CHAKRAVYUHA

I was sub treasury officer, Satyabadi; Jagdish, my batch mate in the O.A.S., was BDO, Kanash. We met regularly as the salary of the employees and other claims of Kanash Block were passed through Satyabadi sub treasury; and he used to come to the treasury at least once in a month.

Jagdish was honest, efficient and a hard working officer. But honesty was his problem. An honest BDO could neither satisfy the authority nor the political boss and nor even the people he worked for. He created only enemies. The collector reprimanded him; his opinion, he was not capable of handling the Block affairs. The Chairman of the Block, an elected representative of the people, openly waged war against him. His friends and seniors or well wishers in the administration said he was tactless. Once the Minister visited the Block to inspect flood situation, he listened the petty politicians of the locality rather to the BDO and humiliated him in presence of the public. The Minister wanted to show up his power before his constituents.

Jagdish could not withstand pressure, he committed suicide.

His death shocked and shattered me. His taking his life haunted me for many days, and provoked me to write a story. In the story, I had written, in a corrupt system, an honest officer would either turn mad or commit suicide. Katha, the most widely circulated monthly story magazine of the time, published this story in the month, coincidently the month of Jagdish’s first death anniversary. The story created a furore in the region, particularly in Puri district. His death had aroused public conscience, and the story published just after one year in the month of his death anniversary made the people livid of the corrupt system. The unfortunate incident was still fresh in their memory.

In the bazaar or in the office, many of the persons I met were interested to discuss with me his death and the story. One day the collector, Puri was holding a meeting in his office and in the meeting he said, “Satyabadi treasury officer has written something against the collector on the issue of Kanash BDO’s suicide?” An officer present in the meeting, who happened to be my friend, said, “That’s a story published in a literary magazine, not an article.” The DSP, Puri asked officer in charge of Satyabadi police station to collect the magazine that published my story, saying, “He has written against the police.” The narrator in the story was a police officer, a friend of the BDO. He was depicted as pragmatic in the story as the BDO was an idealist. The officer in charge met me and took a photocopy of the story. Both the DSP and the officer in charge were pleased with the story. The latter treated me with a sumptuous lunch in a dhaba.

Many persons, particularly the officers had not read the story, but had formed opinion, which usually happened with the authorities. It still happens also.

One day when I returned to the office after my lunch I saw a person waiting for me. He had been to Puri on his personal work. He was going back to Bhubaneswar by bus. He got down at Satyabadi just to meet me. He had been waiting for me for more than one hour. He (Hrudananda Mallik?) introduced him as former BDO, Kanash. After retirement from government service, he was working for a newspaper. He said he just wanted to see me, the story writer; he had read the unfortunate incident from the newspapers and had read the story from the magazine.

Santosh Publications, Sutahat, Cuttack published my second collection of stories in 2000; I decided to give the name of the book, CHAKRAVYUHA. The book contains fifteen stories. Tanuj Mallik had designed the cover. The book was priced at Rs.60/

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