Bullet Balasubrahmaniam sat up in his seat and exhaled deeply. he had this habit of exhaling deeply whenever a deep thought occurred to him. And the thought that occurred to him was indeed heavy. His maroon safari suit was drenched with sweat and the only reason you could not see this was because Bullet sat in the dark even though it was 8 PM and everyone else had gone home. His entire career flashed before him as he contemplated his next move.
Bullet had sailed through his life mostly on his intelligence, his complete and utter lack of initiative and his unwillingness to confront higher-ups on any issues material to his job. From 1982 onwards, when he joined the IAS, Bullet was known as a "loyal" servant in the academy for his unwavering support for the official line. He could be trusted and counted on to do the worst for the Government if that was needed.
"Do the needful," the high-ups would say. And it would be done.
"For your perusal," the notes would say. And the notes were perused.
And this is the thanks I get, he thought bitterly.
It all had started innocently enough. The prime minister had a strange and hurriedly concocted idea to standardize the scripts of all Indian languages. He got this idea on an official trip to Poland to study the effects of running a country with a twin. PM was seriously considering cloning himself so he could also be President.
Instead he came back with an idea for standardization of scripts. First, everyone secretly laughed at it. Then when it would not go away, they tried to buy it with feasibility studies and judicial commissions. That did not work either.
Then came the deadly weapon. Mandal was commissioned to write a report on minority languages and language reservations. It was deemed that 40% to 60% of all the letters in the alphabet needed to reserved for the exclusive use of minorities. This was a sure fire way to stop such nonsense.
But the prime minister would have none of that. He just added 40% more letters to the alphabet representing clicking sounds and Arabic-sounding gutturals and added them to the reservation quota. And Bullet was tapped on the shoulder to start the implementation. Bullet felt the tap quite sharply, but there was nothing he could do. It was that or the career-dead-end at Sreeramperumpadoor as the assistant special offer of the reconstruction office. He had to consider the schooling needs of his children.
So Bullet consented.
That is how my friends, the beginning of the end of the career of Bullet Balasubrahmaniam began.
