[Stories and Poetry from the Room of IAS Officers]

We know Bhaskar Ghose as that TV guy. He was the director general of Doordarshan (and his daughter and son-in-law are famous TV journalists). But he is also a book guy. And not any book guy — a proper Shakespeare walla who has read all the plays and all the sonnets. He has even read Cymbeline (who reads Cymbeline!)

We are at the retired bureaucrat’s apartment in Mayur Vihar I. The house is crowded with writers and poets (one room is filled with mystery thrillers… oh no, we’d sworn not to mention it.)

Bhaskar Ghose was educated in Mumbai and Delhi and joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1960, retiring from it after thirty-six years. He served in various capacities both in the government of West Bengal, the state to which he was assigned, and in the Government of India. He has held the posts of Director General, Doordarshan, Secretary, Department of Culture in the Ministry of Human Resource Development, and Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. He has been a visiting fellow of Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. For the last fourteen years he has been a writer and columnist, and has written regularly for a number of major Indian newspapers and journals, among them The Pioneer, Delhi, The Telegraph, Kolkata, and the Hindustan Times, Delhi. He presently writes a column for Frontline. He has been involved with theatre for the last fifty years and has acted in and directed over forty plays. His first book Doordarshan Days was published by Penguin/Viking in 2005.

Mr Ghose first read the entire Shakespeare collection during his holidays in the hill town of Nainital. He was just 17. He is now in his 70s and while Shakespeare is still a passion, the heart is too big to contain just one writer. The man professes love for a famous drawing-room novelist. “Jane (Austen) is like my devi,” he says. A house help brings us a plate of dainty sandwiches that we eat in a very non-dainty fashion. We leave Mr Ghose with his Shakespeare. Later that evening, we receive a message from him. He is unable to find his precious TS Eliot.

Quotes from Books of Bhaskar Ghose:

  • “It was a truth I had to accept, a truth that underscored that I had aged - one that brought with its attendant images of loneliness and irrelevance.”
  • “A poem's what you think it is,' Arunava said and laughed. He held up his empty glass and said, 'Now that is very definitely not a poem, or it's a poem, but one of infinite loss and solitude, of what could have been and is not.'
  • “I mean, we live on a knife's edge, between the ordinary and whatever isn't - something terrible, something hilarious or very exciting, whatever. The difference is' - he held up a finger - 'just a fraction of a second.”
  • “But why this obsession with what's actually true, the real, all that? Can't you accept that our lives are always part fiction?”
  • “What happens, Tapan,' Arunava had said, 'doesn't ever go away. Something remains, because it's always part of the whole place, the environment, everything. Memories are not just internal to us.”
  • “Something about these circuit houses,' he said. "They always seem to suggest the supernatural. Perhaps because they belong to another age and have just been left behind, almost by accident. They suggest hosts of staff, scurrying about, sahibs taking their ease, sola topis hanging from those hatstands over there, whisky and soda, steaming dishes of mutton and chicken on that large table - and look at the place now. Empty, deserted. As I said, left behind.”
  • “I had no idea that my world was about to change because of her. Thus it is that major, climactic moments come and pass unobtrusively.”

Books:

  • Doordarshan Days: Plucked from the rainy slopes of North Bengal, Bhaskar Ghose, an IAS officer and veteran field administrator, is brought to Delhi at the express request of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. He is appointed director general of Doordarshan, and even before he can get an answer to the most pressing question"why me?"his rollercoaster engagement with television begins. With enthusiasm and passion Ghose plunges into this new role at a seminal time for the network, overseeing momentous events in the organization's develoent"the airing of extraordinarily popular serials like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the first live broadcast of the cricket World Cup, the advent of satellite transmission, the first live election coverage, the attempt to give Doordarshan an international presence"and is witness to the fateful arrival of Star TV and other private networks. But his attempts at reforming Doordarshan also bring him in conflict with the murky underside of public broadcasting, a world populated by capricious government ministers and their fawning acolytes, interfering secretaries and self-righteous MPs, corrupt bureaucrats and greedy producers. In Doordarshan Days, Bhaskar Ghose recounts with disarming frankness"and characteristic humour"his struggle to bring about change, revealing in the process the tragic tale of public television in India.
  • The Teller of Tales: Civil-servant-turned-schoolteacher Arunava Varman is secretive and reticent. But he turns into an inspired teller of tales after a couple of drinks, especially in the company of his friend, Tapan. Arunava's bizarre stories-involving friends, family and colleagues-add a dash of excitement to Tapan's mundane life of a bureaucrat. But over the years, as Tapan gets to know Arunava better, he starts discovering disturbing holes in these tales. Elegant, wistful and full of surprises, this exquisitely crafted first novel combines the suspense of a thriller with the tender charm of a love story.
  • The Service of the State: The IAS Reconsidered: Is the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) still the most appropriate institution to govern twenty-first-century India? Should a cadre of generalists head organizations as complex and diverse as industrial units; museums and rural development boards? If it had to be replaced; what is the best alternative? Drawing on his experience of thirty-six years in the IAS; Bhaskar Ghose addresses these and other major questions regarding the role; relevance and effectiveness of India's long-established but often controversial system of state administration in The Service of the State. Ghose argues forcefully that the IAS is still the best option and one moreover that substantially fulfils its functions-and fulfils them well. Though its once sterling reputation has been tarnished by allegations of corruption; political subservience and declining standards of efficiency; there are still sufficient numbers of dedicated public servants. These administrators; spanning diverse social backgrounds; seniorities and regional profiles; draw on established traditions of duty and of cooperation within the service to deliver-to the best of their ability and often in the face of considerable odds-the goods of development. This reflective and luminous memoir is not only a portrait of a lifetime's service to the state; it is also a timely and persuasive argument for a system of governance that has had a critical impact on India since Independence.
  • FRATERHOUSE: Fraterhouse, a college originally for men but now co-educational, was founded in the 1880s by a group of scholars from a monastic order based in Oxford. In independent India the links with Oxford inevitably grew more tenuous; those among the teachers who were English left. The links with Oxford were not, however, severed; a trust set up by a former banker who had worked in India , the Nicholls Trust, regularly sent out two lecturers from Oxford for terms that could last four years. The story is mainly of Nirmal Hazra a distinguished product of the college, of his disastrous involvement, in his first years as a teacher, with Aishani Mitra, a student; of his growing interest in Emily Desanges, one of the Nicholls Trust scholars; of James Ellis, the other Nicholls scholar, deeply interested in Sanskrit literature, who falls in love with Amanda Murray, a diplomat in the U.K. High Commission. As the seasons that make up a year change, so do the stories of the persons linked to Fraterhouse; some end, but are renewed in other forms, like the seasons. Only the college endures.

Bhaskar Ghose is a books guy, a proper Shakespeare walla who has read all the plays and all the sonnets. His Mayur Vihar I apartment has nearly a thousand books all arranged without any order.