Tripathi walked into the staffroom and lowered himself into a chair whose springs had packed up long since. The faulty springs meant he had to sit at a strange angle. He had been in this place for almost thirty years now—the slant didn’t even register. He unfolded the day’s Northern India Patrika. It was still carrying news of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Tripathi took little interest in politics. The news of the murder had not affected him personally like it had his wife who, like her mother, always voted Congress.

He ran his eyes over the television listings and cursed the government. Tripathi was a TV addict. These days, because of the prime minister’s assassination, Doordarshan was in mourning mode. Tripathi wanted Chitrahaar and Hum Log. What he got instead was Shraddhanjali, Century of Surgeons, The Living Planet, Films Division documentaries. Sometimes a mischievous programming editor slipped in a Russian circus, the recording of a P.C. Sorcar magic show. The cheerful Bengali pranced around the stage guillotining unsuspecting victims, before disappearing into a tiny tin trunk the size of a school satchel. Every ten minutes, he picked up an ornate jug placed at the corner of the stage and poured water out of it. The thing to marvel at was the apparently bottomless nature of the vessel—the ‘Water of India’ never stopped flowing. This particular trick involving Miracle Jug and Eternal River never failed to raise Tripathi’s ire. Once, he had even taken off his chappal and thrown it at the television screen. This upset Mrs Tripathi no end. She called up her father and complained to him about the kind of man he had chosen for her to spend the rest of her life with.

Tripathi sat on a chair on the stage and looked down at the rows of students hunched over their desks, scribbling. He was head invigilator. There were two other invigilators in the hall—young chemistry lecturers who had just joined and were on probation. Tripathi maintained his distance from them.

His sinuses had started to act up again. Tripathi gestured to the peon to fetch him a glass of hot water. He then fished out a small bottle of Vicks Vaporub from the front pocket of his shirt and, scooping out a small quantity with his index finger, proceeded to rub it into the vertical furrows that lay between his leafy eyebrows.

Occasionally, he would spot someone peeking into someone else’s answer script, a student whispering a query to a fellow student. Tripathi’s policy in these instances was to stare and ignore. The rest he left to the chemistry lecturers. After all, he was head invigilator. It would be beneath his dignity to be seen walking amongst the proletarian rows.