROM SHANGRILA (Satis Shroff)
This bureaucrat was gathering blubber
Around his waist.
Seated below the poster of Their Majesties
King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya.
He was the boss with shivering workers,
Out to do what such people do:
He invented rules and standards as he pleased.
His was a small kingdom,
A publishing house
Of His Majesty’s government.
Two dailies in English and Nepali
And a literary mag called ‘The Perspective.’
He had underpaid workers below him:
Journalists, reporters, editors and proof-readers,
Typists and peons who ran on errands.
Perhaps he’d had promised my job to a nephew,
In Nepal we call it ‘afnu manchey’
A tradition of putting your own people in key positions.
But the editors had brought another,
An outsider through the backdoor.
What ensued was a cat and mouse game.
After every article I published
About a visiting American or British writer,
Journalist or culturally interesting artist in town,
I was summoned by a peon
To appear downstairs
Before the fat, mustachioed bureaucrat.
A Newar whom I loathed.
I was obliged to explain
Why I’d written about the said foreigner.
This time it was Catherine Blair,
An American architect.
The other time it was Paul Wohl,
A renowned East Bloc specialist,
From the Christian Science Monitor.
A piece about a Himalayan glacier expedition
With an interview with a Japanese professor.
The Kafkaesque interrogation went on.
Should he sack me,
Why, I’ll find another job.
Age was on my side.
I was young and didn’t care.
The Kafkaesque interrogation went on.
He seemed to hate people from the west.
He wanted me probably to write
About the wonders of communism
And the achievements of socialist Marxism.
I never complained, but gave him the stare, Listened to what he had to say
And left quietly.
No words of praise,
Only a sarcastic smile.
He was a bureaucrat practicing black pedagogy
In a Third World publication.
The Kafkaesque spiel went on.
I just didn’t suit his idea of a journalist.
What he expected was a karmachari,
Who stoops low when greeting him
And says: ‘dhanyavad hajur’ and ‘huncha marsaab’
After each of his statements.
I wasn’t from the Valley;
I was from the Eastern hills,
Where people learn to be smart,
And not servile as in a sovereign’s hierarchy.
I’d gone to an English school with a prince
And saw this oaf as a bead in a long mala.
The Kafkaesque questioning went on.
Why had I learned a language,
If not to defend myself?
I dashed off a letter
To the Principal Palace Secretariat,
Stating what had happened.
He came to meet us journalists
Gave me a smile and said,
‘I like your writings.’
Later he even gave me his card.
The peon ceased to summon me.
Life became normal.
You had to assert yourself.
The Kafkaesque interrogation died out.
Glossary:
Dhanyavad hajur: thank you, Sir.
Huncha marsaab: as you wish, Master.
Mala: garland
afnu manchey: own people
