1

NAME- APRATIM MUKHOPADHYAY

CLASS- PGII

ROLL NUMBER- 65

TOPIC- “THE CIVIL SERVICE ARE RISK AVERSE”: CHATTERJEE’S ENGLISH, AUGUSTAND E. NIVAS’S SHOOL

2

3

INTRODUCTION

“administration is an intricate business” , says the

narrator of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s brilliant English, August. India’s

civil servants come in all shapes, sizes and forms. In general,

whenever the average Indian launches into a diatribe about how

the country is going to the dogs, one can be almost certain that

he will mention, along with the country’s many politicians, a

concerted group of civil servants; these are the ones who usually

work in government offices and, having secured a job that cannot

be taken away very easily, choose to slack off and not perform

their duties. On the other hand, we often come across news items

featuring civil servants like Narendra Kumar Singh, an IPS

officer posted in Banmore (Madhya Pradesh) who was run down by a

tractor while attempting to stop the vehicle as it was carrying

4

illegally mined stones, or someone like Satyendra Dubey, an

officer of the Indian Engineering Service, someone who was a

“ project engineer of the National Highway Authority of India

(NHAI) who had exposed several cases of large-scale flouting of

rules and corrupt practices in the construction project’. He was

shot to death in Gaya in November 2003. The personal experiences

of most Indian citizens would have familiarized them with both

kinds of civil servants; those who intend to merely drift away on

a sea of lethargy, and those who are extremely serious about

their job and would leave no stone unturned in order to do what

they think is constitutionally enshrined. It is this wonderful

dichotomy and co-existence of two diametrically opposite

positions within the same body of professionals which is

immensely fascinating, and it is that and certain aspects that

come along and grow out of the above that the paper tries to

address through the careful consideration of a 1988 novel and a

1999 film.

English, August, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s debut novel is one

which has attained cult status since the year it was released,

also being made into a feature film in 1995 by Dev Benegal

5

starring Rahul Bose essaying the role of the protagonist Agastya

Sen. Described as a “ comic masterpiece from contemporary India”,

by Akhil Sharma, this book lays out in some detail the vagaries

and peculiarities of being a civil servant in a marginal,

tropical Indian landscape in the 1980s. Agastya Sen, a

thoroughbred of the cities of Kolkata and Delhi, finds himself

dislocated in a manner which he hadn’t quite thought of when he

is transferred as a young IAS trainee to Madna in central India,

the hottest place in the country in the previous year. Surrounded

by the likes of Srivastav, his direct boss who proudly proclaims

how he gets to work at “eleven sharp”, although it begins at ten

thirty, Shankar, an alcohol-loving engineer who slacks off and

sings beautifully, Agastya descends into a vortex of inactivity.

Sandhya Iyer states how Agastya is struck by “the laidback

attitude of the administrative community”, and how “Work takes a

back seat for everyone and Agastya, caught in lethargy and

inertia, is happy to get away with doing little or nothing.”

Srivastav, while on a visit to the tenement occupied by his

junior at the Madna Government Rest House, sums up the state that

the bureaucratic community in Madna is in. He tells Agastya to

6

try and sit down with RDC Joshi in order to get a language tutor

so that the neophyte who has got a lot to learn can start with

the language. Right after this, he very disconcertedly says that

Agastya has to pursue the RDC in order to get it done, and for

good reason; according to Srivastav, even the RDC “like the rest

of these fellows, would rather die than do any extra work,

because to die means more rest.” The highest official in the area

lays down a truth about it which is inalienable and all-

encompassing. Seeing all of the above, the novel forms a ripe

site for the analysis of the lethargy mentioned earlier, and how

and why it afflicts and affects the likes of Agastya.

Shool, directed by E.Nivas, is set in Motihari in Bihar

where Bacchu Yadav (played to perfection by Sayaji Shinde) has

been the MLA for fifteen years. Described by a leading film

critic Anupama Chopra as a film which recycles the “old Dirty

Harry-vigilante justice territory”, it pits Manoj Bajpai’s Samar

Pratap Singh as a righteous, loyal and honest police officer in

the mould of the likes of Amitabh Bachchan’s cop in Zanjeer

against the above. Mohammad Ali Ikram tells us how “Samar is out

to fulfill his duties and change the world around him, even

7

though fate and the rest of the police force are not with him on

the journey.” On the way to the vicious end that the film makes

its audience wait for, Samar loses his child in an accident which

has a lot to do with Bacchu Yadav’s goons and their lascivious

comments directed at his wife, his wife himself who swallows a

whole fistful of pills, and also his job when Yadav gets him

suspended via the DSP who, as Yadav proudly proclaims, is on his

payroll. Anupama Chopra correctly states how, while trying to

stay on the path of what he considers righteous, Samar finally

loses himself too. Following right along the heels of another

classic, Satya, this film provides ample scope for the study of a

civil servant who is dutiful and integrated at great personal

costs, and the surroundings and situations which affect such a

man.

