From our friend Varma: In buildings old and new, in their dungeons and lairs occupying prime space in the heart of things, in their swivel chairs, pack rats of status quo, nibbling away at the nation's creative venturing, under the fan and by the side of ACs, files stacked ceiling-high on desks and shelves, in computer hard-disks and in every alley, never fun to talk to, never fun to make a request, chiefs of operations and masters of operatic ennui, lords of the universe, poodles of their masters and parrots of their words, sucking up, ubiquitous as carbon in coal, high-brow, middle-brow, low-brow, no-brow, all browbeating R. K. Laxman's common man, and woman, asking them to prove they live even when both are on their knees right in front of their paunches that blinds them to what's on the ground, masters of understatement when things go wrong, connoisseurs of overstatement when they happen in spite of their best efforts, promising utopia, delivering dystopia, taking shelter in mediaeval rules in statute books, tweaking them when it suits them or their rulers, fingers in every pie and bridge and road and airport, giving the Constitution the respect they give to a telephone directory, believing sitting on a decision is sitting in meditation, believing fervently in their own infallibility, not standing up for good folk, no personality but a walking, talking multiple personality disorder all the same, bloated, bumbling, mumbling, meddling, dawdling, lumbering, jet-setting in their jeeps to understand people's troubles, and giving them more of it by their mere presence, describing themselves as steel frame when they're rusty iron, corrosive to the body politic, starting with good intentions, and paving the way to hell as usual, far removed from real life but deciding what it is at every turn, specialists of their careers, and generalists on everything else, failing their way to higher rank, running nuclear fusion and fission, thinking both are the same, steering rockets into space, funding them, defunding them mid-sea and mid-flight, making policies with holes big enough to park a solar system, ever-hungry for promotion and getting it, inserting themselves into key places after retirement, superannuating themselves into heaven, driving the economy every which way, driving up prices, building monuments to their egos and messing with everyone's lives, in general useless, in particular incompetent, unable to solve a problem because they created it, making people wonder how on earth, how in hell or heaven's name these bureaucrats get their jobs and stay on failure after colossal failure.
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