Eventually that man who belonged to a breed of lesser mortals, who was part and parcel of that faceless crowd which runs the basic network of offices, a creature called a clerk, jumped from the topmost floor of his Town Hall office.

Next day, down below the columns of the third pages of newspapers where 'local news' of robberies and rapes, suicides and accidents are printed, there was a two-and-a-half-line story that Ram Lall, a clerk in the Municipal Corporation, jumped to his death from the top floor of the Town Hall.

The same afternoon, a 'kitty party' was in full swing at Mrs. Midha's house. Mrs. Mathur always felt a little uneasy at such parties because her husband had been stuck for the last five years in a very 'unprofitable' department of the Defence Ministry. She could neither afford to buy the latest sarees nor the solitaires that other women exhibited on such occasions with all the pride. But she couldn’t just sit back and let the world go by. She had to do something to be a part of this crowd, otherwise how would she go through every single boring day, week after week?

So she equipped herself with the latest news and took special care to read the newspaper more thoroughly on the mornings of the parties. Yes, newspapers were the only ones about the powers that ruled not only the 'box' but the whole country, and that was no 'news'.

It seems the 'box' believed in the happy dictum that 'no news is good news.'

Yes, Mrs. Mathur had read the papers carefully in the morning, so she poised a piece of chicken tikka on the tip of her fork with great delicacy and sighed, "Who knows who that poor Ram Lall was. He jumped to his death yesterday from the top floor of his Town Hall Office!"

Nobody else had read the paper that morning. A few clusters of diamonds glittered on a couple of well washed and perfumed earlobes, a few eyelashes fluttered, and Mrs. Midha fulfilled the duty of an accomplished hostess by whispering, "Poor devil!"

Next afternoon, at lunch time, the newspapermen were busy draining out beer bottles in the Press Club, unmindful of the rickety tables and not-too-clean surroundings. They were talking loudly about Tarapore Plant and Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka, about Indo-Chinese relations and the Punjab problem.

Gupta, who brought out a four-page evening tabloid and had been nominated as a member of Rajya Sabha a couple of years back, asked his neighbours on the table, "Any news about that Ram Lall?"

"Ram Lall is making use of the usual routine gimmicks. Every Chief Minister does the same when he is removed from power and is replaced by someone else. He starts looking for the dissidents, starts a whispering campaign against the current incumbent and unearths all his shady deals, to be presented to the High Command. It is a vicious circle which never ends, one Humpty Dumpty being replaced by the other. Ram Lall is also going through the same routine exercise these days," said Raj of The Hindustan Times.

"No, it is not the former Chief Minister I am talking about. I am referring to Ram Lall who committed suicide yesterday."

"It is being investigated by our Crime Reporter. If there is any meat in the story, it would be filed tonight."

But actually everybody connected with this case had already got the "story" in his or her pocket. It was Pawan Manchanda who helped them get to the bottom of the truth when he met them last evening, though we know that at the bottom of every truth there is a residue of that little something which is called untruth.

Pawan Manchanda? Don’t you know Pawan Manchanda? Strange! He is always around at all the social functions in the capital where the glitterati of the city appear with the sole object of being seen by others. One of those all-powerful jugglers whose job is to make others see what is not visible to the naked eye.

No, you are mistaken. There is nothing fraudulent about it. It is simply a part of the poor chap's job. He had been employed in the Corporation for this purpose only. Every large company, every public sector undertaking, every government organisation, every respectable business house, even the Prime Minister himself has such people on their pay rolls.

Yes, your guess is correct. Pawan Manchanda is a Public Relations Officer. It is another thing that he, like all the other cousins of his clan, hardly finds time for the 'public' because he is too busy manipulating the all-powerful 'fourth estate', the media.

Such deaths or suicides, strikes or lockouts, labour unrest or any other ugly incident like that can be a matter of great embarrassment for any 'respectable' organisation. So any news connected with such things has to be suppressed; and if it can't be made to disappear, it has to be made palatable. That’s what is known as 'watering down' in the newspaper language: toning down harshness of mishaps by twisting the facts.

