- "If you're so sleepy please wait outside my room!," Sharma remarked even as my eyes closed for the umpteenth time.

- "No. It's not that. I often close my eyes when I'm thinking," I lied to buy my peace with him.

I turned my gaze from Sharma just in time to see the lady at the table near the exit cast a stealthy glance at us.

Summer is sleepwalking time in Delhi. As the day progresses the pleasant dry mornings make way for the languorous heat. Everyone from vehicles on roads to people to flies at fruit juice shops to birds in the sky move about in a half-awakened state.

If only it were possible, most would just stop where they were and doze off to beat the season.

It was on a day like this that I was in that government office. A few months back I had joined corporate communications team of an airline company. To survive airline companies need to operate flights and flights need schedules, and, like everything else in the country, these schedules also require multi-layered government approval.

- "Please understand we haven't been hired by the government to serve only your company. Please ask your guys in Bombay to stop this practise of making last minute changes to the schedule," continued Sharma.

The office was among the several agencies of the aviation ministry that one is required to approach in order to operate a flight. Cynics dismiss it as just another instance of bureaucracy tying millstones around an industry's feet. While its defenders see it as necessity, precaution to ensure aircraft and passenger safety.

Anyway, let both parties debate the merits and demerits, as they will, while I continue with my story.

- "I'm fasting these days. I'll just step out to have fruits. You can wait here in my room," said Sharma as he tied up one more file after making some noting on the margins and stacked it with others already lying on his table. "Keep the letter ready. I'll see it when I come back," he said turning to the rotund lady.

The lady merely nodded her head in approval.

Cheen... Choon...

The door shut as Sharma walked out to enjoy fruits of his labour.

I was hungry and angry. This was my third trip to the office and things seemed to be reaching nowhere. At the time of joining I was told that my job primarily involved media relations. But since my colleague who liased with government agencies was on leave to his hometown I was despatched instead. Having been a journalist till about a few months back I was still new to the culture of waiting.

The place like any other government office... Dark and musty with piles of unopened files that had collected ever since the unit opened. And will keep on piling till the authorities decide to shift to another address. For then they will be dumped in some obscure store to rot and rats.

As for the smell, all government offices, federal or provincial, have that unmistakable uniformity. This is usually a mélange of old paper, fungi, body odour, burnt tea leaves on electric stoves, lunch hour pickles, cheap cigarette smoke, burps and farts, seeping walls, dirty toilets, rusting coolers and dust under long unwashed carpets.

One area where democracy has truly percolated down to the last blade of grass.

This overpowering metaphor that runs through government buildings through the length and breadth of the country is enough to induce sleep in even a chronic insomniac.

- "Got the director's approval on your file?," the lady called out breaking my reverie.

- "No Madam, not yet."

Madam is another ubiquitous fixture in government offices. She will be a forty something, matronly, sexless creature, which will constructively spend time knitting pullovers for sons and grandsons when not exchanging gossip about husbands, mothers-in-law and sons.

- "Hmm... What is Sharmaji saying?"

- "He says the director is busy."

- "Do you have any cabin crew positions?," she asked changing the topic of discussion.

- "Yes, we've interviews every six months. You've anyone in mind?"

- "Yes my son. He is very handsome and clever."

- "How old is he?"

- "He just finished school."

- "Can you forward me his resume?"

- "I will give it to you next time you're here."

- "Don't worry, if he's good he'll get through."

- "Yes, he's very good."

Silence. I was again feeling drowsy.

- "Is this your first job?," she asked breaking the silence.

- "No my fourth in as many years."

- "Where were you earlier?"

- "I was working with a news agency?"

- "Why did you leave?"

- "Got a better offer? Madam, what do you do here? Are you attached to Sharmaji?"

- "Not really. If you look at it another way I do all the work. But since he sits there," pointing to where I was sitting, "he gets all the attention."

- "Oh. So what do you do?"

- "I draft letters and maintain all files."

So she was a stenographer.

- "Despite my being so helpful your airline people have been most unfair."

- "That's bad."

- "Know I helped out the other company with so many things last year. But they only sent a Diwali gift to Sharmaji. They didn't even invite me to the bash they recently hosted."

I was rendered speechless. I tried to picture her munching peanuts while her male colleagues drowned themselves in free booze and the sight of airhostesses in midriff defying saris.

- "Officers come and go. But we're permanent."

- "Yes, that's true."

- "Will we again go to war with Pakistan?" Kargil was still fresh in everyone's mind.

- "Doesn't look like it. Both are second-rate powers and it'll be difficult to sustain a protracted conflict on either side."

- "No India can easily defeat Pakistan. These Muslims shouldn't be allowed to live here. They should all be sent across the border."

- "It's not that easy."

- "Pakistan is a conspiracy against India."

- "But Pakistan's a reality. We've to accept it. The British played a dirty to prolong their rule over India. Or maybe it started with the Moguls. A section of Indian Muslims led by Jinnah saw no future for the community in post-Independent India. It's good they left.," I protested.

It was a surprise to hear a seemingly docile woman suddenly assume a militant tone.

- "You know something," she said in a hushed tone lest someone had his ear pinned on the keyhole to the large, creaky door to that odorous room, "it was all a conspiracy... A terrible conspiracy..."

- "How?"

- "Jinnah and Nehru were actually both Motilal's sons. He wanted both to become prime ministers after independence. So the nation was divided into two parts for both of them."

Nothing had prepared me for this bombshell. History books tell us that Jinnah was 15 years Motilal Nehru's junior. While Jawaharlal Nehru was born a good 13 years after Jinnah. Other than birth they were also divided by geography and faith.

- "How could you be so sure?"

- "What do you know? I can share more such stories with you. Only a very few people are aware of these gory details," she said emphatically with a quiet smile cutting across her plump cheeks to her ears.

I just stared hard at her. In one stroke Madam had turned modern history on its head.

Cheen... Choon...

The door opened and Sharma re-entered contentedly wiping his lips with a handkerchief. I hadn't welcomed the sight of a man more in my life.

- "Is the letter ready?", he asked Madam.

- "No sir, I'm typing it."

Sharma looked annoyed.

- "Oh, you're still here. I'm sorry, the director is out for a meeting and the draft of your letter too isn't ready. You'll have to return tomorrow."

- "Ok."

I had resigned the schedule and myself to fate and Sharmaji.

***

But all stories needn't necessarily end in tragedy.

The next day another stenographer (not Madam) who was to make our letter of approval disappeared. So I did it myself on an old electronic typewriter at the office. I was sitting with the draft in Sharma's cabin when the director came in on one of his rounds. I wished him and he asked me the purpose of my visit.

- "Where's the letter?," he asked Sharma hearing my answer.

Sharma quietly carried the file to him hunched as a supplicant.

- "We don't like to delay things," he confidently declared as he put his signature on the letter.

Sharma smiled. I grinned.

I collected the first approval and left for the next government office.

Madam was on leave that day.

-Finis-