The Interview
A short story by
Anirudh Deshpande
IV
Sameer entered the Principal’s room and said “Good Afternoon” to the phalanx of interviewers. He was waved to a hard wooden chair kept four inches below the committee platform. His height compensated for this stratagem of official humiliation. Principal Dr. Harish Mohan Shukla, aka Anjaanaa his nom de plume among Hindi kavis and lekhaks, sat below a large black and white photograph of the modest Prime Minister.
On the right bottom corner of this photograph was a small drawing of a soldier in olive green holding a 303 Enfield Rifle. The left corner was embellished with the poster of a sharp nosed wheatish young man in a white dhoti and singlet holding a bushel of harvested wheat.
Between these two heroes of the nation-state was scrawled Jai Jawan - Jai Kisan in calligraphic Devanagri.
Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri’s soft eyes showered benediction on the large longitudinal room. His photo was flanked on the left and right by same size photos and portraits of India’s founding fathers. From the left wall Indira Gandhi smiled and on the right was Netaji in a green uniform.
Unknown to these Indian icons, the college was infamous for gang warfare. A recent battle had claimed the life of an innocent male student. A beer bottle, obtained from an ammunition dump behind the grimy canteen, had caused this collateral damage. A war of maneuver had raged even as the curious boy from Ranchi bled to death on the sports field. The papers had reported that student groups had fought with an assortment of weapons. The weaponry included cricket bats and hockey sticks expropriated from the sports room. The locked door of the room had been smashed to smithereens by a Pahalwan.
The six feet four-inch giant weighed a hundred and forty kilos and was the son of an influential sarpanch of a semi-urban village. The President of the College Students Union he had obtained admission in the English Honors course under the sports quota. It was known that his exams were written a solver, a Rajasthani student-tenant in a tenement building owned by his uncle.
While the war happened in four theatres for three hours the Principal, the stocky Physical Training Instructor and the Convener of the Discipline Committee had deserted the field on the Principal’s scooter. The cowering female colleagues were left to their fate. All teachers and administrative staff had retreated to the Staff Room. Tiwari in wet pants led the baffled guards into the Principal’s office. No one displayed the courage to go close to the windows to acquire a first-hand account of the battle. By then bricks, stones and dusters flew across the open spaces, corridors and parking lot.
After this epic battle many female teachers stayed home for a fortnight. They utilized this time to cook special dishes for their families. Many caught up with relatives and friends and regaled them with battle accounts. The incident had attracted a small para in the papers with the heading: ‘Students indulge in violent clashes in the LBsec. One outstation student dead due to head injuries.’ No arrests followed and the Report of an Inquiry Committee appointed by the VC under Anjaanaa’s Chairmanship concluded, to everyone’s satisfaction, that outsiders had entered the college and rioted.
A condolence message with a check, the amount of which was discussed threadbare in the college Staff Council, was dispatched to Ranchi. The three Staff Associations condemned the violence in strong words and began rumors against each other.
The giant graduated with distinction and joined the city police.
The founding fathers of our great democratic republic stared at the wooden chair in anticipation of its incumbent. Two noisy window ACs provided them comfort. Between Swami Dayananda Saraswati and B. R. Ambedkar everyone graced the wall of fame. Sameer noticed that Nehru was missing from the gallery. India’s first premier had been consigned to the dusty college library as an eight-inch square portrait above a window hidden behind a thick sheet of cobwebs.
Plates with samosa crumbs, half empty plastic bottles of water and soft drinks and used tea cups lay on the long table. From several glass bowls assorted dry fruits disappeared quickly. Salted peanuts had also been served. They remained neglected without chilled beer.
Sameer thought of beer and Ankita.
Diabetic Principal Shukla, guzzler of samosas and milky tea had a jolly appearance, a façade cultivated with care to deceive friend and foe alike. His ambition of becoming a colleague of the Hindi sahitya samrat professor Kamwar Sinha in the faculty had died a painful death in the college.
In response Anjaanaa was born.
Five years from an inglorious retirement, the poet hated his subordinates. The Staff Associations reciprocated his feeling. Professor Mishra sat on his left in an off white half sleeve shirt. On his short hairy fingers gleamed several gold rings crowned with stones of different colors. On his left professor Nand Gopal Dube, bald, fat looked overfed and bored. Professor Suresh R. Murthy, a trustee of a famous south Indian religious temple trust fidgeted with a ball point on the Principal’s right. His furrowed brows set in a broad forehead protected three long thick ash marks. Dressed in a terry-cot blue and grey check shirt his thick black wavy oiled hair glistened in the white light of the illuminated the room.
