The Evil Eye

How do certain superstitions take a hold of our lives, I often wonder. Coincidences one too many and the association of one event with the other gets established subconsciously, and despite claiming to be ‘rational’ , irrationality seeps in subsequent actions. I remember I had a certain green batik printed sari which I wore every single day for important examinations. Till that sari just tore on a very rainy Calcutta day when I tried to walk fast, just off the bus, on my way to the examination hall. Now I don’t remember any more if I did well or not that day, but the memory of the embarrassment I felt as a young girl sporting a torn sari publicly has stayed till these late years.

 

In North India, people do not buy mustard oil and metallic things on Saturdays, apparently all powerful dreaded Shanidev enters a household through these means.I did not know this superstition when I initially came to Delhi. A few coincidences, and I fell irrevocably for this superstition. It started with my buying an innocuous steel utensil rack on a Saturday, and immediately falling ill. Then another Saturday I bought a few steel clothes hangers and my husband had a minor accident the following week, you get the drift. So when I was buying my car this year, I was very reluctant to take delivery on a Saturday. But the ‘rational’ and ‘practical’ ‘worse’ half would have none of my idiotic superstitions and he scheduled delivery on a Saturday, his argument being it was an ‘auspicious’ day, the day of Shri Jagannath Rath Yatra. Very reluctantly I agreed, with the condition that though new, it will not be kept in the garage, as the garage was part of the house itself. So far so good. We did not use the new car much, I was still in service and had the officially provided transport. 

 

Then came the day when I was to pick up my Central Govt Health Scheme (CGHS) cards as a retired Central Govt employee from a designated CGHS building. That particular CGHS building has ample parking space inside, I got off and made my way to the designated window to join the queue, and my husband was trying to park. Suddenly I heard a heartbeat chilling breaking sound... I turned and found that the car was damaged, there was a broken half constructed structure right in the middle of the parking area, not visible from a driver seat, and the car had dashed against it. The repair of the total damage cost 38 thousand rupees, of which we had to bear almost half, as the fine print in the insurance papers did not cover cost of certain items. Call it an accident, mishap, coincidence, what have you, yes, may be no lives were lost (by Lord Jagannath’s grace?), but we lost peace of mind, money and were so harassed(usually ascribed to Shanidev’s influence) ... but will I ever buy ANY metallic item on a Saturday, anymore? You have guessed right, no surprises. I prefer to stay superstitious. So there!!

 

In one of my postings, with the change of the Secretary of the Ministry, the working atmosphere suddenly got very tense for me. I kind of felt trapped and sensed a very vicious and negative working environment. Can not really explain it, but I felt chronically depressed, demotivated, even humiliated. Though I have always tried to maintain a clear distinction between office and personal domestic life, I was unable to do so, and it affected me deeply. At that time, a friend suggested that I keep a Turkish ‘Evil Eye” at office facing the door. Now there is a catch, for such a talisman to take effect, it needs to be a ‘gift’. Well there was one lying at home somewhere, it was a paperweight bought by my husband that he had picked up from an earlier trip to Turkey. Strictly speaking “I” did not buy it myself!!. I took it to office and kept it as advised. 

 

Next morning I found the paperweight was broken, my office peon had accidentally dropped it while dusting!!My heart sank. I felt the atmosphere now was too vicious for me to continue. Even the ‘Evil Eye’ lost to the malevolent forces, hahahaha. At the earliest opportunity of a transfer, I gratefully left that Ministry. 

 

As I key in this note now, my heart feels heavy, very heavy. With my mother being in an irreversible vegetative state post a cerebral stroke for the last six months, I have been under resigned mental stress, which some of the colleagues knew. A junior colleague in the Ministry was an occasional visitor to my room. When she could manage time, she dropped in for a cup of tea, she said that she felt ‘comforted’ in the informal and welcoming vibes in my room, despite my seniority. We discussed about general things, small personal things like bringing up children, etc, the least being office politics. During one such tea session, I happened to mention about the evil eye incident conversationally as to how it needed to be a gift for it to have any effect and how it broke and how superstitious I was about it. A month or so before my retirement, she came to my room and presented me with a small evil eye hanging which she had got during her official trip to Turkey. I was so touched. That was the last time I met her. She was not in office during my last week in office, it was a festival week in general, and most of the colleagues were either on leave or on tour. 

 

Ten days ago, she committed suicide.The personal demons she was fighting with I had no inkling about. 

 

The evil eye hanging she presented me with, stares hard at the door at home.