In fact, around midday yesterday, the Municipal Commissioner had called Pawan Manchanda to his room. "What is happening? Who the hell was this Ram Lall? How did the news leak out to those vultures in the newspaper offices? I've already had six phone calls since morning! Why couldn’t you do anything about it?"

Pawan Manchanda pasted a greasy smile on his pleasant face with a prematurely receding hairline, and said in a meek, humble voice," Sir, when Ram Lall came tumbling down with a bang and lay sprawled in the open space below, dead as a dodo, how could I just make the dead body disappear?"

"I don’t want excuses. If you couldn’t make the dead body disappear, you could have at least seen to it that it's news did not appear in the papers," the Commissioner Sahib's fury couldn’t be extinguished with simulated smiles from Pawan Manchanda today.

Anyway, both of them agreed on one point, that these newspapermen are very ungrateful. When they smell a meaty story, they forget about all the goodies that they have gulped down at the expense of their benefactors.

Pawan Manchanda was at the job now.

First of all he tried to trace down the trail of the suicide because of domestic unhappiness, don’t they?

There can be a million causes: Ram Lall's wife might be having an affair with someone else; Ram Lall's unmarried daughter might have become pregnant; Ram Lall's son might have got himself involved in a robbery. It could be anything!

But all his investigative efforts in that direction came to a dead end.

Ram Lall's wife looked haggard in her early thirties, and was clad in a faded rag of saree. Ram Lall's daughter was only seven, so there was no chance of her eloping or getting pregnant. Ram Lall's two sons were studying in the sixth and seventh standards in a government school, where children are not given lessons on conducting robberies. As you know, it is only the privileged sons of all-powerful politicians or heavyweight industrialists who go to the best of public schools of the country and learn how to commit million-dollar frauds and yet evade the law. And why not? The distinguished class of law-makers deserve to have the privilege to be above the law.

But something must be done, brooded Pawan Manchanda. After all he was paid month after month for this job only. And that too with all the perks!

So he prepared a file. The file moved in rather an unprecedented hurry from table to table. This fast moving file contained an initial complaint from some Mr. Bharadwaj (Pawan Manchanda was in a terrible hurry so he couldn’t think of a better name, because it was with one Bharadwaj's daughter that an intermediary was trying to work out Pawan Manchanda's marriage) that Ram Lall had demanded four hundred rupees from him as bribe to do him a favour in bringing down the slab of his property tax.

The complaint was followed by a detailed enquiry which revealed Ram Lall was allegedly caught 'red-handed' accepting the bribe.

All of us know quite well that occasionally some small time clerks and babus are caught 'red-handed' accepting bribes running into three or four figures. Lighter bribes cannot help floating on the surface and are therefore readily visible; the heavier ones sink down because of their weight, and become invisible. You can scrutinise and scan the history of four decades of independent India ; you will always find a small fry getting apprehended in these corrupt acts.

The 'file' contained a chargesheet and suspension orders too, which were allegedly awaiting the final signatures of the top boss.

It is evident that when the chargesheet and suspension orders were taking a stroll in the corridors of any office, the concerned person cannot be unaware of the approaching guillotine, Pawan Manchanda explained to the newsmen and the reporters over the phone, and invited them over for a 'drink and snacks' at a five-star hotel in the evening.

For such important press conferences he was allowed to book a suite in a five-star hotel and serve Scotch with the choicest of snacks.

Scotch, as you know, is very helpful in 'watering down' any scandalous story.

The most exciting thing about the whole operation is that both the parties think they are befooling the other.

'This bastard P.R.O. is smiling like a prostitute. As if we don’t know..', contemplate the reporters, downing glassfuls of Scotch and munching the most delectable of tikkas and kababs.

In the meanwhile the P.R.O.'s mind is also at work. ' Enjoy your free drinks! You mean bastards! From your lousy salaries you can't even afford to have country liquor. Who doesn’t know you are prostituting your pens?'

If you think objectively, the other news hardly matters for these commoners. The Gorbachev-Reagan Treaty and the Non-Aligned Conference are as immaterial as the presence of a red or a black government in Spain. What is happening in Kampuchea or Yugoslavia doesn't concern the people who are constantly worried about folding their legs and have to lie crumpled up like a ball because their 'sheets' are too short to cover them.