8

ENGLISH, AUGUST : “hazaar fucked in

Madna”

Agastya’s habit of stoning himself and consuming huge

amounts of marijuana is one factor which contributes towards the

lazy civil servant that he develops into over the time that he

spends in Madna and after. Right at the beginning of the novel,

Chatterjee’s narrator tells us how “marijuana caused acute

lethargy”, and the recurrent use of the above for recreational

purposes is something which renders Agastya (more often than not)

as someone who refuses to perform the task that he is supposed

to. This episode takes place in Delhi at one in the morning when

Dhrubo, a very close friend and Agastya are seen driving in the

city in an intoxicated state. This is also what he starts off

with in Madna. We are told how “At eleven, still stoned,” ,

9

Agastya goes to meet his boss Srivastav at the Madna Collectorate

on his very first day on the job. Later on, inside the

Collectorate, he is introduced by Chidambaram, another government

servant working in the Collectorate to a few other people.

Agastya goes through this episode without catching a single word

or a single name that is uttered by those who are eager to meet

the new IAS officer. He blissfully states “Thank God for

marijuana,” , and goes through the above very, very listlessly.

It is easy to see that something is wrong with Agastya. Towards

the end of the drive in Delhi mentioned above, he says to Dhrubo

how he’d “rather act in a porn film than be a bureaucrat,”, and

that spirit of disinterestedness and lack of concern is fuelled

by the marijuana which he smokes with alarming regularity.

Another incident right before Agastya’s entry into the hallowed

portals of the Collectorate alerts us to the stupor of laziness

which is to befall him in the time to come. When inside the jeep

with the naib tehsildar, he sees how many people have crowded in

front of the Collectorate in order to get their work done. This

is something he is alarmed by, and the narrator informs us that

in all his time while training, “he never got used to the crowds

10

outside the offices”. As a civil servant, Agastya fails to

realize the basic tenet of being available to and being ready to

serve the people whom he had been deputized to serve at all

times. He wonders as to how such a large group of people could

all descend upon the Collectorate to get things done. One may say

that civil servants like Agastya are the cause of these people

having to line up in front of government offices for ages in

order to get their work done. On the other hand, the excitement

that he is filled with upon discovering a cannabis bush outside

the Collectorate is something which can hardly be missed and is

something that is in stark contrast to the apathy he has

displayed just previously, that too with regard to those whom he

is somewhat indentured by the land’s constitution. The presence

of the wild cannabis in front of what is an institution where

government service is to be dispensed appears “somehow symbolic”

to him; he also thinks to himself that he has to “return alone

one evening”. The amount of concentration that he has on

pocketing some cannabis is clearly missing in his endeavours or

the lack thereof that he displays as a civil servant. Sandhya

Iyer rightly points out that “such is the heaviness he feels all

11

around him, that he cannot gather the will to pull himself

together.” The heaviness, it must be said, can at least be partly

attributed to his copious consumption of marijuana whereby he

becomes somebody who stones just so that he does not have to do

his duty. Iyer attributes a “perpetual state of daze” to Agastya,

and this daze is mostly caused by his recreational use of

something which becomes an invaluable part of his life in Madna.

Danny Yee perceptively points out how “He survives by…spending a

good deal of his time stoned,” , and one can’t disagree with the

reviewer with regard to the above comment.

Another reason which can be cited as one which contributes

to Agastya’s lack of interest in his work is “the laidback

attitude of the administrative community” that he finds around

him in Madna. As a junior civil servant, he is exposed to how the

bureaucracy really runs and how various people manage to exist

within it without really doing much to deserve the salaries they

are paid. Iyer is right in stating that “it’s a vicious circle”.

Agastya is present only as a trainee civil servant, and when he

sees his bosses and seniors in the service behave in an appalling

fashion that is in complete contrast with the tasks they are

12

expected to perform, he realizes that nothing much needs to be

done in order to get through the workload that he has. During his

very first meeting with his “protégé”, Srivastav, the collector

and D.M. of Madna, makes a show of ineptitude and alack of

awareness as regards the work that needs to be done for the

benefit of the people. Right after the aforementioned cannabis

incident, Agastya goes into Srivastav’s office and starts picking

things up from him. Upon picking up the Madna District Gazetteer,

Agastya is asked to not read it right then and take it back home

so that he can spend time reading it there. It deserves such

treatment because, according to Srivastav, “It’s wonderful

reading.” However, when Agastya points out that what he had in

his hand hadn’t been updated since 1935 i.e. since before India’s

independence, Srivastav dismisses him in one fell swoop and makes

a statement which stands out in its callousness and utter

disregard for duty. A document which is very important for the

administration of the district vis-à-vis keeping records and

maintaining an account of the goings-on in it draws a scowl from

him; then, he says how “Either you work or you write a history.”

This comes from the same man who, as pointed out earlier, makes

13

it a point to come to work half-an-hour after it begins.

Immediately afterwards, without coimg to a solution for the

problem that was at hand i.e. the ancient state of the Madna

District Gazetteer, he starts pontificating to his protégé about the

peculiar tea-drinking methods of the locals. Agastya meets other

senior officers who show a remarkable lack of concern and

attachment to the duties that they are supposed to perform. They

are depicted with what Danny Yee calls “an unerring touch and

perfect balance.” Kumar, the S.P. of Madna, is one such example.

