Thick-skinned?

Almost every one describes most government servants as thick-skinned and I think they aren’t entirely wrong. I was reminded of it recently when I met a colleague I had seen a long time back. He was about my age but looked younger because he had dyed his hair and appeared to be in good health. He told me he couldn’t recognize me because I had lost my hair and also a great deal of weight. I wanted to ask him something- if he remembered what he had lost, but I did not.

Several years ago I worked in a district office whose head office happened to be in Hyderabad. This guy worked in a sub-office in a post which was said to be lucrative or in our terminology an 'income post.' He didn’t have much knowledge having studied in an obscure college in another state but he somehow managed to get the coveted posting. We came across each other occasionally and he would stop to chat with me. Then I was moved to another department after a while. Some months later I came to know that this fellow was caught red-handed taking a bribe in the office. It wasn’t surprising to learn about it. I also read it in the papers about the incident and his arrest.

Later a colleague narrated to me what had happened that day. It seems the anti-corruption cops made him remove his pants in which he had stuffed the tainted money. The pants were to be used as evidence. They made him wrap a table cloth around his waist before arresting him. It seems they led him, with the table cloth wrapped around his waist, to their jeep waiting outside and took him away to jail. Every one in the office was witness to the scene I was told. Then I had wondered how he must have felt in the face of such humiliation. It was a terrible way of losing one’s reputation. Later I learnt he was suspended for three years.

Now he is back again at work. I was feeling sort of embarrassed when I met him last week. But he did not show even the tiniest trace of guilt or shame for what he had done and what had happened to him with the cops. He behaved normally as if that incident had not happened at all. I guess that is what is called being thick skinned.