My first day in and I got my very own office. Well, it was somebody else’s office. But he was on leave and hey! This place had everything government I had ever thought of. What more did I need? I was down the rabbit hole and I had arrived baby (babu?)!

With time I realised, it meant no such thing.

Babuland takes its offices seriously and uses the same decorator everywhere. This artist leaves a key to the officer’s importance in loud and clear terms. Look again at the pic and you will see that this is the office of a mid-rung guy at best.

Has his own room (good going), has a computer (not bad and an LCD monitor too. Everyone knows that anyone who is anyone has an LCD monitor atleast. And anyone who is more than anyone has something much more beautiful like my boss with his iMac) but he is drowning in decaying files of unknown vintage (Boo) and actually has the ubiquitous Godrej cupboard (yuck! they are to be used not seen). If it weren’t for the shiny white towel, I would have concluded that this guy is just above the bugs in the woodwork and but way below the average mouse in the collectorate.

Whats in a towel, you ask? Its not a towel it is the towel. It is the white towel : King among décor motifs and Lord of the towels. It sends out the loudest possible signal that this guy has arrived. A guy who can afford to have fluffy, white, clean towels on his chair and in his car all the time is a guy who has access to a vast array of cleaners, wipers, washers and dhobhis who without ever being told, keep the towel shining. You laugh, but see if you can get your regular corporate office boy to make chai the way you want it.

In fact among the Babus, rumour has it that Douglas Adams was inspired to give towels such a key role in the Hitchikers after he met a Principal Secretary in London on a Study Tour to understand the impact of cumin in fodder to improve the milk output of a nearly extinct British breed of cows. They met in the Tube where the Principal Secretary was sitting on a towel. A bureaucrat without a towel is like a superhero without his unitard.

Its just not done.

To be fair, nobody actually asks for the towels. They are just there. They were first introduced to counter bureaucrats’ innate aversion to friction. But they became obsolete when an up and coming Deputy Secretary thought up of red tape as an alternative. It was an “Ahaa! No motion, no friction” moment. Alas! It was too late, too many dreams nestled in the white arms of the towels. Each man dreamt of the day when he would have his own towel and he would not let them get rid of the towels till he got his very own set. I can bet that it was the Principal Secretary’s attender who voluntarily packed 5 sets of white towels in a special bag for him to use in London. Government offices today have biometric attendance machines, swipe cards at all entry points and some of the best IT infrastructure in the city but the boss always sits on a white towel.

The towels are not all white by the way. There are the pleasant pastels which can be viewed as artistic license without downgrading the officer. Then there are the garish pinks and the eyesore greens which say you are the bull frog but of a very small well. But beware when they give you non fluffy towels or polka dots -you might have to re-evaluate your career path. The darker your towel, the lower your level. Of course, the fact that you are actually getting a towel means that you are still in the reckoning. There is no confusion about this hierarchy. In my car, my seat is a sea of beautiful white, my driver has a dark blue towel and the other seats are stark naked. And my driver is so keyed into the hierarchy that when a couple of days ago I decided to sit in the front (one of the naked seats), he took umbrage. I stepped out to get some cash from the ATM and by the time I was back, my new seat was draped in white too.

Ah what the hell!

Yesterday I told my secretary to buy new towels daily for me. The message should go out loud and clear “Beware! I am fluffy and I am not afraid to use it!”.