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Walk in, and you can smell the sweat of the bovinely patient folk waiting to get things done. You’ll see the resigned, bored faces, the slouched shoulders and the wide, glazed eyes. You’ll somehow feel that gravity is pulling her apron strings a little tighter here, while little stick figures of men cling on by their fingernails. All this sounds like one of Dante’s hells, but no, we’re just in… a government office!

See here, the dark chairs, seats shined by the bottom-shuffling of countless babus whose only function it seems, is to keep the wood warm. See here, the old tired fans that spin at a leisurely, almost languid pace, serving only to stir the fetid air. See here, the unreasonable scowls that mark hyper-official faces, hard-boned fingers clutched around company-issue ballpoints, ready to scratch unfavourable remarks on hastily-scrawled letters, make little arcane signs that only the babu on desk #41 can read. Once read, of course, another indecipherable squiggle will take you to desk #23.

And you wonder, if you were on the other side, would it really be something, when all you do every day is be responsible for moving a vast sea of paper from one desk to another, one godrej cupboard to another….

All this of course, is still connected to the big news that’s coming. Can you stand the suspense?

here’s a clue: utterly knowledgeable, The terrible atavistic alderman questioned The two obliging urbanites rigorously. Simple!