Ram Lall's wife hardly found any time to gossip, and was not aware of what was happening in the world. She was a deeply religious woman, but didn’t find time even to sit down and meditate. She had a small clay idol in the house. She bowed her head before it every morning, and said a brief prayer for the welfare of her family.

Flowers and incense sticks are costly, so their Bhagwan evidently couldn’t enjoy this luxury in Ram Lall's house. But on some particular days like Janamashtami, Ram Lall plucked some flowers from the park on his way back from the milk-booth and offered them to the deity. An incense stick and these flowers were enough to say 'happy birthday' to Bhagwan.

Though Ram Lall's wife had no information about the newspaper story concerning her husband, it had already begun to spread around as it was the same type of juicy news which grows wings and reaches people, who find it spicy enough to go running and to whisper it into the neighbours' ears.

Eventually the news came flying and landed right in the lap of Ram Lall's widow, Prema.

She beat her breast and cried, "It is wrong. A gross lie. Only I know how I went through the thirty days of the month. His salary never lasted beyond the twentieth, and for the rest of the month we were always in debt. Anybody can check up from the grocer. We always owed money to him. If Baujee accepted any bribes, I wouldn't be sitting here today and worrying about how I am going to feed my children tomorrow."

The neighbours listened to her, expressed their sympathy, and went about their work.

These people who belong to the lowest depths of the covered cauldron called 'middle class', are very selfish. They are always worried about their own hearths and homes. They simply don’t have any time for others.

Ram Lall's widow couldn’t sleep at night. She felt she was lying on live coals.

And suddenly a thought struck her benumbed mind, 'Baujee was a very quiet man. Always engrossed in his own thoughts. Hardly talked about anything. There might be another woman in his life on whom he was spending all the 'extra income'. You never know these men..!

And thus that man, who was less of a human being and more of a bullock, yoked to an oil press, with blinkers on, because he was a mere clerk, lost in all his credentials within two and a half nights after his death.

He was stupid like many others of his clan, though this clan is getting extinct gradually. He always consoled himself by thinking that his children would at least be able to keep their heads high and feel proud of him because he was thoroughly honest. It was immaterial that his salary couldn’t see his family through the month, that he hadn't bought himself a new suit for the last twenty years, that the soles of his shoes were so worn out that he felt the boiling hot coaltar of the road searing his skin. His consolation was bringing up his children in an atmosphere untarnished by the all-pervading, suffocating smoke of corruption. He was proud and untiring, and worked according to an inner ethical code based on high moral values, though he knew that these values sold cheaper than even onions in the market.

He was guilty of the twin sins of poverty and honesty.

A poor man should be able to claim his rights or grab them by force. If he is unable to do either, he would himself be robbed of them.

Ram Lall was thus destined to be robbed, though it was to happen to him after his death.

In fact, he came to know about the robbery a little before his death. When this knowledge dawned on him, he decided to call it a day.

This is how it happened.

It all started with his transfer which brought him to the chair of the private secretary to the commissioner who was incharge of the Public Works Department in the Town Hall of the City.

His fellow clerks congratulated him.

"What for?" he said in a some bewilderment.

"This is not even a promotion. A clerk is just like a bullock under a yoke; it is immaterial whether he ploughs the fields or pulls a cart. What difference does it make!"

"Difference? You talk about difference! Ha! My dear, you will come to know about the difference when you occupy that magical chair. Tons of money exchanges hands in the room of your new boss. And when devotees come with their offerings to the gods, the priest also gets his share," one of them said with meaningful glee.

Everybody laughed, and Ram Lall turned crimson. The light-hearted chatter seemed to him like a shower of pebbles.

He merely sighed and thought, 'Oh God, please save my honour and integrity in this infernal place.'

When he started working, his boss dictated to him a list of important visitors with a standing order, "If they ring up, connect them to me immediately. If they drop in, let them into my room at once."