Agastya meets him at an integration meeting soon after meeting

Srivastav. Somewhat curious, Agastya inquires of the senior

official as to why the meetings took place every month, as he has

been informed by Srivastav. Kumar coolly states how these

meetings mean pretty much nothing; he notes how they mean

“Nothing on the surface,” and how all they do is “just eat some

rubbish together and nurse raw stomachs for a week.” In his

defense, it must be said that he alerts Agastya to the purpose

lurking underneath the surface; in a rather disappointing fashion

to a concerted citizen, he reveals how the said purpose is to

pick up “gossip” and try and find out what is really going on in

14

the district. Although his efforts maybe commendable, one cannot

help but think that merely picking up on gossip and not talking

to the people directly can hardly serve as the means via which

proper administration can be dispensed. The meeting takes place

with a bunch of people who are described as “hooligans” by the

narrator, and Agastya learns very little from it except for the

fact that the Gandhi Hall, the place serving as the venue for the

meeting, serves as the venue for a myriad other government

functions like vasectomy camps and table tennis tournaments. A

little time after that, when a somewhat hypocritical Srivastav

(who is later found out as someone who employs the peons who work

at the office as domestic helps) points out to Agastya how very

leniently Kumar takes the service. Srivastav, while giving tips

to Agastya as to how he can transform into an able civil servant,

gives an account of how very lazy and irresponsible Kumar had

been. This, of course, is somewhat ironically posited by the

narrator; in trying to point out how negligent Kumar has been of

his duties, Srivastav mentions, as noted earlier, how he gets to

work at eleven even though he is supposed to be there by ten

thirty. This is a searing indictment leveled at Srivastav which

15

is revealed through his own admission. To return to Kumar,

however, is to open a can of worms. Srivastav says how, before he

had steeped in and started calling the S.P.’s office at three in

the afternoon with some regularity, the man had taken to going

home at one in the afternoon, sleeping till four and coming back

to his place of work at five. Srivastav’s ruse did work since

Kumar did return to the routine which he was supposed to follow.

Till before that, of course, Kumar had become someone who was

being “paid to sleep in the afternoon.” Srivastav also labels

him a “hopeless policeman” whose only refuge lies in big words.

Kumar turns out o be something along those lines in later

episodes i.e. the one between him and the taxi driver in Delhi

with Agastya present right beside him. Another senior Agastya

soon meets is Menon; although he cannot at first be accused of

slacking off on his job, he commits the absolutely grave crime of

defacing a book (Heat and Dust), discovered by Agastya and much to

his chagrin. Menon says how he had borrowed the book from the

Collectorate Library in order to find out more about a book which

he had heard was about an Assistant Collector during the British

Raj. He says to Agastya how he had wanted to “put down what I

16

feel strongly about so that other readers have at least a choice

of opinion.” All this, he justifies, is in order to pre-empt any

sort of assumption on the part of anyone reading the text about

the very same things still going on in rural India i.e. what

Agastya terms “an Assistant Collector touring in the early

morning to avoid the title.” When he has such seniors to learn

from, it’s no wonder that even the slightest desire Agastya has

to perform his duties to the nation go away, and immediately

after the Menon episode he agrees lunch with Sathe as Kumar goes

off somewhere to attend to work. In the process, Agastya

indicates that dropping the Revenue Meeting scheduled for three

in the afternoon is foremost on his mind. This is the first

indiscretion he commits in his official capacity, and although he

later turns over a new leaf (momentarily, it must be said) by

insisting that the borewell in the village somewhat occupied by

Naxalites be repaired (late on in the book), this meeting is the

first one in a series of absences which he tries to justify

through various means, including visiting doctors (Doctor

Multani) in order to get a medical certificate for a fake

disease. In all his time in Madna, how to “shirk work”, as

17

pointed out by Akhil Sharma, becomes an obsession for Agastya,

and his uninspiring, dull and often irresponsible seniors can be

certainly blamed for not setting the best examples for this young

civil servant.

Another, somewhat more ambiguous problem that Agastya has

to deal with is the weather in Madna, as well as the problem that

he faces with the language. As a civil servant who has spent

halcyon days in cities far off and has had a boarding school life

in Darjeeling, a place as far removed as possible from the

blazing, ruthless Madna, it’s incredibly difficult for Agastya to

adjust to his workplace. His reluctance to put in any sort of

concerted effort into making himself fit in with his surroundings

further complicates his situation, and the heat and language

problem in Madna further fill him with lethargy, converting him

into someone who was the under the impression that he was ”living

someone else’s life.” Dhrubo warns Agastya in the novel’s opening

episode how the latter was heading to a a place which “will be

another world, completely different.” He is also perceptive

enough to remind his lifelong friend that “Madna was the hottest

place in India last year,” , something which Agastya bypasses as

18

an useful fact to consider in the haze of marijuana which he is

in at that time. However, upon arriving in Madna, he immediately

realizes that the place is going to test him in more ways than he

had thought possible. Srivastav tells him that he should try and

exist in Madna in May when, as the sayings go. “even birds have

dropped from the sky, dead.” The narrator says how “The heat was

terrible.” Agastya also gets a lesson about the hotness of the

place early on when riding to his first meeting with Srivastav

along with the naib tehsildar. He notices how people covered

their heads in order to protect themselves from the vicious heat.

