In her weekly column for Different Truths, Hemashri takes stock of how government offices work, along with all the absurdities that come with them.
They say life begins at forty! That is great, I thought.
But forty-five seems to be an age when the turbulence of introspection leads to excessive self-questioning. What have I been doing in life? Am I leading the life I always longed for? What is the output or outcome of my efforts in the home or in my workplace? Maybe this is how midlife crises set in. To do away with facial wrinkles, they claim to have invented miracle creams and lotions, but how do we handle this invisible syndrome of ageing when a harsh tone deep within keeps annoying us with such uncomfortable questions?
For a year, I have been in a place where I studied every single issue placed before me and recorded suggestions in a bundle of papers wrapped in a dust-coloured jacket called a file. These keep rotating indefinitely with some more comments, and there is no outcome/output/impact. I have been doing this job for more than twenty years now. To achieve this, I get dressed up to cheer myself and come to a place every day where everyone dislikes everyone else. This place is called the office.
At 45, the mature woman within me asks what you have been doing all these years. Your countdown has begun. If the average age is 70 years, you have only 25 years left, and it may be even less. So hurry up and live the life you always wanted to. Leave no scope for regret when the time is right to leave. What have you given so far? What do you have to give? This mature woman is torturous!
So we all keep going to the office without ever making any serious effort to enjoy our work. Is it like this everywhere? There are people who, after 30 to 35 years of service, again queue up for re-employment. I wonder, are they not exhausted? Are they not content after rendering so many years of service? We do not enjoy work while working, yet we want to stay! Many of us talk about taking voluntary retirement, but we never actually do. It reminds me of Khalil Gibran, who had said, “Work is love made visible.”
Here, for a piece of work, everyone starts shouting at one another because harsh pressure tactics are all they have mastered. Creating an enabling environment for everyone to work is not a priority here. At work, workers are divided into several classes, like the Vedic caste system, which had four classes: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Shudra. The division is watertight, and every class looks down upon the other. No one ever asks anyone, ‘What are your problems?’ or ‘How can we help you to improve your performance?’ Top-level leaders keep travelling abroad to see what the best countries are doing, but they have no intention of applying it here. The lowest level is not aware of what training is. One said that in 22 years of service, he was never given any training. The one above in the hierarchy shouts at those below him but will always be over-eloquent in praise of his immediate boss. No one bothers to be genuine because pleasing the important one is the mission; serving is a lost cause, forgotten forever.
Modern India continues to thrive in slogans and posters of “Poribartan” (change).
Britishers left. But they left behind poor clones, in the form of Brown Sahibs, who mimicked them in many ways. These Brown Sahibs live in perpetual hell, gleefully self-certifying themselves as extraordinary humans or talking about going to some distant land to escape the harsh realities of their own land. They are not aware of Trump’s target to evacuate 50 lakh Indian professionals from the USA or that every country is contemplating harsh laws to free their country from outsiders.
The railway network and roads in some difficult terrains in India were credited to the Britishers, and while leaving the country, they predicted that the rule of this country would go into the hands of cheaters and thugs!
How dare they make such a statement? After seventy years of their departure, we now need to ask if they were actually wrong!
©Hemashri Hazarika
Photos from the Internet
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Hemashri Hazarika is an Officer of the Assam Civil Service since 1997. Her research on Assam Civil Service brought reforms in 2015. A first-class Postgraduate in Economics from Gauhati University, she was awarded JRF/NET by UGC in 1997. Her experience as a bureaucrat has sensitised her to human sufferings. A solutionist by passion, she takes an active interest in issues related to Governance, Development, Women, Children, etc. Reading, Writing, Speaking and Painting are her hobbies.
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It took me three days and readings several times to ‘ leave a reply ‘. Does Hemashri sound pessimistic? Whatever that be; her narration, her style of writing ĺeft me spellbound.