Quid Pro Quo

When their mother died, Sanjeeb Bahadur Hamal and his two younger brothers went through the traditional thirteen-day period of mourning.  They imprisoned themselves in one room and slept on straw mats on the floor, clad only in loose white clothes.  They abstained from any kind of footwear.  They cooked their own food and had no meat, alcohol, or sex.  They had their heads and all facial hair shaved.

On the fourteenth day, Sanjeeb looked at his brothers at the breakfast table.  “I am going to Nepal,” he said.  “It is time we set up that trust in mother’s name.”

Raju looked up.  “What about the business here in Boston?” he asked.

“I think the two of you can run things for a few days without me,” replied Sanjeeb.

After her death, Sanjeeb had thought long and hard about his mother, and had made a determination.  He would fulfill his mother’s long-held wish: setting up a trust in Nepal to sponsor the education of promising students from deprived backgrounds.

“Okay,” nodded Robin, the youngest of the three.  “When do you want to go?”

“In about two weeks,” Sanjeeb said.  “I should be able to wrap up things by that time.”

Sanjeeb had come to the USA as a Fulbright management scholar.  He had also got through school and college in Nepal on scholarships.  His family could not have afforded to give him an education otherwise.  His mother had constantly told him that he should pay back his debts, and he agreed.

He had deserved his scholarships.  He was an outstanding student.  After his studies, he got a lucrative job at a large realtor’s.  He sent for his younger brothers and got them enrolled in college.  After about five years, he had resigned from his job and ventured into real estate himself.  After a shaky couple of initial years, he had blossomed.  He had harvested acres of money, not at all bad for a farmer’s son from a village without even an access road in the remote sub-Himalayan mountains of western Nepal.

Within a month of his mother’s death, Sunny was on United to London, on his way to Nepal.  On the flight from London to New Delhi, he got talking to a fellow Nepalese, Durlab, in the seat next to him.

“How long has it been since you left Nepal?” asked Durlab.

“Almost 15 years,” answered Sanjeeb.  “I left Nepal about a year before the democracy movement in 1989.”

“That long?” commented Durlab.  “Well, you will find the country changed drastically.”

Something in Durlab’s tone made Sanjeeb look at him curiously.  “For the better or for the worse?” he wanted to know.

“For the worse, of course.  Earlier, we had just one king and one clique to contend with.  Now, we have dozens of kings and hundreds of cliques.”  Durlab did not expand on his cryptic comment.

The flight from New Delhi to Kathmandu was three hours late.  The air hostesses were an irritable lot, and one of them sloshed hot coffee onto Sanjeeb’s lap.  She tossed a bunch of paper napkins at him, and wheeled her trolley away without a word of apology.

At Kathmandu Airport, Sanjeeb waited for about half an hour to reach the head of the line at the immigration counter.  The official at the counter, a wrinkled grey-haired man with eyes bulging behind spectacles that seemed to be made of plate glass, took his time leafing through Sanjeeb’s passport.  He pursed his thick lips and scrutinized the photograph carefully, peering at Sanjeeb and shaking his head as if disappointed at the match.  He rubbed his thumb against a hairy birthmark on his right cheek.

“What do you do in America?” he inquired.

“I run a real estate business,” replied Sanjeeb.

“Oh, you are a businessman.  Gee, you must be rich,” exclaimed the official with an oily smile. He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger and looked at Sanjeeb hopefully.  He put Sanjeeb’s passport down on the counter top and started to go through some official looking papers.

Sanjeeb waited for a few minutes, and then asked, “Can I go now?” 

The official put down the newspaper and looked at Sanjeeb.  “Of yes, of course, you can go,” he said as he reluctantly picked up the passport, stamped it and passed it back to Sanjeeb.  He seemed to do things in slow motion, like his joints were creaky because they lacked lubricating money.

At the carousel, Sanjeeb was accosted by a stocky, swarthy man in a Nepali cap and a fake Adidas track suit and sneakers.  He was wearing dark glasses, and seemed to be trying to look like a goon in a second grade movie.  He was not successful, because he was exuding cop like a radioactive halo.

“Where you coming from?” queried the cop.

“America,” answered Sanjeeb.

“You got cash dollars on you?” the cop demanded.

“Yeah, I got about three hundred dollars cash.  Why do you want to know?” Sanjeeb was suddenly nervous.

The cop drew up close to him, and whispered, “I can give you a better exchange rate than the banks will give you.  How about it?”

Flustered, Sanjeeb weakly muttered “No, thanks,” and moved on.

Sanjeeb reclaimed his two suitcases and was walking out through the green channel when he was accosted by a female customs official.  She was small, just over five feet and not an ounce over a hundred pounds, but she seemed to carry an attitude the size of the Statue of Liberty.  She hustled him over to an inspection table on the red side of customs.

“Anything to declare?” she snapped.

“If I had anything to declare, I wouldn’t have been going through the green channel, would I?” asked Sanjeeb reasonably.

She glared at him.  “Don’t give me lip.  Open your suitcases,” she ordered.

