Paddie Paddington

A
s soon as Paddie woke up in the morning he was struck by the horrible truth: there won’t be any bed tea. It was always this way whenever his wife lapsed into one of her moods. Tea was a necessity, a dire necessity; without it he couldn’t have a good bowel movement. A few times he had tried making tea himself and bringing it to bed and drinking it, but that did not work. He had tried other remedies too. Nothing had helped. Without a satisfying shit he felt unclean. Even a prolonged cold water bath and an equally prolonged morning puja did not make him feel comfortable. He felt like a hypocrite, for he knew he wasn’t clean within and if God did not find that out, what good his prayers would be? One must have a clean bowel to have a clean mind in a clean body. Still he could not avoid sitting down for the puja lest God got angry. Prayer and meditation, however, still left him fidgety and cranky.
Arriving at his office, Paddie’s eyes travelled to his brass nameplate -- A. K. Padmanabham. The plate had not been polished during the weekend. This upset Paddie even further. He was possessive about his name and disliked it if someone misspelt or mispronounced it. Annandpetti Kumareshwaran Anantpadmanabham, his full name, had already been cut to Paddie long ago by his schoolmates as their north Indian tongues found Anantpadmanabham a twister. Anantpadmanabham did not like being called Paddie but the alternative offered was Andypandy, which was even worse. So Anant was dropped. Over the years Paddie had grown rather fond of his anglicised nickname; he thought it was quite lyrical and had added a mystique to his personality. Taking a last look at the brass plate Paddie decided to dash off a stiffly-worded memo to the head of the housekeeping division about the falling standards of cleanliness in the organisation.
Paddie started the day’s routine by going through the dak pad, the folder of incoming mails. He found it a good way to keep himself in touch with his readers since the pad would usually carry several letters to the editor. Paddie would go through each of those letters before marking them to various sub-editors with marginal notes about the action to be taken. The letter from Harihar’s mother was in the dak today. Reading it through Paddie shook his head in disgust and jabbed his finger on the buzzer. “Ask Subhankar to meet me,” he told the peon who entered the room.
“Good morning, sir.” It was Subhankar. A product of Delhi school and college, he was a handsome young fellow in his mid-twenties. Everyone thought highly of him: a smart person, who knew how to find his way when in a jam.
“Ah Subbu, good morning and howdy.”
“I want to learn something from you,” Paddie went on without waiting for an answer. “Can you fill me in on Harihar Navin. I am meeting someone in the evening and this thing is going to come up.”
Subbu was a taken aback a little, he had never heard the name and he was about to say as much when his natural inclination to smartness prompted him to say, “Not Harry Nevin, sir?”
“Subbu, you heard me,” Paddie said in a stern voice and then looked hard at Subbu. Subbu squirmed in his seat. Paddie made him feel nervous, for what reason he did not know. Of course, the man knew a lot about a whole lot of things. He was extremely good at his work, and nobody could fool Paddie easily. He was a hard taskmaster as well. But none of these bothered Subbu; something else did.
“Well…ahem…never heard of the name, sir.”
“I see.” Paddie extended the letter from Harihar's mother to him. “This might help.”
“Well?” Paddie said after Subbu had finished reading.
Subbu looked up at Paddie not knowing what kind of an answer was expected from him. He did not know which article the writer of the letter was referring to, he had not read it; as a matter fact he rarely read anything least of all the rival magazine. More importantly what did he have to do with some experiment with education taking place in some godforsaken place? An uncomfortable silence reigned while Paddie waited for an answer.
Paddie was obviously enjoying the situation. Although he did not share it with others his view was that Subbu was a callow young man lacking in substance. Subbu neither had the capacity nor the inclination to go beyond a superficial examination of an issue. While he had a good general knowledge which, along with his gift for articulation, made him an impressive speaker, ask him a probing question and he would fumble. Paddie thought Subbu tried to cover up his lack of knowledge by his “smartness”. Paddie pitied Subbu the ignoramus and hated Subbu the smart aleck. He was relishing Subbu’s discomfiture. The young man needed to learn a few things if he wanted to survive as a journalist, the first of which was hard work. Paddie was now feeling a little less fidgety.
“Well?” Paddie repeated the question, waited a little and added, “Why haven’t we covered it?”
“Sir.” In anyone else’s presence Subbu would have come out with some smart reply and gotten away with it, but Paddie’s penetrating gaze made him lose his confidence.
“Awright, we can still make amends. Collect every bit of information you can find on this Harihar Navin and get back to me this afternoon. Also find out who’s SR, get every detail about that person. I can tell that person is not from Delhi. You are leaving for this place . . . whatsit called?”
“Behore, sir.”
“Right, Behore. You are leaving tonight? I want a first hand report. Okay?”
“Yes, sir. I”ll get busy.”
“Yes, and remember it is a tough world, you can’t allow your competitor to be one up on you.’
S
ubbu was at the Press Club having his lunch. He liked the place. The food, heavily subsidised by the government, was unbelievably cheap. This must be the only place in the country, he thought, where a cup of tea could still be had for twenty-five paise. For someone like him who was always short of money the place was paradise. One had to be careful about where to sit though. An unwritten code of conduct divided the place between seniors and juniors, each to their own corner, and if one group strayed into the other it meant war, well almost. Then there were corners within corners. A certain table in the seniors’ corner was known as Nikhilda’s corner. Getting invited to that corner was a rare honour. Then there was the corner that belonged to the political correspondents, the Brahmins among the journalists. There was also the invisible divide between the vernacular journalists and the English language journalists. Subbu found that the latter were invariably snobs who never gave the time of the day to the regional language ‘fellas’. Everybody freely gossiped here. And fiercely. ‘Listen carefully to all the gossip,’ a senior had advised Subbu on his first day. ‘Frequently you will read them as scoops or news analysis.’ The gossip covered every subject on earth, and one hardly ever tried to hide the identity of the person being gossiped about. One never gossiped about their own profession and colleagues, that was the only principle one followed, dog never ate dog’s meat, right?
