Secretary Birds

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Its common name is popularly thought to derive from the crest of long quill-like feathers, lending the bird the appearance of a secretary with quill pens tucked behind his or her ear, as was once common practice. 

.....wiki

 

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A couple of months back while in India for Durga Puja, Shamik wrote:

.....I was carrying some books to read, namely, surely u r joking...., a book on Picaso and......the latest Ishani. The last one was exclusively for my father...he did not have a chance to read it, since it was with me in Lyon. While he was reading the book, I could see him "smiling from within" (I just invented this phrase, since it aptly describes what I wanted to describe). I got inspiration from a quote that I had seen on the door of the department secretary at the weizmann institute in israel:

"Doing a good job here is like wetting your pants in a dark suit....you feel the warmth but no one else notices."......

The last sentence above had me in splits...and then I turned seriously sorry for the entire clan of Secretary Birds in India with whom I had interacted...apparently Israel is no different.

When I was in my Final Year M.Sc. at AU, I was getting so bored with Physics which I was not understanding at all but had to mug up that I thought I would give it up and write the Civil Services Exam. I even got some material from a well-known Institute coaching aspirants for the IAS. But then I found I had to mug up even more stuff than in M.Sc. Physics and gave it up.

In retrospect I am thankful that I didn't end up in the IAS and rotted there...for I have absolutely no flair for administration. And as luck would have it, I ended up in a job that was perhaps the best in the world for a woolgatherer like me...IIT KGP was Heaven for such unsocial owls:

 

 http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/murder-owl/ 

My friend B was different. He joined IAS at about the time I joined IIT KGP. And he was so happy that his childhood dream was realized at last. Apparently when he was in his village high school, the DM of Vizagh District was on an official visit to their school. All kids of the school were asked to attend the Assembly without fail and my B was in the first row (he was the shortest perhaps) and so had a ringside view of the proceedings.

As soon as the Jeep arrived carrying the DM and his retinue, there was a great fuss and the DM's underlings staged a show elbowing everyone and guarding their Boss from the unwanted advances of all teachers except the HM (who was perhaps in his default headgear). And the HM ordered his Secretary to 'open' the soda water bottles bought for the occasion from the Contingency Fund of the School (subject to Audit). And everyone in the DM's retinue was handed the cheap and tasteless transparent soda after the opener made its 'wheeeze' sound.

But the HM himself advanced towards the DM, bowed in style, and handed his majesty a Color Soda (red with sugar and perhaps lemon or orange essence).

Then and there this front row kid decided that he would become an IAS Officer.


He then went to the hoary Ravenshaw College in Cuttack where he did his M.A. in Economics (passport to IAS then).

And after joining the Services and logging in a decade there, he found that the post-Nehru India was different and he wasn't exactly suited to the job but it was too late by then. His complaint was the same as the Weizmann Institute's Secretary's. Only much worse...because the ultimate bosses of the IAS chaps are politicians. And they have to obey the man (or woman) of the moment at the risk of being shunted to obscure postings...I am talking about the run-of-the-mill Secretary and his Politician Boss...there are surely many honorable exceptions.

I find their consequent brainwashing rather amusing.

When Indira Gandhi declared her Emergency in 1975 and shut up all Opposition and the Press, I happened to overhear B saying:

"Good thing...the country needed this iron hand for a long time"

Two years later, Indirajee was obliged to lift the Emergency and call for polls which she lost disastrously and had to sit in the Opposition. 

B then told us:

"Good thing...why can't the Congress sit in the Opposition once in a while?"

And then she was sent to jail for a while. 

And I heard B say:

"She threw  so many Opposition Leaders in jail...so why can't she take her own bitter pill?"

A couple of years later she was back as PM. 

And I heard B say:

"Thank God, India again has a strong PM"

That's how it would have been with me too had I joined the Civil Services. 

I studied B closely and he would have been an eminent teacher of Economics in any University...

And in 1977 I visited him when he was the (cherished) DM of Dharmapuri for a year. And I was treated like the proverbial Salahsaheb of the King...everyone was saluting me too on our joint excursions round the district in his Staff Car.

And we landed in Krishnagiri, a picturesque town in his domain. And was received with due protocol by his Assistant Collector who had joined the IAS only a couple of years back. He was a Punjabi Hindu bachelor of 25 living with his widowed mom in a Bhoot Bangla. And he invited us for the night meal. And, in the few minutes when he was not under his Boss's watch, he asked about me and came to know that I did my Ph D in Theoretical Physics and was a Lecturer at IIT KGP.

He was then in tears and told me that he did his M.A. in Math with special interest in Group Theory, that he always wanted to be a Math Prof, but was pushed into the Services by family pressure, was unfit for the job which he hates, buys and reads every Math Book that comes his way, and that was why he was not so well-off as his colleagues....

So sorry for Secretary Birds...Indian and Israeli...  

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Post Script 

I have an uneasy feeling that much of this post is a Repeat Telecast ...but take comfort from our Autocrat (hoping that it too is not a Repeat in my blog):

Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making the same speech
twice over, and yet be held blameless.  Thus, a certain lecturer,
after performing in an inland city, where dwells a Litteratrice of
note, was invited to meet her and others over the social teacup.
She pleasantly referred to his many wanderings in his new
occupation.  "Yes," he replied, "I am like the Huma, the bird that
never lights, being always in the cars, as he is always on the
wing."--Years elapsed.  The lecturer visited the same place once
more for the same purpose.  Another social cup after the lecture,
and a second meeting with the distinguished lady.  "You are
constantly going from place to place," she said.--"Yes," he
answered, "I am like the Huma,"--and finished the sentence as
before.

What horrors, when it flashed over him that he had made this fine
speech, word for word, twice over!  Yet it was not true, as the
lady might perhaps have fairly inferred, that he had embellished
his conversation with the Huma daily during that whole interval of
years.  On the contrary, he had never once thought of the odious
fowl until the recurrence of precisely the same circumstances
brought up precisely the same idea.  He ought to have been proud of
the accuracy of his mental adjustments.  Given certain factors, and
a sound brain should always evolve the same fixed product with the
certainty of Babbage's calculating machine.

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