All the rest he had to understand himself, gradually, with experience. He also had to learn to read the meaning of shades of subtle changes in the boss's moods manifested by the way his eyelashes fluttered or the angle to which his eyebrows were raised. Correct response to these different moods was an essential part of this job.

He had to make instant decisions on whom he should allow to enter the all-powerful devil's room, whom he should offer tea if the boss was busy at a meeting, and who should be given small doses of opium even if the boss was free, puffing on his pipe, because there were people who were a mere nuisance. Moreover, it was not 'profitable' for the boss to meet them. Who wants to waste his time for nothing!

Sitting in his private secretary's chair, Ram Lall entered a mysterious world where money was God, the Almighty One! If someone higher in the political hierarchy rang up the boss and wanted him to 'help' somebody, it only meant that the money had changed hands elsewhere.

Ram Lall realised that he was surrounded by thieves. He felt as if he himself was Ali Baba. Yes, that’s what he was. Surrounded by not forty, but forty thousand thieves.

He thought of all the counsellors, members of parliament and of state assemblies, big politicians and their cronies who helped them during elections and who needed to be carefully nurtured all the time. All those hordes of thieves!

There were many smaller thieves behind every big thief, like those wooden Russian dolls. You open the bigger one, and hidden inside is a smaller one inside. Dolls within dolls. Thieves within thieves.

The Ali Baba of Arabian Nights was able to make those forty thieves lick dust, but Ram Lall was unable to do anything. He just cursed the day he was transferred to this post. He felt all these thieves were out to rob him only, because he was a minuscule version of India, a symbolic heir to the whole country which was being robbed.

Sitting in that chair he felt his third eye had opened. It was, what they call, Shiva's eye. But unlike Shiva he was incapable of destroying the universe with an angry look of the third eye.

But now he could see through things. Like Shiva he was drinking the poison of his new awareness.

With the third eye he saw how millions of people die without medicines; why children remain uneducated; why the bones of young people are eaten away by termites and rot away because there are no jobs for them even when they want to work; how freshly-built tarcoal roads develop bumps and potholes after the first monsoon shower; and why every politician spends millions to fight elections, though after being elected his total salary is less than that of Ram Lall's.

But Ram Lall couldn’t do anything about it. He was supposed to say 'Yes Sir', 'All right Sir', and nothing else. He was supposed to take dictations from his boss, type out letters and notes, and attend the telephone calls.

In fact,his job was the one and only badge of his identity.

"Ram Lall? Which Ram Lall?"

" Ram Lall, son of Bhairon Prasad."

"Who the hell is Bhairon Prasad? In this country millions of Ram Lalls and Bhairon Prasads are sold cheaper than turnips, and millions rot in the warehouses."

"The Ram Lall who is private secretary to the Commissioner of Public Works, and works in the Town Hall."

"Ah well, that Ram Lall."

This was what distinguished him from the others.

He had three children who needed food, clothes, medicines, fee for their schools, money for books and notebooks. They were the future of the country. It is immaterial if they never had enough to eat, and never had new books when they went off their seams, particularly from the back; and the shirts had always worn-out collars.

Ram Lall's wife Prema was like a juggler, who always managed to make their shirts by cutting off the frayed portions of Ram Lall's worn out ones, and restitching them, cutting them down to three different sizes for her children. She could shorten the length, alter the size of the cuffs with her magic touch after trimming the sleeves, but she could never learn to stitch new collars. That is why the same collars travelled from Ram Lall's neck down to the necks of the children.

Like the country's hunger and poverty, these collars descended from one generation to another, and adorned the necks of those who were the country's future.

They were always accused and reprimanded by their teachers: for coming late, for not doing their homework properly, for not depositing the fee in time, and for being rude and rowdy.

Because Ram Lall was carrying the burden of this 'future of the country' on his tired shoulders, he couldn’t even shrug them off like the mythological Atlas. But Atlas is a god after all. Gods are free to do anything; they can shrug their shoulders, can carry mountains on the palms of their hands, can steal butter and see nubile nude beauties taking a bath, can have roaring love affairs with married women, can abandon their pregnant wives to please the people they want to rule, can force their wives to walk on embers to prove their chastity. They can do anything because they are gods.

