(a). My 1st Posting - Berhampore, Murshidabad

After verification of antecedents and qualifications, I was appointed to WBCS (Executive) and posted as a Deputy Magistrate & Deputy Collector (on probation) at Berhampore, Murshidabad, on the result of the West Bengal Civil Services Examination, 1967.

I was still due for my M. Sc. examination. Initially, I hesitated to accept the State Civil Service as a career; I took a few days to think. I had never been second to anyone that far in my academic career. In a youthful vein, I thought it might be hard to fit into a service where I would have to serve mainly under the direct superintendence of All India Service Officers1. My apprehension had come true to a certain extent in later times. There were conflicts and differences with my superiors in some of my assignments. In a few such cases, where it became difficult to continue under persons of contrary mindsets, I changed my place of work. In the others, I stuck to my views without caring for the consequences that could follow.

However, considering various aspects like salary element, the scope of work in diverse fields vis-à-vis available alternative avenues, and the ideal recruitable age for various services at that time, I decided to join the service. 

Finally, on the 4th of December, 1967, I departed from Kolkata (then Calcutta) on the Lalgola Passenger train to go to my place of posting, Berhampore. I carried a holdall with bedding materials, a steel trunk containing a few clothes, essential documents, and books. Upon arrival at the Berhamore Court station, I took a rickshaw to reach the Collector's office. At the Collector's office, I joined as Deputy Magistrate & Deputy Collector, Murshidabad (on probation). This marked the beginning of my career, which lasted for more than 35 years. During this time, I had the opportunity to work in different places under varying circumstances and with various superiors.

As I mentioned earlier, my entry into WBCS (Executive) was more by chance than by design. If I hadn't gone to pick up the application forms for my brother, I wouldn't have even known about the service, let alone considered joining it.

Anyway, at Berhampore, I was allotted a room in the local dak bungalow as temporary accommodation. Being a government place, I thought it would be good to stay. But, to my horror, I found it was infested with rats and bugs and lacked even the minimum maintenance. I couldn’t sleep for the first night. I became depressed.  The hard reality shattered the high opinion I possessed about the premier civil service of the State.  It had so lowered my spirits that I had once thought of even quitting the service. However, ultimately, I did not leave the service, nor had to stay in the bungalow for long.

An IAS probationer, Ajoy Sinha (since deceased), vacated a double-roomed Govt flat while leaving for a long-duration course of Settlement training. Mr Baroda Charan Sharma, the then-District Magistrate of Murshidabad, allotted me that flat vacated by Mr Sinha on applying for it. 

[Mr Sharma, too, was from Assam. He had a soft corner for me for whatever reasons it might be. In my later service life, too, I felt this softness in his dealings towards me whenever I worked under him or approached him with any problem of mine. In this context, I recall one such later incident where he, as the Deputy Commissioner of a district, called me to know if the leave recommended by my immediate superior officer, the SDO, in curtailment of what I had applied for would serve my purpose.  I was just a probationer, then posted in an outlying subdivision with only a couple of years of service in credit. District magistrates used to have a busy schedule and did not usually bother about the affairs of a state service probationer. Later, it was he again, at whose intervention I could get out of the God-forsaken place of Mekliganj after serving there for more than four years. I had his support in different matters at different times when in service, and he was around.

After retirement as a Secretary to the Govt of India, Sri Sharma served in various other capacities, including being a member of the Central Administrative Tribunal (Calcutta Bench).  Finally, he left West Bengal to live his retired life in his native place in Guwahati. He is one of those upright officers under whom I had served. He had a distinct influence on my career as a Civil Servant. ] 

I shared the flat allotted to me with one of my colleagues, Ganesh Chandra Chakrabarti. We stayed and messed together; an old widow cooked for us. She was a good cook. In those days, fresh fish and vegetables were available in plenty in Berhampore at reasonable prices. We could, therefore, have varieties of good food.

