It was in the Eighties, the era of Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh. After a resounding success in the 1983 Assembly elections, N T Rama Rao had taken quite a few controversial decisions. One of them was the reduction of retirement age in government service. Though he claimed that the move was to help the youth, who were largely behind TDP’s electoral success, get government jobs, the decision met with criticism from all quarters. Despite all that criticism, NTR with one stroke reduced the retirement age to 55 years from 58. This rendered more than 30,000 government servants jobless.
A GO had fixed a date and those who would be completing 55 on that date would be deemed to have been retired. This compulsory retirement caught the unsuspecting employees who were on the threshold of 55 unawares. There were stories that some employees died of shock, some fell sick and a few others looked for a legal remedy.
One of the victims was my friend’s father, a clerk in a government department. Though he was already confined to bed with a debilitating illness even before this ‘draconian’ order was issued, this news had further accentuated his illness and doctors attending on him expressed hopelessness and told my friend to take his father home as he would live not more than 20 days. His father would be turning 55 exactly on the day the government order was supposed to come into force. The deadline was only a month away.
Quite understandably, my friend and his family were in grief. Besides being unemployed and dabbling in sundry jobs, he had the burden of marrying off his sister. Colleagues called on him and assured my friend that he would get a government job if his father died before turning 55.
The visitors’ word gave much comfort to my friend and his family, for a government job means a secured life with decent salary besides fetching a handsome dowry and winsome girl in marriage. So, the smile replaced grief on his face, though he did try to cover it. He started dreaming and it continued for 25 days. Five days to the deadline, he got tensed but to lessen his tension his father slipped into coma. My friend, who was not known before for going to a temple, went praying for his father’s exit ‘within the deadline’.
Though now killing one’s kith and kin at the drop of a hat is common, those days even praying for the death of one’s blood relative was unthinkable. One day before the deadline I visited my friend. He was crestfallen. “Father’s condition is unchanged”, he said and added almost wailing, “if he were not to die this night, all my dreams would be shattered”.
I visited him again on the D-day. There was no crying nor arrangements for a funeral. Everyone was doing his/her chores as if nothing had happened. Sitting in a corner of the house, my friend looked dishevelled. “Father regained consciousness last night,” he said in a hushed voice. That effectively ended his daydreaming.
The aggrieved employees went to the high court and got the order revoked. The government had to reinstate them while those who had already attained superannuation got their arrears. My friend’s father was one of the luckiest to get back wages on his death bed! Now in his early eighties he is still nursing illness while my friend landed in a private job still smarting his ill-luck.