But Ram Lall couldn’t even think of shrugging his shoulders because if he did that, he and his family would get buried in the rubble of the ensuring earthquake.

So Ram Lall kept doing his job silently, gulping down all the poison of his newly acquired knowledge.

The monsoons set in. It rained incessantly for two days, and on the third morning the roof of a newly-constructed school collapsed like a pack of cards, and four children died on the spot. Twenty-three of the seriously injured were taken to the hospital.

Ram Lall knew the contractor who had been commissioned to build that school. It was through Ram Lall that his boss had conveyed to the contractor a hint about his thousand yard plot of land, asking him to suggest a good architect. The contractor gave an all knowing smile and said, "Why only an architect? I shall get the house built. Ask Sahib to leave it to me and stop worrying about it."

Ram Lall knew it was a filthy deal, but dutifully conveyed the message to his boss.

He felt he was one of the accomplices.

The contractor kept his word and the house was constructed within six or seven months. One-and-a-half-storeyed bungalow. Marble was brought from Makrana, and tiles from Bombay.

Sanitary fittings, lights and chandeliers, fans and air-conditioners, everything was purchased under the personal supervision of the Commissioner Sahib’s wife.

Ram Lall was sometimes ordered to take Mem Sahib to the market where she selected the fittings and accessories, and the contractor made the payments.

After completion, the house looked not only beautiful but was also sturdy because it was to be used by the second and third and fourth generations of the boss.

Who bothers about school buildings, even if they collapse a few days after their construction!

The children who die under the rubble don’t count. There are millions of them in the country. Heaps of them are born every day.

And if you ask me honestly, who asks these children to go to schools? Why should they? They can also shine shoes on the pavements, clean plates at the wayside dhabas, work as domestic servants or in the backyards of factories, carry luggage, hawk newspapers at road-crossings. Well, they can do anything. Why the hell should you pick up their satchels and walk to the schools? Don’t they know that school buildings are make-believe structures and come crashing down in the first monsoon shower?

Ram Lall was angry.

He was angry with the children who were dead, with the boss, with the contractor, with himself.

In the afternoon the boss called him in and with honeyed politeness asked him to collect all the files concerning the construction jobs given to the contractor who had built that school, and come to the Kothi, Sahib’s bungalow, in the evening.

In the evening when Ram Lall reached Sahib’s house, carrying a huge load of relevant files, he found the contractor and his son too in the drawing room, having drinks with the boss.

The boss told him, "Well, Ram Lall, keep the files on that table, and flag the concerned documents of the contract for the school building."

Ram Lall started doing what he was told to do, quietly and mechanically.

The contractor realised Ram Lall’s importance, filled up a glass and offered it to him. Ram Lall told him in a meek voice that he had never touched liquor. But the contractor persisted, " We are honouring you, Ram Lall. You must have a sip. If you don’t, we’ll feel hurt."

The boss was smiling silently, and was looking on with a kind of patience he was not generally known to possess.

Ram Lall looked at him, and feeling grateful and vengeful at the same time, took the glass and gulped it down in one go. And held out his empty glass. The contractor refilled it.

After gulping down the second peg, he sat down, relaxed. He opened his eyes and looked around. He had come to this room several times, but always with downcast eyes. Today he looked up, for the first time in his life, and saw the T.V., the video, the Persian carpets, the flowers in the cut-glass vases, the dinner sets, the music system.

And he rose, and walked out.

On his way home he kept abusing himself, "Ram Lall, you bastard, what did you achieve in life? What the hell did you accomplish? You couldn’t give two square meals to your family. You couldn’t give them any happiness. You couldn’t save those unfortunate children who died under the rubble of the school building."You are worse than a dog, Ram Lall."

He was drunk and was therefore keenly aware of life.

The whole night he kept arguing with himself. The whole long night he kept, talking to himself. He was angry with the whole world.

In the morning he got up.

He was sober and very serious.

He took out a new blade, shaved, had his bath, changed, and went to office.

He kept climbing the stairs till he reached the top floor.

From there he jumped down.

- translated by the Author