My salary then was ₹418.35 at the basic pay of ₹325.00. After covering all my expenses, including pocket money, I  could send ₹140.00 to ₹160.00 to my father (my commitment towards my parents; they were then with my brother, a college professor); it was a significant amount in the 1960s. All India Service officers, including IAS officers, used to draw a basic pay of ₹400 on entry to their service during that time.

It was here that I opened a Bank account for the first time in my life. My father had never had a Bank account or money to keep in it. My brother, too, in all likelihood, did not have a Bank account till he joined the service. 

Under the terms of service, a WBCS officer had to be on probation for two years. During this period, he had to complete the training successfully and pass the departmental examinations1 in Hindi, Law, Accounts, and allied subjects. There was no training institute2 for the State Civil Service Officers in those days. Ours was an on-job training. There is now a full-fledged Administrative Training Institute, where WBCS officers joining on probation undergo in-house training for a part of their probationary period. WBCS officers are now required to undergo training in the car driving also.

On my joining at Berhampore Collectorate,  the Office Superintendent drew up my training programme with the approval of the District Magistrate. The office Superintendent was a strict man with a personality. We, the probationers just out of College and yet to learn the nitty-gritty of administration, were very scared of him. We also had to submit our work diaries to the District Magistrate through him. The probationers had to maintain a daily work diary detailing what they learnt during the day. This diary was subject to scrutiny by the Collector. For continuous six weeks of training in the  Treasury, a separate such diary was to be maintained, for examination by the Collector. The Collector had made comments of appreciation in my Treasury training diary.

According to the training program, I had to remain attached to each section of the Collectorate (District Magistrate’s office), for several days, at a time to be acquainted with the functioning of that section within the set-up of the Collectorate. My first attachment was to the section called English office. Sitting with the Dealing Assistant, I learnt how to prepare and work on files, deal with communications received from different sources, prepare notes on such communications and place them before the higher authorities with suggestions for action. I learnt here the fundamentals of the art of correspondence in a Govt office.

Other sections I had attended as part of my training while stationed here were: Judicial Munshikhana dealing with Judicial and quasi-judicial matters, Revenue Munshikhana dealing with Revenue matters, Amusement section dealing with permission and licenses for cinema and other sources of entertainment and imposition and realisation of amusement taxes therefor, Arms sections dealing with issue and renewal of arms licenses, etc. I still had many more sections and departments to undergo training. As a trainee officer, I was to be conversant with the practice and procedure manual on the conduct of business in district offices and the departmental rules and regulations prescribed for related departments. 

I have already mentioned while describing my academic life that I had skipped my final M. Sc. Examination at the end of my academic session in 1966. I thus remained due for the following year's examination. The timetable for that examination was now published. I took leave from March 25 to April 16, 1968, and appeared for that examination.  During the examination, I almost broke down when I found some questions to which I did not have the answers. I was making mistakes and taking an unduly long time to write known answers due to nervousness. It had never happened to me in any of the previous examinations. Remorse struck me for having wasted precious time otherwise than in study. I, though, had passed the examination, the result was nowhere near my standard; I got only a high 2nd Class[2]. I shall never forget this ignominy and shall never recover from its pain. I can’t forgive myself for straying away and not giving my whole at this last stage of my academic career.  I felt it was the curse of the goddess of learning on me for doing what I should not have done.  One failing to do one's work at the right time has to pay a heavy price in this way. I had learned it at the cost of everything I could accomplish that far in my academic career.

Despite completing the M. Sc. Examination successfully and obtaining a post-graduate degree certificate, I find myself questioning the depth of my knowledge on the subject.

