REFLECTONS
bn uniyal
Delhi, whore city
The ONGC imbroglio brings a chance remark by Ramnath Goenka to our columnist’s mind
ONE day, sometime in early 1977, a group of journalists was sitting on the lawn of Chandra Shekhar’s South Avenue flat. Ramnath Goenka (1904-91), the founder of the Indian Express group of newspapers, arrived there, pulled up an easy chair and plonked himself in it with a thump, and pronounced without any apparent provocation: “All capital cities are like whores – alluring to all but faithful to none.” “That’s well said, sir,” remarked someone from amongst us. “But why didn’t you move to get it inscribed in the Constitution? After all, you were a member of the Constituent Assembly, weren’t you?”
“That’s because, my dear young man, I was not a whoremonger then!” pat came the reply from Goenka, who was never one to let a putdown like that go without an adequate response. The banter was conducted in what is called khanti Hindi and, therefore, sounded a great deal more stinging than it does in English. The reason for Goenka’s outburst soon became apparent. He disclosed that he had just seen the liaison man of an industrialist lurking behind the hedge when he alighted from his car. There were others like him also loitering on the road. That had upset him.
“Netaji [Chandra Shekhar] is about to arrive from Patna after meeting Jayaprakash Narayan and the word has already gone around that he too has a chance of becoming PM,” continued Goenka. And then he burst into laughter, saying, “But why get annoyed over that? Am I also not here because of that? Delhi is a funny place. Damn whore of a city! Here, in this house of pleasure dancing, girls change, clients change, even madams change but the only ones who never seem to change are the harmonium and tablawallahs, am I right?” Goenka was not off the mark in his estimate of capital cities. They do attract all sorts of men and women, righteous and roguish, but mostly fixers, fraudsters, racketeers, wheeler-dealers, hustlers and suckers. He was, however, not the first to call a capital city a whore. The early Christians called Rome a whore. Before them, the Jews called Babylon “the mother of whores”.
The Indians did not come up with such comparisons because whoring in India was not despised and prostitution was treated like any other profession with its own guild, code, rules and regulations. And, like prostitution, even thieving and sleight of hand were all treated as arts in their own right. No wonder, it was only in India that thieving or chaurya kala was accorded the status of one of the 64 high arts that an accomplished, well-to do city dweller or nagarika was expected to learn and be proficient in.
Delhi too is full of swindlers, sharks, fiends, goblins, monsters, vamps and outright rascals in various disguises – bureaucrats, retirees, MPs, journalists, swamis, gurus and whatnot. Every second person you meet at a gathering will, without as much as batting an eyelid, claim to be the confidant of no less than the Prime Minister himself. He will not hesitate to claim that he has been assigned to fix a deal or two. If he is less ambitious, he may scale down his contact to the level of a Cabinet Minister or a Secretary to some Ministry.
Delhi is full of swindlers, sharks, fiends, goblins, monsters, vamps and outright rascals in various disguises — bureaucrats, retirees, MPs, journalists, swamis, gurus and whatnot.
THERE is nothing that a Delhi go getter takes as much pride in as presenting himself as a fixer or a wheeler-dealer on the rolls of someone high up. Almost everyone you meet or are introduced to at a Delhi club, restaurant or dinner party has a secret multibillion-dollar deal up his sleeve, or a Minister or Secretary waiting for him to return with a deal.
If you are important, successful or wealthy, a businessman on the move or one who has a contract stuck somewhere, a real estate tycoon, or a bureaucrat hopeful of selection for a key post, you cannot avoid running into someone with top-level connections in some Ministry or other, in the CBDT, CBEC, CBI, IB or RAW. This is how it goes: “Oh, sir, it’s you…You are the…I guessed so…let’s move aside…I have something to tell you…what a chance, sir…you must be cautious, sir…IB is tracking you, sir…I am telling you…also, I think, revenue intelligence….”
Or the spiel may go: “Your enemies, sir…there are some MPs after your blood…I know a few journalists who want to kill you…I have it straight from the horse’s mouth, sir…yes, yes, the horse is very close to me…actually, sir, you can almost say the horse lives in my stable, sir…I’ve known him from the days when he didn’t even know how to neigh…actually, sir, you will not believe it but it’s me who first taught him how to neigh…sir, I can’t say ‘bray’…you can say that, sir, I can’t…his wife…you know these things, sir…but not here…we can’t talk here…let’s meet tomorrow…you know, your friend, so-and-so…tomorrow, then…Oh, no, sir, not tomorrow…tomorrow, you know, the Home Minister’s dinner… no, sir, not tomorrow…the day after…yes, I’ll call you, sir….”
This will go on until one or the other is ensnared. Many names will be dropped – often by both fixer and “fixee”. The “fixee”, if he is cleverer than the fixer, will not take long to make out that, though the fixer may know the horse well, he may not know him well enough to stitch things up for him. If the fixer finds out that the “fixee” is too clever to be caught in his net, he may draw an MP or a senior bureaucrat who is around into the conversation and use him as his showpiece to convince the “fixee” how well connected he is. The suckers are, however, not as innocent as you may think.
They, too, are extremely clever at acting as suckers and beguiling the hustlers into believing that they are a nice bite. Goenka’s take on Delhi came back to my mind after many years because of this continuing campaign of disinformation, falsehood and calumny over the appointment of the new ONGC chairman. In my 40 years or so as a journalist, I have never seen such a vigorous and vile campaign over the appointment of a public sector company chief. I say this with authority because I know every player in this game personally. Some who are active from behind the scenes may not know me but I know them well from their friends. They have all done incalculable harm to a great organization. And the worst has been done by none else than the Prime Minister who has taken so long to settle the matter one way or the other. g
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