Please do forgive me for my long silence, O Most Loyal Reader…for Clouds of Angst have filled my deranged mind ever since the Lok Sabha polls, especially because the Aam Aadmi Party candidate for whom I voted—whose name I have forgotten, if at all I ever knew it—lost his/her/its deposit.

But now, as I struggle to cast aside Writer’s Block and emerge from the churning brown Monsoon waters that have turned Delhi into a mosquito-and-politician-infested swamp,  the Gates of Memory briefly open to reveal a dreadful yet inspiring tale I narrated 22 years ago; a tale that I inflict upon Thee now (with some slight modifications), in the hope that it might relieve Thee too of any depression with its moral message—that even within the deepest Pits of Darkness, we may find the Lights of Optimism and Good Cheer….    

Pits of darkness

Amid the fire and brimstone raised by the recent debates in Delhi and indeed across India over collapsing buildings, flooded streets, and rewriting our history books, an archaeological discovery of immense significance escaped public attention—much to the relief of an embattled government! Indeed, it was only with the greatest reluctance, and that too on conditions of strict anonymity, that a senior archaeologist attached to the Department of Ancient Monuments agreed to reveal details of their extraordinary find.

“The MTNL chaps unearthed it,” he began, “while digging a trench during a routine cable-laying operation in West Delhi. As soon as they alerted us, we rushed to the site to investigate what they’d found. Careful excavations at the site eventually revealed a large rectangular room with a single doorway. It was buried two metres below the surface, and built entirely of a sickly yellow material, that upon chemical analysis turned out to be a kind of inferior grade cement…”

“Cement?” we broke in, startled.  “How could that be…surely cement is a modern construction material…?”

“Exactly!” he cried. “We, too, were excited at the idea that we might have stumbled upon a facet of some hitherto unknown, technologically advanced civilization! At first the chamber we were in appeared to be an ancient necropolis, similar to those found in Egyptian and Mesopotamian sites of contiguous depth. Strange, sinister-looking objects stood here and there on the floor of the chamber, smothered in dirt and dust: some tall and vaguely cuboid, others squat and flat-topped, still others on spindly legs and clustered in little groups. There was something curiously familiar about them…a colleague remarked that they resembled the great dolmens of Stonehenge and Meghalaya. We also found hideous crimson streaks on all the walls, particularly near the corners. They suggested that the chamber might have been the site of ritual sacrifices in ages gone by!”

“It took us a month to survey the layout of the chamber and to record our findings on dictaphones and digital diaries, notebooks and camcorders. Even now I remember the moment when we finally commenced physical verification of the artefacts in the chamber, starting with a flattish mound near the doorway.” He shuddered slightly. “Ahh! Even now I recall the stillness all around, the eerie glow of our solar lanterns, the silence broken only by the hum of our scrapers and the hoarse breathing of my colleagues, the odours of decay and the heaviness of ancient memories in the air…” his voice trailed away.

“And…?” we prompted him gently.

“Oh ye Gods, give me strength!” he choked: the poor man was obviously still traumatized by his experience. He took a deep breath, lit a noxious cigarette with trembling fingers, and went on in a calmer tone: “As we worked away with scrapers and chisels, all of a sudden a great chunk of dirt fell away from the mound. We brushed away the last traces of earth and held aloft two lanterns to better illuminate the scene. Before us stood a crude wooden table, its legs still encased in muck. And on the table lay a monograph; a standard-issue Staff Attendance Register, open at a page marked ‘July 22, 1986..” and again he broke off into a spasm of choking and gasping.

“What!” we cried, aghast. “But what…but how…what did it mean!”

He held up a weary hand. “It meant,” he whispered hoarsely, “that after a month’s painstaking work, we had succeeded in unearthing a long-buried Area Office of the Delhi government’s sole electricity distribution company— the Delhi Electricity Supply Undertaking,DESU.” He paused to wipe his glistening brow.

We gaped at him, attempted to speak but could only make strange gargling noises.