This heat further forces the somewhat disinterested and

nonchalant Agastya further away from the work that he is supposed

to do. The outside in Madna becomes a space which he wants to

avoid at all costs. The dastardly weather does its bit in

throwing him completely off course and leaving him afloat on a

sea of doubts and uncertainty. His secret life inside the rooms

which he occupies becomes a much more consuming and exciting

engagement for Agastya. His secret life, which comprises of

silent masturbation engaged in “compulsively and without joy”,

reading a little, listening to Tagore and Chopin, stoning and

19

spending time with Shankar becomes “more exciting and more

actual” than the physical world in Madna which in its hellish

state pushes him further away with every passing moment. Even

when the rains come, only temporary respite is offered to the

inhabitants of the Madna. The narrator announces, somewhat

prophetically, almost with the enunciation of a Biblical doer of

good, “Then the rains came to Madna.” Everything changes for a

while, but then, very soon, everything around changes into slush.

Mandy, an acquaintance from Agastya’s college days in Delhi and a

veteran of the place (having spent a whole year there before the

arrival of Agastya) reminds him about how, following the rain,

“the mosquitoes will really come out.” The weather refuses to let

up and let Agastya catch a break. Hence, with the passage of

time, Agastya loses his battle with what Sandhya Iyer calls “the

trying conditions of the place.” One has to agree with Srivastav

in declaring Madna as one of the unhealthiest places in the

entire nation, a place which can be quite currently described in

the following words: “Hot, humid, diseases, everything.” No

matter how much censure Agastya deserves for slacking off as he

does, and rightly so, one might feel even a tiny bit sympathetic

20

towards the man of twenty-four; as the problems of the outside

world beset him and fill him too many questions to answer, he

recedes into the inner sanctums of the many government buildings

he occupies in Madna. Language, of course, is another problem

which he hyas to deal with; although this problem causes him much

less discomfort than anything else because most people can

communicate with him in broken Hindi or Good English, it still

adds to the inscrutability of Madna, something which bewilders

Agastya more and more as the days go by. Danny Yee is right in

stating that the place displays “faults along language”. The naib

tehsildar starts him off on the wrong foot when upon seeing him

on the station, he goes up to him and speaks in the local tongue.

Although Agastya politely requests him to switch to Hindi and the

subordinate complies with consummate ease, the fact that

Agastya’s tryst with Madna is going to be a tough one to handle

is one which is made clear at the very start. The language

problems affect him the worst vis-à-vis his relationship with

Vasant, his cook and caretaker, someone who fails to understand

Agastya’s instructions and consequently put shim in a spot of

bother very frequently. This leads Agastya to try and seek out

21

meals away from the Rest House he is staying at, thus driving him

even further away from the tasks he needs to perform. Srivastav,

an inept but nonetheless experienced officer keeps on advising

him to try and pick up the language, but Agastya, being someone

“without ambition”, as bracketed off by Sathe late in the

narrative, fails to do that and pursue the issue with any amount

of concerted effort. Hence, this is another of those things which

makes life difficult and restless for him; it puts him in a place

where many, many things go by him, and he is able to glimpse at

all that with minimum or very little effort, “but never his

future.” That remains something elusive and extremely hard to

define.

SHOOL : “a truly different film”

22

In Shool, the first broad structure that Bajpaii’s Samar is

up against is the political fraternity that runs Motihari, a small

town he is shifted to right at the beginning of the movie. The power

held by this fraternity is best exemplified by Bacchu Yadav, described

by Mohammad Ali Ikram as a “a ruthless bloke and typical politician.”

He is the chief antagonist to Samar’s righteous, dutiful and

idealistic protagonist. We get to see glimpses of how dangerous he is

even when he is not dealing with Samar in any form, and it only helps

to establish him in a negative light in the eyes of the audiences.

Shinde, it must be said, gets right under the skin of the character

and is deserving of the very highest praise that he can get. Anupama

Chopra is right in stating that “Shinde as a psychopath performs

brilliantly.” The episode where he kills off a rival politician when a

loyal party member informs him of his seat of 15 years having been

handed to the concerned rival is one which deserves special attention.

This sets him up brilliantly as a brutal, self-serving man who would

get to any length, even murder, almost in a Macbeth-like way in order

to stay safe and hold on to the power which he so loves and wields.

