I am a great one for trivia. If trivia contests were an Olympic sport, I would have certainly won many a medal for India. If you don’t believe me, ask my well-informed wife, who keeps benefitting from the esoteric nuggets of information that I share with her. Just a few days back, as I was getting ready to go to the bank, I recalled an interesting fact that I simply had to impart to her.
Even as she didn’t stop going about her silly chores, I asked her whether she had heard of the Wasika Office in Lucknow. Suddenly she was all ears, though she pretended to continue ironing some clothes. “This Wasika department in Hussainabad doles out pensions to the erstwhile nawabs of Awadh. Well, not the nawabs; but the progeny of the nawabs and the progeny of the progeny. There are more than a thousand such pensioners—wasikedars, as they are called. They draw wondrously meagre pensions from the government that range from just one rupee to a few hundred a month.”
I waxed eloquent about these descendants of the nawabs who converge with ancestral pride to collect their pensions—trifling amounts that are less than the cost of travel to the pension office. Still they come from near and far to celebrate the nawabiyat coursing through their veins. But they can’t survive on past glory alone, so these latter-day nawabs have other pursuits and professions—from pulling rickshaws in the by-lanes of Lucknow to running successful business enterprises in India and abroad. Many might be modest clerks and bus conductors and tailors and paanwalas; but on the day they come to receive their pensions, they doll up in smartly starched chikan kurtas and sherwanis.
My wife was clearly not impressed by my vast store of information.
“Are you even listening?” I asked irritably.
“I am listening, stupid,” she said calmly. “You are a retired old man with nothing to do, but I am a homemaker and homemakers never retire. You can afford to go on prattling about nawabs and pensions and other such nonsense, whereas I have work to do. I don’t have all day. Nor do you for that matter, if you want to reach the bank in time.”
“I am waiting for Gopu,” I said. “We will go together to submit our life certificates. You know that to continue getting our pensions, we have to inform the bank in November every year that we are alive and kicking and have not yet kicked the bucket.”
“I do so wish you would not mix your metaphors. And also that you would not mix with people like that no-good Gopu!”
“His name is Gopu, and not ‘that no-good Gopu’,” I remonstrated.
Gopu arrived just then and I appealed to his good sense to convince the little woman that knowledge about the nawabs and wasikedars was essential for leading a perfect and happy life.
“So what is this wasikedar poppycock?” he asked.
I then had no option but to educate Gopu. About the nawabs, the starched chikan kurtas, the paanwala who you would never suspect of being a nawab and the paltry royal pensions.
“But I thought it was us who got a pittance as a pension,” he asserted.
“Isn’t it amazing,” he continued, “we were fortunate to get the best paying government jobs 50-odd years ago and our pay was Rs400 a month. It seemed unlikely then, but we hoped to reach the pinnacle of our careers by the time we retired and dreamt of getting the highest government pay of Rs3,000! Strangely, while our salaries, and then our pensions, increased many times over, our level of poverty has remained almost constant.”
“Well, it’s not that bad,” I said, “We do get handsome pensions.”
“Certainly,” said my friend. “But the government takes back a third of it as income tax! And don’t forget the GST. On an average, you and I pay around 20 per cent tax on everything that we buy. Therefore, the government takes back more than half of our so-called handsome pensions.”
I had to agree with that. The little woman chipped in. “Considering that this guy’s main expenditure is on petrol and whisky, he pays yet higher taxes. Probably more than 60 per cent!”
I looked at Gopu disconsolately. “That is so true! I wonder if it is really worth all the bother?”
“Are you suggesting that we don’t go to the bank to give the life certificate because the pension is peanuts?” he asked.
“It certainly is peanuts! But don’t the descendants of the nawabs come to collect a few rupees because the pension proves their royal connections? Similarly, we too need to rejoice our past sarkari connections. Furthermore, the leftover nawabs have additional means of livelihood, while we have nothing. Nothing at all! Not even a paan shop!”
Meekly, I left for the bank with Gopu to tender my ‘life certificate’ to prove that I am alive. The tiger may be subsisting on peanuts, but it is alive, dammit! Tiger zinda hai!
K.C. Verma is former chief of R&AW. kcverma345@gmail.com