The P Place, Department of Accounts, Panaji.

            Opposite the Capt of Ports, across the road where the new Patto bridge descends to an always crowded 24-hour petrol pump is lovely (but very untidy inside) old building that houses the Treasury and Pension sections of the Government of Goa. I’ve been visiting it often, to help a very old relative restore the pension due to her. It had not been claimed since 2004 because going there wasn’t worth it to collect the Rs 60. That was before two pay commissions increased the amount drastically.

            On my first trip to the department on a very hot April afternoon, I was amazed/amused to find an entire floor of people comatose. The air indicated much indigestion happening amongst them. Indeed, I thought, India should harvest the gas produced in such offices, good fuel it might make, and lots of it. To be fair, the clerks who were awake were helpful. The file I wanted was tracked even before I submitted the application. I returned impressed.

            By the first week of May, a letter was despatched to me via Post. It didn’t reach me, and one of the behind-the-benchers told another that this ‘not reaching’ was happening often. I’m not surprised, because my village, Sangolda, had no postman for several weeks and even now I have a feeling it’s a badli that’s doing the rounds. I got a photocopy of the letter concerned. The relevant Deputy Director requested me to meet the Treasury people on the ground floor. I know every tile of that sweeping staircase because I’ve avoided slipping and tripping on more than five occasions.

            My visits to the Treasury have put everyone in a tizzy, because I very sweetly refuse to leave the premises unless they do something spelled w-o-r-k. Very sweetly. My weekly visits have made them search their cupboards downside up and confidently inform me that no records exist for such and such person. For how many years do you store records? I ask. Ten, I’m told. It isn’t ten years yet, I inform them, hence the records should be there. They agree, then politely tell me that they’ve been around for two/seven/nine and a half years and that’s why they don’t know where the records are. They mumble something, I think it’s a mantra to make me disappear. Doesn’t happen, I’m still there. I ask a matronly woman staffer who looks like she’s about to retire whether she’s been around for ten years. I ask her in Konkani, Marathi, English and Hindi. Like the mantra, this doesn’t work either. She throws sad glances at the cobwebs on the ceiling, tattered papers in the trash-bin, stains of spit and the rain outside. Will someone give me in writing that my records have been destroyed, lost? Nope, now the voices are confident: they haven’t received anything in writing, see? The letter that I have from the Dep Director doesn’t have a cc marked to them, see? How can they give me anything in writing? I pen in duplicate yet another application and run to the despatch clerk to get in inward-stamped-and-dated before the minute is up, for if the shift ends, I’ll have to make another trip.

            I notice a pensioner walking in with drooping shoulders, his fingers clasped in front of his chest like he’s approaching the sanctum sanctorum of a holy place. The young male clerk who helped me in the first instance and the peon are the only ones who make any effort to approach him. The sariwali madam with the diamond ear-studs thinks yawning and stretching takes too much effort, so she just sits without moving at all. At all. It’s fascinating that a fellow human being can thus just ‘be’ day after day after day. The Art of Living guys must take a lesson in this meditation technique from her. They can earn some more millions.

            Coming back to my story: I’ve booked every Wednesday in my diary for the year for a trip to the pension office. I’ve set aside a budget for pilot ride to and from ferry (sixty bucks, equal to the amount of the original pension), chips, sandwiches, a tetra-pack of fruit juice and paper napkins. Might as well make a picnic of it. One problem though: the taxes I pay the government don’t ensure me a clean loo in that office.