His almost Orwellian obsession with power leads him to making his gang

of goons kill a man and then, just to make sure, diabolically stab him

through the heart in order to make sure that he will not be a problem

to him anymore. Just before that, he tries to buy the guy out in order

23

to keep his valued seat, but when that backfires, he resorts to a

heinous murder, setting him up as the monster against whom Samar will

have to launch into a crusade. It is he who makes Samar lose

everything that he values, ultimately turning him into a man who only

lives and breathes to exact revenge on his enemy. Samar is already one

who can be rightly called “a man of strict and unwavering principles”,

and Yadav’s pushing him to the limit makes him even more forthright,

upright and dedicated as a civil servant, one who loses his wife and

child in a matter of days because, in the end, he is one who wants to

uphold the sanctity of the nation’s constitution and laws. Yadav

affects Samar’s life in many, many ways. Yadav makes his power felt

early on during Samar’s stay in Motihari. Samar manages to apprehend a

gang of Yadav’s henchmen and take them to court for the crimes that

they have committed against a rival gang, even going against the

orders of a superior officer. However, the henchmen are soon released

when, in a trope that has been used time and time again in Bollywood,

the witnesses in question turn hostile and refuse to provide evidence

against Yadav’s men ostensibly under duress and to avoid the same fate

as the rival politician who was stabbed through the heart. That,

however, is only the beginning of the troubles that Samar will face.

Very soon after that, Yadav is guilty of blaring music without

permission late into the night, and Samar decides to take him to task

24

for it. He does this while celebrating his marriage anniversary at

which a dance (played by Shilpa Shetty) dances to an item number which

remains popular to this day. Samar tries to be the law’s custodian

again and enforce its stamp, only to be harshly shown again who wields

the real power in Yadav’s Motihari. In collusion with Yadav, his

superior officer gets him suspended under false pretenses, and Samar

is again left to see how powerful Yadav really is. After this, he

frames Samar for the murder of his brother-in-law, Lalji. This is

perhaps the most atrocious move that Yadav makes in order to bury

Samar, and it all works out as he gets arrested for murder. This truly

shows how very cruel and barbaric Yadav is, not thinking twice before

bludgeoning his own brother-in-law to death with a firearm in order to

make sure that Samar falls into some sort of trouble. Samar, of

course, is a man who is somewhat fixated on things, to say the least;

Anupama Chopra notes how he is someone who displays a “one-note

characterization”. Chopra also notes how he “has upright morals and a

furious temper”, and the master manipulator Yadav takes advantage of

this too. Samar is somewhat of a Bollywood stereotype in the mould of

characters like Shashi Kapoor’s honest cop in Deewaar; he hates crime

and criminals immensely. Hence, when Yadav arrives at his house after

he is bailed upon the murder charge to let the cat out of the bag, he

is extremely incensed. It is revealed to Samar how his father went

25

behind his back and begged Yadav to help his son out from behind bars.

Yadav does this very, very knowingly, it has to be said; he is aware

of the fact that it will hurt his enemy to the very core of his heart,

and his effusive, sarcastic greetings at the release of Samar only

further fuels his anger and cements Yadav as a coldhearted, despicable

man. He launches a verbal tirade against Yadav and his father,

wondering as to whether he should wash Yadav’s ass or lie prostrate at

his feet in order to display obeisance so that he can repay Yadav’s

debt , and as can be seen, the dialogue here (crafted brilliantly by

Anurag Kashyap) is tinged with feeling from the very bottom of his

Bajpai’s character’s heart. The deaths of Samar’s daughter and wife

can also be partly attributed to Yadav, although one may say he is not

as directly culpable in them as he is in certain other things like the

murder of the rival politician; after Yadav’s goons make licentious

comments about his daughter and wife, Samar is driven into a blind

rage and he attacks the goons around him, and in the ensuing scuffle,

his daughter is dealt a severe blow to her little head and dies in a

hospital. One can perhaps blame Samar in this case for not displaying

any equanimity and deciding to take on an entire group of people by

himself, but Yadav’s gang, propelled by the jungle law which Yadav has

been instrumental in establishing In Motihari, is certainly to be held

responsible for daring to outrage a child and a woman’s modesty, and

26

that draws a reaction from an already exasperated Samar whereby things

spiral wildly out of control and he ends up losing his only daughter.

His wife’s death, again, while not directly caused by Bacchu Yadav,

has almost everything to do with the man. Manjari, Samar’s wife, does

indeed have what Mohammad Ali Ikram labels a “serious door-mat

complex”. The only time she decides to act is after her daughter has

been killed due to what she considers Samar’s unflinching dedication

to his duty, and Samar’s career and their lives have been

significantly maimed. Right after Samar’s parents leave the house they

live in, Majnari acts out and blames her husband for all the great

losses she has had to suffer over the recent past. A huge altercation

ensues, and then Samar leaves the house to get away from it all.

Unable to be a door-mat anymore and at her wit’s end, it seems like a

perfectly fine idea to Manjari to ingest poison, and she later dies as

a result of having done so. This is what finally pushes Samar over the

edge and forces him take matters into his own ahnds vis-à-vis Bachhu

Yadav. Again, Manjari’s acto to consume poison might be one she takes

in a state of perfect consciousness, but the shadow of Bacchu Yadav

looms large over her corpse; since Samar has dared to stand up against

him, Bacchu has done everything in his power in order to bring the man

down, and as his wife, Manjari has had just about enough, and in her

act of committing suicide (although she does not die immediately after

27

having taken poison), Manjari makes a vocal statement against the

evils perpetrated by Bachhu Yadav and his men, something her soft-

spoken, introverted being would never have been able to do while she

was alive. Bacchu Yadav is critically important, as can be seen, both

to the misfortunes that befall Samar and, more importantly, his stance

as a police officer who follows the letter of the law to the very end.