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[2] I could not collect my post-graduate certificate from the University for my years-long stay in far-off Mekliganj and later due to my procrastination. Unfortunately, I also lost the mark sheet at some unguarded moment. As far as I remember, the marks I obtained were around  55% 

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After my M.Sc. examination, I returned to Berhampore with an overwhelming sense of remorse. On return, I resumed my training from the stage where I had left it while going to appear for my M. Sc. Examination.  Under the guidance of the Treasury Officer, Sri Surjya K. Mandal, a WBJCS officer at the advanced stage of his career, I completed the prescribed term of continuous six weeks of Treasury Training. I learnt the rules and the procedures for the management of Government finance. Berhampore was a non-banking treasury, where the cash transactions of the treasury used to be done by the State Bank of India. For this, the Bank and the Treasury had to maintain close liaisons. The Bank sent scrolls of the government transactions to the treasury every day at the end of the day; the treasury reconciled them with its accounts. The treasury was required to send compiled Accounts for the entire district to the Accountant General, West Bengal, at intervals and within the prescribed dates. Similarly, the State Bank had to send their compiled accounts to RBI. The Accountant General and the RBI reconciled the  Accounts of the State Govt. and the Central Govt in the State. The District Magistrate had gone through every minute detail of my Treasury Training Diary. He had made comments of appreciation at the end. 

After I completed the treasury training, I had the Subdivisional training under the SDO, Berhampore.  Here, I got acquainted with the functions of a Sub-divisional Officer and his office. Sri Mrinal Kanti Brahmachari, a senior member of our service, was the SDO of Berhampore.  He often invited the probationers to his Bungalow, where we used to have a good time with snacks and tea offered by his wife, our Brahmachari Bowdi. Mrs Brahmachari was also an exponent of Rabindra Sangeet. SDO's Bungalow was adjacent to the wretched Dakbungalow, where I had landed and stayed for a few days on my arrival at Berhampore. During my sub-divisional training, I had done an inquest 3, the first and the last of its kind in my life, on a partially decomposed male dead body lying in a ditch by a paddy field. Police recorded all marks of injury on the body, the conditions of the limbs and the organs, and the apparent cause of death, in my presence,  as required, and sent the body for a post-mortem under escort.

At the Collectorate, the probationers had a separate room to sit in. One general duty of the probationers was to sign the fair copies of letters issued in the name of the District Magistrate from various sections of the Collectorate. The signature-pads with fair copies of the letters to issue, typed and compared, were sent to the probationers' room along with their approved drafts. These fair copies were signed by one or the other of the probationers as available. So far as I could surmise, the idea behind this system was to make the probationers acquainted with the day-to-day administration of the district besides keeping them engaged. By going through the fair copies before signing them and calling for original files, wherever necessary, the probationers could learn how to deal with various matters in the Collectorate.

Berhampore bore a great legacy to the British Raj. It had a big square field known as Barrack Square, around which were the Offices, including the Collectorate building, and the senior officers’ quarters. It was called Barrack Square since the buildings around it had been used as barracks for the British soldiers. In our times, there were three magnificent Gothic-type buildings almost side by side, by that side of the square field which ran along the main road. Two of these accommodated the Collectorate offices, and the third the Textile College. On the vacant space between two of these buildings was the Bus stand. On the opposite side across the field was the Bungalow of the District Magistrate, and by its side, an identical building accommodating the Additional District Magistrate (General) and the Circuit House. Along the line of these buildings were the quarters of the Superintendent of Police and the Divisional Forest Officer. On the other two sides of the square field, there were bungalows of other senior officers of the district administration. For other officers, there were a few Government Housing Estates at  Laldighi, not far from the Collectorate Building. I used to live in one of these estates. 

The Bhagirathi flowed just behind the District Magistrate bungalow. There were two Govt launches on the Bhagirathi at the disposal of the District Magistrate for use during an emergency. There was a complaint of pilferage of fuel against the Sarangi (Boatman) of one of these motorboats. The boatman was a government employee. I was etrusted to conduct enquiry gainst him. That had been the first departmental inquiry I held. The charge was established; I had recommended a punishment of suspension of the delinquent’s annual increment of salary for a year or two. 

