Rogues Among the Ruins by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2021-10-24T17:57:06+00:00

A Harvest of Pineapples

Subhash felt no enthusiasm returning to the state cadre. A bureaucratic saying was: ‘As inevitable as death and as gloomy as reversion to the state cadre.’ The national capital was a place of excitement and innovation, intrigues and conspiracies, and wonderful opportunities for advancement. Service in the state was comfortable and predictable. But after his showdown with a powerful Union minister, Subhash did not want to serve in Delhi.

‘Reversion to the state’ as it is inaccurately called (as if it was a disgrace and demotion), can be painful after a showdown, especially if the party in power in the Union government is the same as the party ruling the state. An officer is then kept on ‘compulsory waiting’ and harassed in other ways. The government in power in Dakhinstan was in opposition to the central one. But Chief Minister Delonius and his éminence grise Iago de Sanctis were not likely to champion a ‘maverick’ officer like Subhash. Some politicians are united by a common dislike of a strong-willed officer, and if the officer is also honest, he is dreaded like the bubonic plague.

Subhash was posted to Kurtum, an arid district near Sandalore whose only appeal was its pineapples alleged to be superior to those of Hawaii. As Kurtum is drought prone, cultivation of rice and coconut had been replaced by pineapple. At harvest time the highway between Kurtum and Sandalore is dotted with farmers offering pyramids of spiky pineapples that travellers stop to buy.

The deputy commissioner’s residence, ‘Dobb’s Bungalow’, was a dilapidated relic of the British Raj and took its name from a stern British officer of the Mutiny days, whose ghost was said to appear now and then and abuse wrongdoers in the local language.

‘If we fall short of suitable acquaintances here, we can always rely on ghosts of British deputy commissioners to amuse us,’ Subhash wrote to me. ‘The assistant commissioners are competent young men so I have satisfactory assistance on the official front. Their wives like Radha and we meet once a month at district headquarters to review development projects.’

When he described his bailiwick, I wondered if Subhash was trying to console himself or whether he was indeed a different breed from officers like me. He described the parched landscape; fields of hardy jowar, dried irrigation tanks that resembled craters and of wolves foraging for human flesh.

Subhash, I consoled myself, has been banished to a dreary place and will soon be forgotten. He has missed the tide and has proved that he is that most dreaded of civil servants – an idealistic maverick. He will stay in Kurtum until he is promoted, and then be shifted to some other nondescript post in Sandalore. Learn the lesson, I told myself, whenever I had a feeble urge to revolt.

But Subhash did not complain. Perhaps after storms in the capital, he found peace in dreary Kurtum. I soon learnt that he had once more taken on wielders of power.

While leading a posse of police to track down

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