Samar is also forced to become the tough, uncompromising

policeman that he is shown to be because of the opposition that he

receives from within the rank and file of the very service to which he

belongs. The system is so rotten, as Samar finds out, that even the

very protectors of the masses, those who have to swear by the

constitution and uphold and enshrine all that is in it, have given

over to the monetary muscle wielded by the ilk of Bacchu Yadav.

Although he tries to get his colleagues back on the path of

righteousness, he is made to understand each time how very powerful

Yadav is and how, as he proudly states upon having entered the Singh

residence for the first time (having scared his wife and daughter to a

great extent), the D.S.P, someone he claims to have bought out is one

of those who are his dogs; loyal to him for all the financial benefits

he bestows upon them, and detrimental to those like Samar who want to

trample on the life of illicit pleasures and unconstitutional benefits

28

that he leads. The D.S.P is one of two officers who can be pointed out

for their utter disregard for the rules which govern the nation. He

proves on several occasions that he is someone who has sold out to

Yadav and has consequently become a part of the nexus between the

civil service and dirty politicians like Yadav who threaten to

destabilize the very core of the democratic structure of the country.

Firstly, he asks Samar to let go of Yadav’s people after he arrests

them after a scuffle with a rival gang, even after Samar had gone to

the spot himself and investigated himself as to the situation and how

it had truly unfolded. This is how Samar begins to unearth the truth

about how things run in Motihari. The small town is one which operates

almost completely according to the whims of corrupt, insensitive and

scandalous politicians. His righteousness is further questioned and

augmented by the D.S.P very soon after this. At the anniversary party

he throws in his house, Yadav plays loud, blaring music without

permission and thus he is in contravention of the laws of the land.