I had friendly senior colleagues in Berhampore. Manojit Bandyopadhyay, Suhas Bhattacharyya, and Nirmalya Mukherjee were noteworthy among them. By tradition, we used to address our senior colleague as "dada".   Manojit Bandyopadhyay (whom we called Manojitda), a 1959-batch WBCS (Ex) Officer, was a storehouse of jokes having ready jokes for every occasion. He could tell a joke with a grim face making everyone laugh. He was a good conversationalist, too. He had a rich collection of anecdotes involving WBCS officers. Here I mention one. The WBCS Officers had to pass the departmental examination in Hindi. Most could not do it at one attempt. There were several anecdotes on answers given in oral examinations in Hindi. One such anecdote oft-repeated by Manojitda was as follows. The examiner asked the officer, “Could you tell me what the Hindi of Rabindranath Tagore’s verse,  “খুলেছে দুয়ার, এসেছ জ্যোতির্গময়” would be. The officer promptly replied, “Yes Sir, It is दरउयाजा खुल गिया, ज्योतिर्मय तुमभि आगया”.

Incidentally, in my departmental Hindi examination, I had come across in my passage for Hindi dictation an adage, “रूपेया पैसा हात का मैल हाय़, आते याते रहते हाय़” (Money is nothing but dust on the hand; it keeps on coming and going.). I believe there could be no better evaluation of money. This phraseology has remained embedded in my mind since then. 

Coming back to colleagues, Nirmalya Mukherjee was aged but apt in using slang. He wanted to give his daughter in marriage to one of our probationer colleagues. It did not, however, fructify. The colleague concerned had quitted the service shortly after joining. Sri P. N. Naskar, a sub-magistrate at an advanced stage of his service career, was the Senior Deputy Collector who, as per practice, looked after the matters concerning probationary officers. 

Among my probationer colleagues, those close to me were Ganesh Chandra Chakraborty and Nripendranath Bhattacharjee, 1966-batch officers of the West Bengal Junior Civil Service. Nripendranath Bhattacharjee was in the habit of using English words during his conversation. We nicknamed him English Bhattacharjee. Much later, when I was the District Land & Land Reforms Officer and Additional District Magistrate, Howrah, Govt issued an order appointing me as a presenting officer with Nripen as the inquiry officer in a departmental proceeding. As Nripen was junior to me in the service and I, as a senior officer, could not report to him, I refused to comply with that order, and the Govt. had to rescind the order to exclude me from its purview. 

At Berhampore, I met my old-time hostel mate Tusar Dey of Hazra PG Hostel. He was working as an Agronomist under District Agriculture Officer. I also got acquainted with some of Tusar's colleagues, of whom I still remember one named Swapan Raha. Swapan was an enjoyable company.

Back to my training programme, I may add that the programme had an element of trial court training. We had to sit with the Sessions Judge and the Magistrates of the first class to take down evidence in three sessions-triable cases and three other cases, triable by the Magistrate of the first class. Later, we had to annotate this evidence with relevant sections of the Indian Evidence Act and submit them to the government with certificates of court attendance from the concerned Public Prosecutor for the session's cases and the magistrates concerned in magisterial cases. At Berhampore, I completed this exercise for Sessions cases along with two of my colleagues.  Later, at my next place of posting at Mekliganj, I completed the exercise for magisterial cases and submitted the records of all the six cases with required certificates to the Home (GA) Department as the Home (PAR) Department was called at that time. Govt duly accepted these and communicated their acceptance to me during my tenure of Mekliganj. 

With the separation of the judiciary from the executive, the need for judicial training of executive magistrates possibly has lost its importance in intent and purpose. I don't know if it is continuing.

I had appeared for my first half-yearly departmental examination from Berhampore.

