Protocall - 1

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Turncoat:  At least promise you won’t go to the Sacrificial Assembly either.

Prince:  Gott in Himmel! You must be mad. I’ve been preparing these last six months to go there. --- I’ve arranged to spend ten million or so --- and you think I’m going to call it all off at your whim? Oh, that reminds me --- Baron, have you checked all the battle-drums? Are there seventeen?

Bibler:  Yes, Your Highness. I put them out in the sun, they’re nice and tight.

Prince:  All seventeen?

Bibler:  All seventeen.

Lang Pang:  What will you do with battle-drums?

Prince:  We’ll play on them. When I set out for the Assembly, seventeen battle-drums will begin to beat. Prince Drunkendorff has only thirteen; I’ve seventeen.

Lang Pang:  Why stop at seventeen? You can play seven hundred battle-drums, kettledrums, bagpipes, flutes, horns, or whatever you like, if it takes your fancy.

Prince:  Heh, heh, it’s not as simple as that. I have to play just the number that the government has allotted me. If there’s even a single one extra, they’ll cut it out…

….Parashuram in ‘The Scripture Read Backwards’

That was a typical Parshuram parody of the protocols of the British Empire in India. The ‘seventeen battle-drums’ are a mockery of the Seventeen-Gun-Salute which a certain Prince was entitled to…not one more…

But the British didn’t invent Protocol. It was ever there even before the dawn of civilization. In any group of men or animals (I don’t know about birds and fish) there is a hierarchy, and hierarchy means protocol…implicit or explicit.

During my school days in Muthukur, there was only one feared figure…the Head Master. All power vested in him. This was exhibited explicitly in the Daily Assembly where he would be standing by the flag-post and would try to hoist the tricolor whenever needed. And he was the one who dealt the ‘number of canes’ that were awarded to yesterday's culprits, whose names were forwarded by their lowly Class Teachers. 

All the protocol we observed was to stand up when the Teacher entered the Class and also when he left after surviving his half-hour ordeal. Yes, we had to also stand up when he called out our names during Roll Call and say: 

“Present, sir!”

At IIT KGP this custom was prevalent during my first decade there. Gradually it petered out, happily. During Roll Call, my students got to bark, “Yes!” or sometimes, “Here!” or simply lifted their left hand (they were unwrapping their bubble-gum with the their right hand). And I had to growl: “Quiet Please!” like the Wimbledon Umpire to stop their halla. 

At home we had no protocol at all. We never touched the feet of elders, which is a North Indian and Bengali custom as I learned later on. Ladies were not pulling their saris over their heads when in the presence of males, in-house or strangers, though they discreetly avoided the latter. Even in joint families there were no separate living quarters for men and women like in UP, as my friend Tyagi used to say…janana and mardana.

But this didn’t  mean women were liberated. No, sir! I used to watch several not-too-old widows in ocher or white saris with their heads covered by their edges…pallus. Not out of shyness but to cover their shames…their heads were periodically shaved as clean as the copper vessels they used to drink water from. They were forbidden to wear bindis (dots) on their forehead. I was too young to notice but perhaps some weren’t even allowed to wear blouses…I’ve to ask my mother. Fortunately these customs have vanished like the dodo.  It is now difficult to tell a widow from a non-widow. Divorcees are even better treated nowadays (provided they have their private incomes)…they are supposed to have conquered widowhood and are invited whenever a non-widow is required at rituals at short notice. 

After staying for forty years at IIT KGP (Bengal) and mixing with a large number of North Indians, I had developed the habit of saying, and doing, ‘Namaskar!’, even as a substitute for ‘hello’ on phone. But as soon as I returned to my Nellore in AP, I was often scolded mildly whenever I said, ‘Namaskar’ to anyone younger to me. 

Apparently it is not a done thing. Initially I bristled and continued perversely my old habit. Once it was explained to me that if I said or did Namaskar to anyone younger to me, their longevity will go down perhaps a month for each Namaskar they get from their elders. It was a piquant situation, since often I didn’t know the dates of birth of people I met. So, I dropped my habit and would smile wanly when I meet someone and wait if he does it to me…hopefully correctly...I don't want my longevity reduced even by a day.

Shaking hands is of course a treacherous thing. I had come to know that I can’t offer my hand to all and sundry. A higher official whose hands I would like to shake may take umbrage and refuse to protrude his hand…an awful predicament. My cousin (sister) who is the Principal of a Homeopathy College told me one day that she never offers her hands to even her seniors when they stretch out a welcoming hand…she would decline and give them a Namasthe with folded hands. I asked her why. And she said there is a hidden power in her hands and she is afraid it may be conducted away to the other chap if she shook her hands with him (or her). And she mentioned that this was precisely how Parashuram (not the Bengali one) lost his power to Lord Raam. I have a suspicion that being a doctor, and that too of a voodoo science like Homeopathy, she may be convinced that holding hands may need several triturations back at home.

By the time I joined my University at Vizagh, I had become savvy enough to notice the hidden hierarchies and protocols there. University students were divided into two groups mentally…Arts & Sciences; Engineering students didn’t ‘belong’…they were shunted out to the perimeters physically and psychologically. Arts students didn’t get good jobs, unlike science students who could at least become Demonstrators in mofussil colleges; arts didn’t have labs.

But they had a chip on their shoulders, because they were supposed to be preferred in Central and State Services…IAS, IPS, Tehsildars and Sub-Registrars, because they had a lot of English in their syllabi and so they thought they could write better letters and memos. Law students took the proud cake because they learned to argue perversely, trying to defend the indefensible.

Indeed they were the favorites for winning the Union Elections, which were conducted along the lines of the Presidential Elections in the US…lot of money was spent on printed pamphlets and sweets, and after all those Primaries which were dubbed Soap Boxes, the two finalists were invited to the Erskine Square and were allowed to publicly debate in front of all the electorate (students) and Teachers and the Principal before voting started.

In this connection I am reminded of the story told by my good friend NP of the night which was blood-drenched…don’t worry, it wasn’t blood but blood-colored liquid alright. After winning the Election as the Mess Secretary of their Hostel, a young chap had to recover all the money he had spent and more. So, he went about doling cheap watermelons instead of the regulation mangoes as the fruit dish after special dinners on weekends. So, all wing-mates of NP decided to go to the Mess Sec’s room late one night, knock on his door, and as he came out, crash each one’s watermelon on the floor in front of Mess Sec's door so that the whole of it looked like a bloody red battle ground…

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