She pulled everything out of his suitcases, dumping it all in an untidy pile on the table.  She inspected the lining on the lids, the sides, and the bottoms of the suitcases.  She ransacked his briefcase.  She found nothing, and could not hide her frustration.  She looked at him like a black widow whose mate was having appendage malfunctions.

“Passengers like you give customs officials very little scope,” she snarled enigmatically.

Sanjeeb was received outside the airport by his elder brother, Saroj, who had come over from their village.  Saroj was living in their ancestral home, a nine-hour trek from the nearest self-propelled vehicle, if you agreed that yaks didn’t count; a four-hour trek from the nearest electric appliance, if you did not include solar power- and battery-operated stuff; and a two-hour trek from the nearest medical institution or personnel, if you discounted the local jhankris and dhamis—witch doctors.

They were swamped by cab drivers and hotel touts outside the terminal.

“Hotel, sir?  Very cheap, luxurious, in center of city.”

“Taxi, sir?  Very comfortable, Toyota Corolla.”

“No, we don’t want to go to a hotel,” shouted Saroj.  “How much do you want for a cab to Putali Sadak?”

“Three hundred Rupees, sir,” replied several of the cab drivers. 

One of the cab drivers drew them aside.  “I will take you to Putali Sadak for only two hundred Rupees,” he said.  “You won’t get anything cheaper here.  If the others know I am underbidding them, they will cut my throat.””

“But the meter would show only about sixty Rupees,” Saroj protested.

“Our cabs here don’t have meters, sir,” replied the cabbie.

Saroj pointed to several cabs in the parking lot.  “They look they have meters.”

“Their meters don’t work.  No taxi meter works at the airport,” said the cabbie.  “Look, if you want to go, let’s go, or I will go back to look for some other passengers.”

They settled with him at a hundred and fifty Rupees.

The next day, Sanjeeb went to the Ministry of Education, to meet the Director General of the Department of Education.  He had confirmed the appointment two weeks before.  He was carrying an expensive folder containing his proposal, which had been prepared for him by a high level team of Nepalese experts.

He found his way to the Director General’s office, where he came up against the man’s personal secretary.  She looked middle-aged, but was very pretty and petite.  She was doing some serous yakking on the phone.  A gang of three men and two women were draped around the room.  They looked very much at home there, like regular cronies at a habitual hangout.

Sanjeeb was ten minutes early.  He waited for five minutes before knocking on the table to draw the secretary’s attention.  Sanjeeb pointedly tapped his watch. 

The secretary said “I will call you back later” into the phone and hung up.  She looked at Sanjeeb with a measure of irritation.  “Yes, what do you want?” she asked.

“I have an appointment with the Director General,” explained Sanjeeb. 

“He’s not in,” she said with evident malice.  “He is on a three-day leave because of his daughter’s marriage.”

“He didn’t tell me about this marriage when I called him from the States two weeks ago,” protested Sanjeeb.

“Two weeks ago, the honorable Director did not know his unmarried daughter was three months pregnant,” chuckled one of the female cronies, and all of them sniggered.

Sanjeeb reluctantly handed over his folder to the secretary.  “Please give this to the Director.  Please tell him I will be in touch with him after about ten days.  I am going to my village tomorrow.”

The secretary started to leaf through the folder’s contents.  “Oh, so you want to set up an educational trust?” she asked. “Is it going to be a big trust?”

“Yes, I plan to sponsor at least a hundred students within two years,” said Sanjeeb.

“For studies in the USA?” perked up the secretary.  “My daughter has just topped her graduation class, and she is desperate to do her Master’s and Ph D in the USA.”  She peered at Sanjeeb slyly, fluttering her eyelashes, her hostility gone.

“The trust will be sponsoring deserving students in Nepal only,” said Sanjeeb.

The cronies slid over, arranging themselves behind the secretary and peering over and around her at the folder.

“It is written in English,” one of them commented, looking disappointed.

Sanjeeb muttered a polite goodbye, and walked out into the corridor.  He was trailed by one of the male cronies, who hissed at him and brought him to a stop.

“Your trust idea is very noble, and we will all support you,” said the crony, scrubbing his hands in the air and sporting an oily smile.

“Why, thank you,” responded Sanjeeb.

“Yes, we will try to move your file as fast as possible,” said the crony.  “You got money for a little tea?”

A startled Sanjeeb responded, “What?”

“Just a little money for tea,” wheedled the crony.

Baffled, Sanjeeb pulled out a fifty-Rupee note.  He offered it to the crony, who took it and made a face.

Sanjeeb walked away, shaking his head at the thought that government offices in Nepal could not even afford tea for their staff.

He was set right by his brother that night.  Saroj told him that in Nepal, money for tea was a euphemism for a bribe.

“You are not going to get your work done if you don’t grease a few palms,” his brother remonstrated.  “Nowadays, that is the way the system works.  You have to pay your way at every step.  Before we had democracy, it was enough to get one big shot on your side.  He would tread over everyone and get your work done.  Now, everyone is a big shot, and if you try to buck the system, you will find yourself caught in an endless tangle of bureaucracy.”