During my stay in Berhampore, I had a short training course on Civil Defence at the National Civil Defence College, Nagpur.  Govt took steps to train civil service officers in civil defence matters post-1965 war with Pakistan. We were seven participants from West Bengal in this training course. During the training, we made a short trip to Ajanta & Ellora. We could not, however, make it to the city of Aurangabad at a distance of about 100 Km for want of time; Aurangabad, too, had many historical sites to see. After visiting Ajanta and Ellora on the same day,  we boarded a bus from Ellora for Chalisgaon, where we took a night train to Nagpur. On the way from Ellora to Chalisgaon, we passed through a hillock of black soil having plantations of bananas called Singapori. I found it interesting that the plants were dwarf, and bunches of bananas hanging from them had almost touched the ground. 

The description of this trip is given in my Travelogue Part A. That had been a very hectic trip, and besides being a cursory visit, it had left out many important places in and around. Since then, I have been looking for an opportunity to revisit the area. The opportunity came decades later, in January 2015, when my school friend Asu, who now resides in South Wales in the UK, visited Calcutta. We made a joint trip to the district of Aurangabad and toured all its important historical places, including Ajanta and Ellora. Details of that tour and an electronic album of photographs of places we visited and people we came across are available in my Travelogue Part B on this website. On the left is a present-day picture of Asu with me.  

Bicycles were the popular means of movement in Nagpur city in those days. Men and women both used cycles. Cycles were available on hire. One afternoon, some of us were riding hired bicycles. We were carrying one co-trainee in the front and another in the back. Suddenly,  a police constable stopped us and asked us to follow him to the City Magistrate; we had violated the city rules by carrying three persons on a cycle. After much pleading and divulging our identity, we were let off with a warning from Constable Saheb. 

Berhampore had a good club for its officers. The club had a British legacy as pronounced in its style, amenities, and layout. It had provisions for all kinds of indoor games, like carrom, cards, table tennis, billiard, etc., and outdoor games of badminton and lawn tennis (both hard courts). The Badminton court was within an enclosure with high walls on all four sides to prevent air from disturbing the game. I occasionally played table tennis and badminton. There used to be housie games on Saturday evenings in which District Magistrate B. C. Sharma and his wife also participated at times. Mrs Lakshmi Sharma, the charming wife of the district magistrate, mostly won in the housie. I also played housie on a few occasions but don't remember to have ever won. 

I stayed at Berhampore up to September 7, 1968. Berhampur was a good place, lively and to my liking. I had picked up a good lot of friends and acquaintances here from amongst the officers. I never felt lonely, so long as I was here, even though I was a bachelor at that time.

Berhampore had a lot of monkeys and donkeys. Young boys here, particularly those of the Textile College, preferred to dress and behave like American Cowboys. It made us call Berhampore, in a sarcastic vein, "a place of monkeys, donkeys, and Yankees".

Berhampore was a very cultured place enjoying the patronage of fine arts from the days of Nawabs. Artists from various fields of arts had sowed the seeds of cultural heritage in this place. Local citizens maintained a calm lifestyle, evoking a rich cultural environment. Every well-to-do parent sent their kids to at least one school of arts. Music, Dancing, Painting, Art of Acting were the most popular among these arts. Some of those old traditions still exist.  On Sunday mornings, one could see girls walking the streets with their musical instruments,  ostensibly to music/dance schools or music/dance teachers. The place had been famous for brass utensils, called, Khagrai utensils. It is also known for elegant handicrafts in carpet-making, jute and bamboo works, and miniature paintings.

Murshidabad was also famous for superior varieties of mangoes like Kohitoor, Begum Pasand, Daud Bhog, Dilpasand, and sundry others. The District Magistrate, Murshidabad, had organised an Exhibition of Mangoes of Murshidabad at Berhampore in the summer of 1968 when I was there. That was the first of its kind here. All the varieties of Murshidabad mangoes were on display with historical backgrounds. The special treatment most of these varieties required before being ready for consumption was also explained by those manning the exhibition. The exhibition was a great success and attracted visitors from different places.