“The other artefacts in the room,” he went on shakily, “revealed themselves to be cupboards, tables, chairs…little wonder they’d looked familiar to us despite being covered in muck! Our subsequent investigations revealed that on the afternoon of that fateful 22^nd day of July, 1986, this particular DESU office had suddenly subsided beneath ground level. The cause for its subsidence was a nearby sewage canal, whose waters had progressively undermined the foundations of the DESU office building. Almost immediately thereafter, a violent monsoon storm had struck the city: whereupon a partly-constructed and wholly illegal building on an adjacent plot of land had collapsed onto the site where the DESU office had stood, burying it beneath tonnes of muddy waters, plaster, sand and assorted rubbish. It was fortunate indeed, that these events took place only at 3 p.m—two hours before official closing time, by which time of course all the staff had long left the office—or else the casualties might have been heavy.”

He wiped his brow again. “And so the DESU office remained concealed through the years, buried underground, till our arrival.”

“This is impossible to believe…it’s insane!” we yelled, having at last found our voice. “What about the employees, the DESU office staff? Surely they’d have turned up for work the following day and found their office missing? Surely they’d have tried to locate it, done something …?”

Our colleague emitted a hideous cackle. “Indeed they did!” he replied. “But all of them, from the Officer-in-Charge down to the lowliest assistant peon, were ‘Lessee Employees’: that is to say, each employee held his post in a purely unofficial capacity, on lease as it were, having paid a lump-sum for this privilege to the person whose name was actually on the official roles of DESU.”

We stared at him blankly.

“This system of Lessee Employment,” he explained patiently, “is still in vogue across India, particularly in government and public-sector undertakings . On the one hand, the official employee continues to draw his/her monthly salary but is unshackled of any duties, and thereby able to learn other skills and earn additional income elsewhere. On the other hand, the lessee employee rests content in the fact that under-the-table earnings more than compensate him/her for the absence of an official salary. Indeed, the overall effect of this system is to increase employment and national productivity!”

We made some more strange gargling noises. He ignored them and went on.

“Understandably, then, when these Lessee Employees of the DESU office could not locate their office the following day, there was no question of their lodging any kind of report or complaint—the poor fellows had no locus standi whatsoever! After searching awhile in vain, they therefore quietly dispersed. Our investigations have confirmed that in due course all of them found re-employment, on similar lessee terms, in other Delhi government and municipal bodies.”

A wave of unreality had come over us. “But…but what about the members of the public?” we quavered. “What about all the people in the neighbourhood who had electricity connections, who were served by this DESU office…what of their bills and applications, their files and records? Surely they at least would have complained when their DESU office disappeared?”

“Yes, yes!” our spokesman retorted impatiently. Clearly, he had had enough of the subject and wanted us to leave. “The more naïve and ignorant citizens did indeed lodge reports and complaints—naturally, to no avail whatsoever. One foolish person even filed a PIL before the Delhi High Court—we understand it is scheduled to come up for hearing in October 2029. The majority of people, however, regarded the disappearance of their DESU office—and with it, their files and records—as a supreme stroke of good fortune.”

“What! Why?”

“You see, at a stroke every electricity connection under this Area Office became unauthorized and illegal, because there were no documents left to prove that these connections had ever been sanctioned or even existed! This in turn freed the local citizens forever from power-related worries. Each grateful citizen—householder or shopkeeper, industrialist or businessman—simply made a suitable one-time lump-sum payment to designated DESU personnel who called on him/her at home…and lo! After that there were no more electricity bills to pay or files to chase, no faulty meters to complain about…”

He leaned back in his chair, glanced pointedly at the wall-clock and fed himself a large paan.

Outside the window, we could see the skies had turned a forbidding grey, and there was a heaviness in the air; a brooding stillness that mean only one thing: a great monsoon storm was brewing. Hastily we rose, thanked our spokesman for his enlightening discourse, but paused at the door as a sudden thought struck us: “One thing remains puzzling,” we ventured hesitantly. “What were those crimson stains you found on the walls of the buried chamber…?”

His reply was fluid if not eloquent. With accuracy born of years of practice, a jet of scarlet betel-juice shot out from his mouth straight out the window. We fled even as the lights suddenly flickered, heralding the usual evening power-cut…

[The Sunday Pioneer: January 20^th, 2002]