“But I am trying to do some good for the youth of this country.  How can they expect bribes from a noble cause?”

“The good of this country’s youth is not necessarily the good of the people who must do your work.”  His brother spoke gently but firmly.  “They only care about feathering their own nests.  That’s their noble cause”

Two weeks later, Sanjeeb was back at the Director’s office.  He had strained hard over the last three days for this appointment.  The Director’s secretary had given him a dozen excuses for not putting him through to the Director.  It was by the sheerest luck that the Director himself picked up the phone when Sanjeeb called up yet again the previous evening.

When he arrived at the secretary’s table, he immediately sensed hostility.  He was taken aback to see his folder still lying on the secretary’s table.

“Hasn’t the Director gone through that folder?” he asked the secretary.

“He is waiting for you.  Please go in.”  The secretary’s tone was gruff.

The Director welcomed him pleasantly; arising from behind his table, he led Sanjeeb to a couch and seated him.  The Director was a very fair, rotund laughing Buddha with a hairless face and a bald head, except for tight grey curls on the temples and the back of the head.  He was neatly and conservatively dressed.  He smiled in an easy way that indicated he was well versed at it, like a politician.

“I am sorry I missed our first appointment,” he said.  “I had to arrange my daughter’s marriage in a hurry.  My son-in-law, you know, he is leaving this week to take up a job in Australia, and may not be in Nepal for several years.”

Not sure what to say, Sanjeeb nodded.

“Now then,” continued the Director.  “I have not yet seen your proposal.  I understand you want to set up a trust for educating kids here.”

“You have not seen my proposal? But I left it here two weeks ago,” said Sanjeeb.

“Oh, my secretary must have forgotten to give it to me.  Poor lady, she has so much on her mind, she is so worried about her only child, her daughter.  I understand she told you about her daughter.”  The Director gave Sanjeeb a very sharp look, his face stern.
Then, smiling again, he said, “Do please give me a briefing on your proposal.”

Sanjeeb set out the salient features of his proposed trust, with the Director nodding and asking a pertinent question every now and then.  Sanjeeb got the distinct impression the Director had already read his proposal.

When he finished, the Director leaned back, closing his eyes.  He looked considerably like the sleeping Buddha.  He seemed to find inspiration after meditating for a minute or two.  He opened his eyes and looked at Sanjeeb.

“It is an interesting proposal.  I will see what I can do,” he said.

“I hope you can grant me an approval within a week,” said Sanjeeb.  “I am going back to the States after a week.”

The Director shot him another sharp look.  “Why don’t you drop by at my house some time soon?  We could have a drink together.  Here, this card has my home address and phone number and my mobile phone number.  Call me when you can come.” 

Sanjeeb accepted the visiting card, feeling that there was some undercurrent he was not tuning in on.  He said a polite goodbye, and took his leave.

Once again, he was followed out into the corridor by the crony who had done the same thing the first time.  The crony drew him aside and asked him, “How did it go?”

Sanjeeb shrugged.  The crony continued in a low voice, “Let me give you some advice as an insider.  If you want to get your work done, you will have to keep the Director’s secretary happy.”

Sanjeeb stared at him, puzzled.  “What do you mean?  It is the Director who makes the decisions, isn’t it?”

“That may be so, but the Director’s secretary decides what the Director decides.  They are like that, you see,” smirked the crony, extending his index and middle fingers out, locked together.

Sanjeeb nodded.  He thought he understood, but was afraid of asking for clarifications.

“My file has not even moved to his table,” he protested.

“Oh, I will take care of that straight away.  Perhaps you could treat us to some tea,” said the crony.

Sanjeeb gave him five hundred Rupees.  The crony smiled broadly, shook his hand, and scampered off.

That evening, Sanjeeb told Saroj that he had been invited home by the Director, who appeared to be a very sociable man. 

Saroj laughed.  “You are so naïve, Sanjeeb,” he said.  “Don’t you know that when a bureaucrat or politician calls you home, he expects you to go carrying money?  Now listen to me, or you are going to achieve nothing.”

Saroj launched into a long discourse on the ways of getting work done in Nepal.  He interspersed his monologue with several critical references to Sanjeeb’s “American” ethics.  Sanjeeb listened with a bowed head, and when Saroj finished, nodded.

The next day, Sanjeeb went and met the Director’s secretary.  She was all smiles when he left after a brief talk with her.  He called on the Director at home later in the evening.

Two days later, Sanjeeb was called in the morning to the Department of Education.  He was given the approval for his trust by a beaming Director General.

After Sanjeeb left, the Director General called in his personal secretary and his cronies.  They looked at him with great expectations.

The Director General gave each of the cronies a bulky envelope.  “Those envelopes contain your shares. Put them away safely, and open them only when you get home,” he said.  “Now please leave.  I have some work with my secretary.”

When they were alone, the Director General looked at her.  “He told me he will be taking care of your daughter,’ he said.

His secretary gave him a dimpled smile.  “Yes, he assured me he will get her admitted to a good university in the USA, and will pay for her studies.”

The Director General patted her on the rump.  “Good.  We will celebrate tonight.”