Between Murthy and Shukla sat Padma Shri Lokbandhu K. K. Agrawala, the Chairman of the College Governing Body and a respected trader of spices and dry fruits. His late father had been a big contributor to India’s premier party during the Freedom Struggle. It was said that as a sulking toddler he had once urinated in Gandhiji’s lap. Accounts claimed that Bapu had smiled at the large stain on his dhoti. Azad and Pant had remained stoic.
Lokbandhu was a clean shaven dark short man in a white khadi kurta, Nehru jacket and Gandhi cap. The cap was large enough to hide a bald pate. A foolish smile which displayed white dentures was fixed on his face. From the extreme right corner, a heavily built tall man with a thin moustache regarded Sameer with unhidden dislike. He was in his early forties with thick grey hair parted in the middle of his unshapely head.
Sameer who guessed him to be the Teacher in Charge of the college history department.
Sameer, with a pony-tail and a curved comb which held his jet black hair in place, stared glanced at the fellow for a second before sitting down.
The interview was initiated by professor Mishra.
“Were you in my MA Class some years ago?” he asked politely.
“Yes Sir. I took your course on the Indian National Movement. Quite enjoyed it, Sir” replied Sameer hiding the truth. Mishra was a Gandhi bhakt in Marxist sandals and feudal pants. In class, and outside, he was a crashing bore.
Mishra, obviously pleased by the answer, asked the second question, “I am happy to know that you enjoyed my classes. Now tell us, in your view, who were the two men most responsible in making us independent in 1947?”.
The head wanted to make short work of Sameer because his favorite, the Brahmin ad-hoc, was fourteenth on the list. He had no intention of eating a packed dinner in the Principal’s room.
He looked at his co-panelists while saying “us” and they nodded in concurrence. The Padma Shri looked at Sameer, his ears eager to hear something about the freedom fighters.
“Sir, in my considered opinion,” Sameer mimicked his father, “our independence is owed to Gavrilo Princip and Georges Clemenceau.”
Sameer had learnt some French from Antara and pronounced the last name with correct diction to increase the import of the outlandish suggestion. The Professors’ faces informed the Teacher in Charge that they had never heard of these two. He thanked his stars for the protocol which assured his silence and his dislike of Sameer turned into a grudging respect.
Before the elders reacted to this fresh hypothesis, K. K. Agrawala exclaimed in Hindi “What is this man saying?”.
What forcep did this hippie speak of ? Accounting had been his school leaving subject. He had become a Commerce Graduate by correspondence while editing his illustrious father’s shop ledgers day and night forsaking the pleasures of flesh which beckoned from a mere two hundred metres.
He had washed his soiled dhotis and guilt with soap on many mornings cursing Gandhi’s vows of celibacy. Never in his comfortable life nourished by khichdi and pudina-dhania chatni, except once in the office of an Income Tax Commissioner, had he been humiliated as a Padma Shri. For god’s sake, they always gave him the fourth row at the republic day parade. And now these forceps had emerged!
Maybe this hippie referred to a new technique of childbirth used in colonial India.
Exhausted by the alien task of thinking, he slumped in the high backed cushioned chair shaking his head in disbelief.
“What history is taught in our universities these days! No respect for our great leaders!” Lokbandhu quaked from the depths of despair.
Murthy feigned alarm and Tiwari, shuffled forward from the half open door to pour the Gandhian a glass of mineral water. The Principal, whose hatred of Lokbandhu was inversely proportional to his love of samosas, looked forward to the interview.
“The young man is carried away by some history fashion popular these days. Let him explain” boomed Murthy to stabilize the situation.
He had seen the shell shock spread to Dube who shook his head in disapproval. Dube was a heart patient and Murthy disliked him. He wanted to avoid the hospital on his son Ramanujan’s birthday eve. His wife would have crucified him with the thick gold nails which kept her half inch ear tops in place.
The thought sent a shiver down his spine.
“Continue” Mishra regained command.
“Sir, please let me explain. Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his Wife in June, 1914. In my view the wife’s murder served no purpose. Anyway, this double murder started the First World War which weakened the British Empire. This imperial weakness created the conditions of mass nationalism in India during the early 1920s. We cannot imagine India without the Rowlatt Act and Jallianwalla Bagh, both caused by a passionate young man called Princip. Passion is a great cause of history, Sir.”
“And what about Clemen…the other fellow you mentioned” Mishra growled. He knew of Churchill, Lord Irwin and Mountbatten. The fact that France also had Prime Ministers had escaped his attention.
Sameer’s pronunciation had foxed him.