However, upon getting there and attempting to make things right, Samar

is treated to something which is diametrically opposite to his stance

as an honest cop. He finds his boss punch drunk at the party along

with many other people who are submissive to Yadav. When Samar asks

that Yadav stop the abomination that he is perpetrating, the D.S.P

asks him to leave as such small laws are rarely followed in small

29

towns like Motihari. Samar, as filled with integrity as ever, fails to

fall into place with his boss’s expectations and demands vehemently

that Bachhu stop right then. His boss gets further infuriated and

chagrined; however, Samar refuses to budge and upon being asked again

to let things continue as they were going on, he says that he won’t do

so till he is given written orders. This ends up harming the

idealistic Samar; right the next day, he is framed by his boss and

under the false pretense of attacking a superior officer, suspended

from the police force. The D.S.P frames him very carefully, hiding on

to his collar and challenging him to do something, something which

would land him in trouble. Hussain, another civil servant who occupies

the same fictional universe as Samar, is the second representative of

the police force who stands in stark contrast to Samar’s morally

integrated, honest being. Hussain is perhaps the most blatant, vocal

adherent to the cult of mismanagement and wrongful use of political

power that Yadav very successfully runs. He is shown to be someone who

receives weekly payments (colloquially termed “hafta”) from Yadav in

order to do his bidding and make sure that no voices are raised

against him even by mistake. Hussain is also one who tries his utmost

in order to try and convince Samar of how wrong his methods are and

how hard he may fall if he keeps doing what he usually does. Samar’s

standing as a forthright, law-abiding civil servant is perhaps

30

challenged the most viciously by a fellow civil servant, that being

Hussain; he makes it very clear that he is not interested in following

the orders of the government which pays him. Instead of that, he is

more interested in being of use to Yadav and make sure that nobody can

touch the man. Upon being inquired by Samar as to whether he would let

Yadav go scot-free if he sees the man assaulting someone in front of

him, Yadav proudly states how he would not only turn a blind eye to

it, but he would also help Yadav beat up and finish the man. Hussain

also plays a pivotal part in the destruction that falls upon Samar

vis-à-vis his career. He is on the same boat as the D.S.P. as regards

getting him into trouble and it is with his cooperation and somewhat

active participation that the D.S.P is able to frame him for

assaulting a senior officer and put him behind bars. Hussain leaves no

stone unturned to make his true feelings towards Samar unknown; he

makes it appoint to try and remind him about how Yadav is a very big

man and compared to him, Samar is an absolute nobody. He tells a

disgruntled and visibly seething Samar that he still has time if he

wants forgiveness from Yadav, going on to tell him to go and apologize

to the man. He proceeds to callously state that owing to the

indiscretions (in his eyes) that Samar has committed, he should

consider himself lucky even if Yadav spits at him. Lastly, of course,

there is a somewhat innocuous figure of the policeman who insults

31

Samar upon his arrival in Motihari. Later, he is shown feeling guilty

because of what he has done, having been unable to recognize a more

highly placed officer; however, two things do come to mind when

talking about him. There is, of course, the issue about him being

complicit in the nefarious circle which operates in Motihari. He

initially asks Samar to hand over the exorbitant amount of money which

the coolie asks for, thereby indicating a possible cut for him from

however much a coolie can scam from his temporary employers. Later on

in the film, however, he displays something which, though certainly

not as harmful as the callous disregard displayed by certain other

characters around him, is something which shows why he is not really

attuned to his job and why he needs to be a part of the unholy nexus

operating in Motihari. He discovers Samar sleeping on a park bench one

night after the fiasco involving the D.S.P and Hussain. He initially

mistakes him for a vagrant, but is all official when he realizes that

it is Samar who is occupying the bench. In a short but loaded

exchange, the hawaldar manages to beautifully enunciate everything that

is wrong with the civil service. Firstly, there is his expressing of

guilt and sadness at the fact that Samar has been punished without

cause. However, he then goes on to say how very helpless he and any

other policeman who want to help him are. He states how nobody is

fearless like him, they all being another quintessential Bollywood

32

trope, “chote admi”(“small men”). It is fascinating and somewhat

disconcerting to see that this lowly police officer considers the duty

work expected of any policeman as an instance of fearlessness. His

next admission, however, is even more damning and shocking. When asked

by Samar why he joined the police force, he gives an answer filled

with indirection and laziness. It displays a solid lack of resolve and

strength. He says that he took up the job because he would have done

something in life anyway; he found an advertisement by the government

and answered, and was consequently made a part of the large machinery.

The fact that he will get pension in his old age makes him feel

immensely comfortable and hides the cause for concern. This is in

direct conflict with Samar’s proud announcement to Hussain where he

says that the government pays him to do a job and hence it’s his duty

to do it. The hawaldar, while certainly not as vile as some of the

others Samar encounters throughout the film, he is one of those who

helps perpetuate this kind of evil in the rungs of the civil service.

Samar loves policing and trying to uphold the letter of the law,

whereas the hawaldar does his job merely because it pays and he needs

some sort of livelihood. He does not love his job; he does it rather

mechanically and without any sort of fixed goal in mind. He is perhaps

much more useful to and responsible for the creation and sustenance of

the system which lets someone like a Bacchu Yadav take control of

33

things. Samar is someone who wants to do his job well and serve the

nation and its people; however, he meets such people around him that

it is very, very hard for him to accomplish what he wants to.

COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS

34

One of the similarities that Agastya and Samar share is the

obvious disregard that some of their colleagues have towards what they

are supposed to perform. Agastya has the likes of Kumar and Srivastav

who set examples at how to be inept while being in very important

posts; Samar has his own such colleagues. There is a subtle difference

between how the two groups of people operate in each work, but at the

fundamental level they are the same. Agstya’s seniors in the service

do not transform Madna into something as evil and grisly as the

Motihari which is run by Yadav. True, there is an S.P. who watches

pornography at the government’s cost, Srivatsav, who sends Agastya

with Sita and John Avery into a jungle under the pretext of it being a

part of Agastya’s training procedure, and there are also the engineers

who siphon off lakhs of rupees from the roads that they build in

Madna. Motihari, of course, is a whole different kind of evil empire

altogether. all in all, one can’t but agree that both Agastya and

Samar co-exist with people who make their jobs even more difficult

than they already are. The very people who are supposed to help them

settle in and work with them for the greater good fail to rise to the

occasion, and hence the two protagonists are left all at sea.

The lack of companionship that Agastya and Samar both undergo

also affects them in a way. Again, their lack of companions can be

35

assessed separately for the two of them. The kinds of aloneness that

they suffer could not be more different from each other. Agastya is

utterly and uniquely alone; he has no companions with whom he can

share his feelings, his feeling of being dislocated, his feeling sof

being a sufferer of “homelessness of a kind.” He does make a few

friends like Sathe, Gandhi and his old college acquaintance Mandy;

however, they are not as sensitive and acutely attuned to their inner

self as Agastya. He fails to fit in into the space that Madna offers

him and his aloneness is rather apparent. He finds solace in

travelling to Delhi and meeting up with Dhrubo and in letters from and

to his oldest friend Neera and his father, vestiges of his old,

“shallow” life that he desperately tries to reconnect to. Samar is

also alone, but his aloneness is of a completely different kind. His

aloneness is one of someone who stands up t the corrupt and festering

system, thereby alienating everyone else in his path and forming a

group of one entirely unto himself. Tiwari, perhaps his only friend in

the entire civil service structure in Motihari, lays it all out for

him better than anyone else does. He tell Samar, upon the launching of

the latter’s vicious tirade on Yadav and how he will do work since he

is paid to do so, Tiwari shows that he knows about the truth of what’s

happening, but he is also practical. Unlike Hussain, he does not

viscerally castigate Samar for standing up against Yadav; he says how

36

what Samar is doing is absolutely right, but how, if he keeps treading

the same path, he will certainly be killed. His father tells him how

he considers the steadfastness and unflinching honesty to be a “natak”,

a mere dramatic performance enacted for an audience’s enjoyment.