Parliament and I

Parliament and I

As I watched the Lok Sabha TV today bringing the Monsoon Session of the Parliament at a close sine die, I had a very peculiar inexplicable lump in my throat.

 Every Ministry has a Parliament Section which is supervised by an officer, among other duties. This responsibility relating to Parliamentary work is considered an ‘absolutely-no-perks-all-nuisance’ responsibility among officers, and generally there is a game of passing the parcel to the most vulnerable/docile/ un-networked officer with that responsibility. So not too unexpectedly, in one of the Ministries, immediately on joining on transfer, I was assigned Parliamentary work.

When Parliament is in Session, the Parliament Section normally works the whole night before the Question day,  that is to say, twice in a week. More often than not, the Minister clears the last Question file only around 8 pm on the day preceding the Question day. After the Minister approves, work of the graveyard shift begins. The Hindi Section translates the responses and provides the Hindi Version, the Parliament Section gets the English Version typed in prescribed format, make umpteen bilingual copies and sets. The task of Parliament Section gets over after they deliver the sets to the respective House Secretariat, which might well happen in the morning of the Question Day, depending on the volume of Questions.

No, as the supervisory officer, I was not required to stay the night, but had the total responsibility. I usually  left office after the last file was approved by the Minister, and reached office next day an hour before office hours, just in case…. I was answerable for all errors and omissions and commissions. It was an uneasy cross to bear, as human errors do happen under pressure…like I remember the time it was detected at 8 am in the morning of the Question Day that the Hindi version of an answer had a mistake, and nobody in the Hindi Section was available so early in the morning.  I had to think on my feet. I located and sent Hindi knowing staff from another section under my charge to Parliament to make corrections in the copies in hand, to be readied before the Question Hour at 11. 

In my limited way, as the supervisory officer of Parliament Section, I did try to make the task of my team a little easier. Earlier, every Division in the Ministry got the basic draft response to Parliament Questions prepared as they found convenient and submitted files to Minister for approval. It was considered the sole responsibility of the Parliament Section to get the approved replies typed in the standard prescribed format. One of the first things I did was to streamline procedures. I took approval of the Secretary of the Ministry that henceforth every Divisional Head should get the draft response typed only in the Parliament prescribed format, and send hard and soft copy of the draft response to Parliament Section and Hindi Section in advance. In 95% cases, the Minister approved the draft reply as it is, and so this way, re-typing the English version in the Parliament Section could be avoided, minimizing chance of typo and saving time, and Hindi Section also got lead time to translate the draft reply.

I did find my ‘perks’ in the dry ‘‘absolutely-no-perks-all-nuisance’’ responsibility too.

One, the Minister became directly aware of who I was   and my work, which, in hindsight, helped me in a convoluted way in my annual performance assessment. I happened to work under an opinionated Secretary for some time who invariably graded all non-IAS officers tad below the IAS officers of the same level. It was such a humbling feeling to get a photocopy of what the Minister had written about me later from Administration for my record. As the Reviewing authority, The Minister had disagreed with the Secretary’s assessment about me and significantly upped my grading.

The second ‘perk’ was in deciding which Division in the Ministry should handle a particular Parliament Question. It is a fact that nobody really likes to handle a Parliament Question directly, and at the flimsiest of opportunity, dodges it horizontally to a colleague. As the supervisory officer of Parliament Section, I was able to pre-empt many such moves of my colleagues by taking orders of the Secretary beforehand. They grumbled, but had to comply with orders, and ahem , I was able to excuse myself successfully too sometimes…hahahaha. After all , charity should begin at home.

Though I was supervisory officer for Parliament Section only in one Ministry, in my more than three decade long working life serving the Central Government, ever since my first posting, I have been exposed to Parliamentary work, be it Parliament Questions, Parliamentary Committees, or legislative business relating to the Ministries that I was posted in.  I have lost count of the number of times I had been to Parliament, to the Official Gallery, to brief Ministers in their allotted rooms in Parliament, attending meetings of Parliamentary Committees as official witness......

 So many memories… …some unnerving in hindsight… I was in Parliament to brief my Minister the day Parliament attack had happened… just half an hour earlier I had come out , …, some very satisfying… the elation one feels sitting in the Official Gallery to see the House pass a Bill one has spent midnight oil on…..   

This was my last Parliament Session as a Central Government Officer. I will hang up my boots before the Winter Session commences.

I silently lipped the National Song Vande Mataram along with the Parliamentarians as I stood and watched the Lok Sabha TV in the privacy of my office room. Yes, I had a lump in my throat.