“I firmly believe that had Clemenceau not ensured the ill treatment of the Germans at Versailles, Hitler would, in all probability, not have come to power. And Sir, Hitler started the Second World War which exhausted the British and made them leave India in a hurry in 1947” Sameer replied with a straight face.
His supervisor would have been proud of him.
Professor Murthy intervened “So, according to your theory of causation Indian leaders did not play an important role in getting us freedom in 1947. Right?”
“Sir, the question initially asked referred to two men most responsible for 1947. With all humility I must add, Sir, that the difference between being responsible and playing an important role in the causation of history is more than semantic. In any case Gandhi had become irrelevant to practical politics after 1942, but that is a different matter, Sir” Sameer rejoined pulling an expression of innocence across his face.
His aunt and her bohemian friends had tutored him well and he had read world history seriously. The panel noticed that he had not called Gandhi Gandhiji.
Even as Murthy made sense of this perfect logic, Dube recovered and executed a rear guard action. He looked for approval at Mishra who nodded his head.
“Are you interested in European History, Mr. Randive?” Dube mispronounced Ranade. Sameer disliked a north Indian mispronouncing his name. Once a student pass office clerk at the local transport office had called him a Rande and everyone had laughed!
His faced darkened.
Dube felt the blood move through his clogged arteries. He began feeling well. He remembered the Sistine Chapel he had seen during a brief seminar tour of Rome some years ago.
“Yes, Sir. I like European history very much” Sameer replied.
“Tell me where and when was the Sextine Church built?” Dube, originally from Kanpur dehat, inquired flaunting his knowledge of European History. The Teacher in Charge was a graduate of B.A. General with History and a post graduate of the Department of Indology and Tibetology. He gawked at the Professor under whose supervision he had never managed to finish a Ph.D. on the “Influence of Indology and Erotica on the Hindi Poets of Ujjain during the early 20th Century.”
“Sir, the Sistine Chapel was built in Paris by Louis the Fourteenth, the Sun King, during the eighteenth century. This Louis ruled for eighty years, Sir. It is located in the church of Notre Dame” Sameer spoke with confidence pronouncing the French words slowly.
A triumphant Dube closed in on the kill.
“You said you like European History very much but it seems you don’t know anything about the Sextine Church of Rome. I bet you have not read about the punarjagran!” he exclaimed in Hindi.
Mishra, Murthy, and even Shri Agarwala, who was indifferent to the difference between Rome and Paris, heaved a sigh of relief. The smart aleck had been nailed.
Dube addressed the Committee in Hindi after a long pause.
He mocked everything he considered wrong with the subject he failed to comprehend despite his half-hearted efforts. Defeated by the latest developments in historiography, time and again, he sought solace in the textbooks sold to the civil service aspirants in the book stalls near the Deenbandhu Chest Institute near his department.
He furtively taught historical facts to some civil service aspirants in a coaching center in Chatterjee Nagar.
“Look at these young men. They dabble in theory and use difficult words like semantics, metaphor, lexicon, trope, subaltern, micro history etc. but do not pay attention to the facts of history. Young man, take my advice and read some good books on history. Read basic history about facts. Don’t be in a hurry to interpret them.”
His voice rose with each phrase he uttered. The others stared at him. Tiwari peered into the room from behind the door. Manoj Kumar entered the room on the pretext of showing the Principal another candidate’s file from a slim door behind the Principal’s large table. All this while he had stood against this door eavesdropping. From behind the Principal he informally winked at Sameer who smiled back.
Dube mistook this smile as the beginning of a counter offensive and became furious.
A silent moment ensued after which Mishra dismissed Sameer.
“That will be all, Dr. Ranadive. We won’t bother you with more questions.”
The Selection Committee turned to the file brought in by the Principal’s Personal Assistant.
“Thank you Sir. I am sorry to have offended anyone” Sameer affected politeness. He got up from the hard chair and moved to the exit. There he stopped for a second, turned and said something which spread like wildfire in the college in ten minutes.
“Professor Dube, Sir, I have one last thing to say. May I?” Sameer made the Committee members look up from the file.
“Had I told you that the Sistine Chapel painted largely by Angelo is, technically speaking, in the Vatican, would you have given me this job?”
These two sentences were spoken in Hindi especially for Manoj Kumar and Tiwari. Before the Committee members recovered from the shock Tiwari rushed to the Staff Room.
The Principal was overjoyed.
The news that the Selection Committee had been buggered reached the aspirants. Their morale soared and Bansal and Rawat shook hands.
Sameer and Antara polished off five bottles of chilled beer that evening with spicy roasted peanuts. Later the Brigadier thought he had dreamt his son’s nocturnal laughter.
The cook had placed the brown envelope on Sameer’s bed late in the evening.
THE END