Pretty much till the end, he stands alone in his desire to do work

within the bounds of the nation’s constitution. In the end, when he

finally takes the law into his own hands and kills Yadav off in the

Bihar Legislative Assembly, he stands alone then too; he is the centre

of attention and the only one who has raised a voice against the

systemic oppression of the common man. Hence, as can be seen, both

Agastya and Samar are uniquely alone in some ways, and it affects

their lives in certain fashions.

Agastya and Samar also differ in the ends that they reach within

their respective narratives. Agastya, of course, gives up at the end,

unable to reconcile himself with Madna and everything that it offers.

It all finally overwhelms him. He is unable to put himself at any sort

of calm; “the mind is restless”, Krishna keeps saying to Arjuna in

Sathe’s Gita, and Agastya’s restlessness makes him finally give up and

go back to the urban shallowness he so craves. Samar, however, ends

things differently. He ha slost everything that was dear to him, but,

in oine final act of defiance and moral duty, he is able to kill Yadav

37

off and punish him for his many sins. Samar swears by the law and is

shown to be prepared to do anything and everything so that it is

obeyed and followed to the very last letter. However, when he finally

acts in a state of blind rage, he takes the law into his own hands,

murders Yadav and makes a statement. It is ostensible that Samar will

be punished and dealt with severely in the aftermath of Yadav’s

murder, but he is able to make a stand, killing off the representative

of the system’s vicious tentacles of oppression, and thus doing his

duty as a civil servant, even though it means breaking the law.

Agastya and Samar also differ in the ways in which they approach

their respective jobs. Agastya, of course, is always someone who is

there in Madna merely by accident. Right at the beginning, he admits

to Dhrubo how he has “no special aptitude for anything”, and he shows

how very disinterested he is throughout his stay in Madna. Sure, the

ineptitude all around him means that his slacking off mostly goes

unnoticed (Srivastav lightly takes him to task occasionally), but his

lack of desire to do anything is very apparent. Cannabis and pretty

much every other trivial thing excites him, but the job for which he

is being paid does not interest him at all. Samar, on the other hand,

stays true to what he believes in for nine-tenths of the movie, it

must be said. His integrity and belief in doing his job properly ends

38

up costing him pretty much everything that he could have offered. Of

course, at the end, having lost everything, he goes over the line and

ends up finishing Bacchu Yadav in the only way which it was possible

to do so, by breaking the law. Thus, even in breaking the law, Samar

remains true to his duty and to the ethics of what he considers a

civil servant should do.

CONCLUSIONS

39

The two works present fascinating character studies of two civil

servants who are extremely unique and who function in ways that are

very, very interesting to study. More than anything else, however, the

works raise deep questions about the very nature of civil service

itself. Its two protagonists are certainly two of the “millions” whom

Agastya says try out their luck in the civil service examination held

each year. Their jobs, in a way, do end up defining them; Agastya

becomes a slacker and a quitter who even considers joining a

publishing firm runy by a childhood acquaintance Tonic for a while so

that he can escape to Delhi and not have to deal with everything Madna

has to throw at him. Samar, on the other hand, as we are told early on

in the movie, has been transferred several times previously; he still

refuses to give up on what he believes in correct, and by the end of

the film he has taken a radical step towards what he believes will

lead to many wrongs being righted in the society he inhabits. They

stand out, pne must say, as two small but extremely reflecting

microcosms of the civil service that exists in order to perform

actions on behalf of the nation’s taxpayers. For Agastya, nothing is

really enough; he goes back to an episode from his childhood when he

had often thought about what it would take for him to lick the cow

dung that littered the streets of Darjeeling, upon being challenged to

do so by his friend Prashant. Agastya ruminated and decides that he

40

would have done it if he had been given enough money for the rest of

his life. Samar, on the other hand, says categorically how he needs to

work since the pay warrants it. In reality, and in conclusion, they

represent two poles of the service that attracts people like flies

from the nation. Agastya merely goes through the motions and finally

quits, whereas Samar does his job till the very end, even at great

personal cost. The civil service has a lot to throw up in terms of its

personnel, and these two end up becoming representatives of what dos

and can happen to civil servants. They remain interesting till the

very end, it must be said.

WORKS CITED

1. Chatterjee, Upamanyu. English, August. Delhi: Faber and Faber, 2002.

Print.

2. Chopra, Anupama. “Predictable but pacy.” Rev. of Shool, dir. E.

Nivas. India Today 18 Oct. 1999.

3. Iyer, Sandhya. Rev. of English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee. 04

Aug. 2009.

4. Ikram, Mohammad Ali. Rev. of Shool, dir. E. Nivas. Planet Bollywood 05

Nov. 1999.

41

5. Sharma, Akhil. Rev. of English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee. New

York Review Books 04 Apr. 2006

6. Yee, Danny. Rev. of English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee.

DannyReviews Apr. 2005

7. “Three sentenced to life imprisonment in Satyendra murder case”.

The Economic Times. N.p. Web. 9 May 2015.

8. “IPS Officer Killing: Tractor Driver Sentenced To 10 years RI”.

Zee News. N.P. Web. 9 May 2015.

42