All in Their Own Ways

I was in Rourkela from August 1996 to January 1999 working in Investigation Unit of Commercial Tax Department. The office was in Civil Township; it was near to Rourkela Government College. Pravat Tipathy, an eminent writer in Hindi, taught Hindi and Deepak Pal, a poet and writer, taught English in the college, and both were staying in government quarters in the college campus. When I found time I went to them for chatting and gossiping. One day Pravat Tripathy asked me, “Being a literary person, how can you work in bureaucracy, and particularly, in a tax department?”

As the officer in charge of Investigation Unit, my job was to raid, which we called ‘surprise visit’, a trader, industrial unit or business organisation, to examine if  there was evasion , and prepare a report, if he or it was found to have evaded or avoided paying tax. I also sometimes stood on the road at a strategic point, checked the goods carriers to verify, if the goods carried were as he had declared in the documents. In event of any discrepancy, I collected tax and imposed penalty. Not a pleasant job certainly, but I was required to do to earn my salary.

I replied, “Sir, I have the experience that you don’t have. You are teaching in a college, your colleagues and students are urbane and educated, and they speak a polished language. But I have to interact with tax evaders, truck drivers, corrupt officials, and criminals by nature in my day to day official activities, and also with bossy seniors. An officer may be one year senior in service, but he makes you feel always a subordinate, if you forget, he never forgets to remind you by his action or speech. There are varieties in my life what you don’t have.”

They wanted to hear some incidents and I happily described. Both Deepak Pal and Pravat Tripathy suggested me to capitalise my experience and write stories. Later, whenever I met they reminded me.  Pravat Tripathy even suggested, “If you are afraid of your departmental higher-ups, write the stories in good handwriting. I shall translate into Hindi and get it published first in Hindi magazines. Later, you will publish those in Odia.”

I wrote a story. Katha published the story under the caption, Eka Eka (All Alone). The story was about inspection of a senior officer of a subordinate office. The senior officer had come for the inspection with his wife and an officer posted as his assistant. The story caused a stir among the officers and staff of sales tax department, a few seniors fumed; but the common readers liked it. The officers and inspectors, particularly of the Sambalpur Range consisting of Sundargarh, Sambalpur and Bolangir districts discussed the story for a long time; in some places, photocopied and circulated the story. They liked particularly two characters, I had named as Bhuanbiradi (Tomcat) and Sijhaaloo (Boiled potato).

Having seen the readers liked this story, I continued to write such stories from my experience. Manas is the protagonist of all the stories, one situation or an incident in his life is made into a story. Even readers wrote me (It was time before the use of cell phone, internet, etc) to tell them in advance in my reply to their letter, the magazine that was going to publish the next event in the life of Manas. The stories are inter connected and one will get a feel of a novel reading from first story to last one.

Once, one interviewer asked Qurratulain Hyder, the famous Urdu novelist and short story writer, “Why do you write?” She replied something like this: If I got angry or hated someone and I could not do anything to him/her in person, I would write a story, make him/her a character, beat or murder him/her in the story; I took revenge in this way and placated my heart.

 I admit I feel the same writing these stories.

Cuttack Students’ Store, Balubazaar, Cuttack published a book containing fifteen of the stories of Manas’s life under the name, Nija Batare Nije (All in Their Own Ways). This is my third collection of short stories, published in 2002. The book was priced at Rs.70.

****