THE VIEW FROM KOLLAM
A Day in the Life of a Sub-collector
C Balagopal
HarperCollins Publishers India
167 pages; Rs 275
Shocked by the grimy and gritty nation he encounters at Madna, Agastya Sen - the protagonist of Upamanyu Chatterjee's English August - famously seeks distraction in marijuana, masturbation and the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Mr Chatterjee, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer himself, was possibly exercising the creative licence of a novelist and exaggerating the travails of city-bred bureaucrats posted in rural outposts for comic effect. In writing The View From Kollam, C Balagopal did not have a novelist's licence but the anecdotes he narrates are often as bizarre and comic as Agastya's experiences.
Mr Balagopal's career in the IAS was short - from 1977 to 1983. He was first posted in Manipur - this inspired his acclaimed literary debut: On a Clear Day You Can See India (2013). His second posting was at Kollam in Kerala, inspiring this volume. In the Introduction, Mr Balagopal writes: "The anecdotes narrated in this collection dwell on the quotidian events that mark the work of a district official in Kerala... To that extent, it is a continuation of the narrative from my earlier book..." Having said this, he is at pains to emphasise the difference between the administrative work in the troubled north-eastern state and the relatively peaceful southern one.
There is, however, another similarity he doesn't discuss. Like his debut, the title of this book implicates the narrator by making him a part of the dramatis personae that populate these stories. It is a view from - not of - Kollam. Mr Balagopal is not merely a disinterested observer; he deeply invested in the narrative. Of course, as a serving IAS officer, it was his professional duty to be involved but the lucidity and details with which he recalls the incidents indicates an involvement beyond the call of duty. By extension, it is an invitation to the reader - to enter this quaint, and now lost, world of small town south India of the eighties.
A narrative of this nature cannot avoid comparisons with RK Narayan's classics. Mr Balagopal's vignettes stand up to the test. He is a raconteur par excellence, and his style - tongue-in-cheek, candid and irreverent - immediately draws the readers into the world he creates. Along with the young and earnest sub-collector and his sidekick, confidential assistant Padmanabha Pillai, the reader experiences the adventures and misadventures, as the duo try to unravel one knotty conundrum after another that the job of grass roots administration throws their way.
These tasks may have well been "quotidian", all in a day's job - the sub-title of the book: "A Day in the Life of a Sub-collector" seems to assert that - but for the reader, they prove to be a source of laughter and entertainment. Take for instance the case of a man and his wife who obtain a divorce certificate so that their son can gain admission to college under a reservation scheme for people from low income groups. Or, of a man and his brother who keep lodging false cases with the intention of harassing each other. Another story, "The Exhumation", begins as a murder mystery and ends in bathos as the suspected victim of a political killing is found working as a cook elsewhere. One can almost imagine the smirk of satisfaction on a job well done on the lips of the young civil servant as he goes about solving these problems.
In the Introduction, Mr Bagagopal evokes former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who transformed the Big Apple from a failing city to one of the best administered by focusing "on the ordinary citizen". "My experience convinces me that district administration is key to improving governance in India," writer the former IAS officer. "If a policy of 'zero tolerance' is adopted by all district administrations in the discharge of their duties, the citizen will start to feel the benefits immediately." The best example of this grass roots policy is perhaps related in "The Glass is Half Full", where a little help and a little encouragement transforms a village office from a derelict, dysfunctional place, inspiring shame in the officials who work there, to a well-kept and functional government institution, discharging its duties effectively.
But like a Narayan novel, not all is jovial in the pages of this slim volume. In "Requiem for John", Mr Balagopal remember a colleague and friend who died young, through amusing anecdotes but nevertheless inspiring a little sadness. The last chapter of the book, "Cut from the Same Cloth", too, is somewhat tragic, illustrating how the politically motivated interference of elected representatives in the work of the administration often leads to more trouble than problem-solving.
Apart from the anecdotes, Mr Balagopal also indulges in occasional digressions. One that is close to this reader's heart is the outrage at the destruction of Kollam's quaint colonial architecture and open spaces. Most urban dwellers in India would be only too familiar with this phenomenon - recently, writer Amit Chaudhuri started a petition to protect Kolkata's traditional houses from land sharks. It is a pity that the beautiful houses of Kollam, Kolkata and other such places seem fated to remain preserved only in our nostalgic memories and memoirs such as Mr Balagopal's book.