Subbu’s attention was drawn to the animated discussion taking place in the Hindi corner. He overheard the name Harihar Navin being dropped several times. His ears pricked up. Three persons sitting at a table were trying to convince a fourth that it wasn’t really their fault that they hadn’t published any of Harihar’s poems. The poems were immature outpourings of a fourteen-year-old. The fourth man did not seem to agree. He thought their ignorance was colossal, they had failed to recognise a genius, why was it always left to the angrejiwallahs to herald the arrival of a genius? Oh, the shame of it.  
“Look,” the senior person shook his head vehemently before pausing to gulp down the tea noisily, “after chayavad and mayavad and all that, we have had nothing in Hindi literature. It seems all those vads happened a century ago and since then Hindi poetry is stagnating. The big guns are either dead or past their prime, there is no new name nor any fresh experiments taking place. Tell me, do you see any new trend emerging? In the west every new generation produces a different style giving birth to a new genre. But here? Even the new generation mixes up creativity with copying the styles of their granddads. We have a responsibility to our language, to our literature. It is for us to discover new faces and not leave it to the angrejiwallahs. My friends, it is a tough world, you can’t let your enemy win.”
“What you are saying is right, but can one make a horse out of an ass?” the one with a thick moustache and bushy eyebrows asked.
“Yes, one can if he is a good touch artist.”  
“You mean a genius can be made, he needn’t be born?”
“Precisely.”  
“Sir, Basudev sir! How can you say that!”
“I say that because I’ve been in this field long enough to know how a word here and there can transform a poem from bad to brilliant. You see, it’s not only what you say but how you say it is important. Believe me…”
“….there has been a draught for a long time, everybody is pining for a monsoon. When Nature does not oblige what do you do? You call the rainmaker. A new poet, properly packaged, will take the market by storm. You must give your readers what they want. Right now they want to discover a genius. Give them that opportunity; let them feel as if they are a part of a discovery. Sell them the dream that they dream most about, that they have a potential Nobel Prize winner in their midst.” Basudev paused for breath. He was speaking to his chief editor, publisher and owner Hariom Agarwal. “Then you see…”
Hariom raised his hands indicating Basudev to stop.“Okay, I get you. What’s your proposal?”
Basudev’s face broke into a broad smile. He felt relieved. “I am sending Nirmal to Behore. We need a name and a face behind that name. Nirmal will meet Harihar, he will know how to handle Harihar, I’ll brief him on that. My boys and I will take care of the product. After the product is ready it will be left to you and your people for packaging and marketing it. Have faith in me, between you and me we are sure to have a winner.”
“Okay, go ahead. And keep me posted.”
“Thanks. You will have to allocate some budget for this project.”
“For now, you will have to manage from your own budget. When the product is ready I will give the matter my attention.’ With that Hariom went back to his work signalling the end of their discussion.
‘Damn the filthy, kanjoos bania. Tight-fisted maggot,’ muttered Basudev as he came out of Hariom’s room.
P
addie was feeling more his natural self. His meeting with Subbu had gone off well. May be he could go for a shit now but the need to take bath after that kept him back. He ordered for a cup of coffee to enjoy his moments. He again picked up the letter from Harihar’s mother and read it for the third time. His instinct said there was something more than the plain words of the letter suggested. He closed his eyes and tried to build a portrait of the letter writer. ‘Let me see. Mother of a teenager, a boy. Small town. Must be in her late thirties. A little plump? Perhaps, you never know these moffusil ladies, some of them manage to preserve a shapely figure even in their middle age, like his Shanta Tai. Does she wear jeans? Not important. The handwriting is bold and firm, that indicates a confident person. The t’s and the i’s are interesting. The t’s stand tall and erect which point towards an ambitious individual. The i’s have no loops, such a person is always sure about her objectives, she has a clear plan that she executes systematically and with perseverance. Paddie glanced at the name of the writer, Subhadra Rawat….Subhadra….Subhadra Rawat. SR. Hey, wait a minute. Was that also not the by name of that correspondent? Boy! Do we have the making of a thriller here, Paddie wondered. He was now convinced that the whole purpose of those reports and this letter was to promote this Harihar Navin. But, what was Subhadra’s interest in promoting Harihar. Usually men promote women, it was different in the present case. Well, Purnima must also travel to Behore, Paddie decided. This story needed a feminine angle as well as feminine instincts. With that he called Subbu’s to his room.
“Subbooo, have you found out about Harihar?”
“Yes sir, Harihar is….”
“That’s good. Well done. I have decided Purnima too should travel to Behore. She will explore the relationship between the correspondent, the letter writer and Harihar. You will do only Harihar. Booked your tickets?”
“Yes sir, there being no direct flight I will…”
“Well, hand over the tickets to Purnima. Let her travel by air, you take the train.”
“SIR….” Subbu’s voice rose in protest. Paddie stopped him in mid-sentence with a stern look. Subbu quickly checked his anger and fell silent.
“Your tickets will be delivered at your residence. You may go now.”
For the first time since morning Paddie felt completely at ease. Making Subbu travel by train in an ordinary sleeper coach was a masterstroke, he thought, ordering another cup of coffee.
That evening saw three persons headed for Behore: two by train, one by air. Behore was waiting for its fifteen minutes of fame.