Who'll clear those files? Asim Dasgupta has quite a reputation for sitting on files. He may have got away with it earlier, but people are fast losing their patience. A ministerial colleague has promised to reward with one of those three-nights-two days holiday packages any officer who manages to extricate a file from Dasgupta's office. One MLA, famous for his caustic tongue and, needless to add, no friend of the state finance minister's, had just about had enough of Dasgupta's endless procrastinations. His pet-proposal, an infrastructure project that would immensely benefit the people of Calcutta, had found its way into Dasgupta's office and showed no sign of ever coming out. Recently, this legislator had the chance to get his own back. In the midst of a party meeting, Dasgupta told him smugly that he had passed his file - three days ago. The MLA who had checked up on the status of the file just before coming to the meeting, refuted his claim and also repeated Asimbabu's instructions to his officers - that the matter was not too important and they mustn't bother him with it for the next six months. The embarrassed Dasgupta didn't know where to look. Not everyone gets angry of course, some camouflage their frustration with humour. A party leader was recently exhorting the lal jhandawallahs to look beyond politics and power and do something worthwhile - for example, donate their bodies. 'We wanted to,' was the reply, 'but if donating bodies has anything to do with the department of finance, our bodies would start to putrefy while the ministry debated whether to pass the file!' He's got power Who is real power in the Union external affairs ministry, Jaswant Singh, Omar Abdullah, or Brajesh Mishra? From the way he was all over Almaty, it would seem Brajesh is the PM's right hand man and adviser on everything to do with external affairs. For one, Jaswant was not even part of the entourage to Almaty. Abdullah was, but no one took any notice of him. All everyone wanted was Brajesh. He was present at all the PM's meetings with foreign heads of state. When AB Vajpayee had to reply to Pervez Musharraf's speech, it was Brajesh he turned to, and not Abdullah or Sudhindra Kulkarni who were equally near. So much does Vajpayee rely on his principal secretary that when he wanted to convey a message to an external party - the Congress - he chose Brajesh. Brajesh's Jeeves to Vajpayee's Bertie Wooster, what say you? The general has roving hands Talking of Almaty, the Indian delegation did double duty to ensure AB Vajpayee didn't run into the Pakistani premier. They were afraid of a repeat of Kathmandu, where Pervez Musharraf had forced Vajpayee to shake hands with him, in the full glare of the international media. This time the Indian team feared that if the two came face to face, Musharraf would try to hug the Indian PM. Vajpayee and his party had reached the Kazakh capital a day before the summit was to start and were put up at the Hotel Regent Ankara, while the Pakistani general was to stay at the Hotel Hyatt. Unaware of the PM's dilemma, the Indian ambassador to Kazakhstan, Vidya Sagar Verma, organized a dinner for the PM to meet the Indian residents of Almaty at the Hyatt at around the same time that Musharraf was supposed to check in. But the Musharraf scare was such that the dinner had to be preponed. The next day, when Musharraf was in the basement of the Hyatt and Vajpayee was travelling in a lift on the upper floors, some impish spirit spread the rumour that the two leaders had had a face-to-face. That was enough to set the cat among the pigeons. The man who would be president The quiet afternoon peace was shattered at the Anna University recently by the ringing of the telephone. The caller wanted to know where Prof. APJ Abdul Kalam was. He was calling from N Chandrababu Naidu's office, and the CM wanted to speak to him, pronto. Since Kalam was busy in the lab, he was asked to call later. It was only half an hour later that Naidu could speak to Kalam and ask him whether he would consent to be the next president of India. 'Me, are you sure?' asked the self-effacing scientist. He then went back to the lab and picked up from where he had left off. But within hours, senior Chennai police officials had surrounded the University - after all, you don' take chances with a future president. Kalam however betrayed no excitement - except of course to ask his family to rustle up some biriyani. Out of the race One person who is not very happy now that APJ Abdul Kalam looks all set to be the next resident of Rashtrapati Bhavan is its present incumbent, KR Narayanan. Naturally. Narayanan had been in touch with the parliamentary forum of SC and ST MPs which had assured him of the support of 106 of its 145 MPs. But from Tuesday morning, the calls of support started becoming fewer. By late evening, it seemed Narayanan would not even get 30 per cent of the votes. The wise man that he is, Narayanan read the writing on the wall, and issued a late night communiqué, saying that he had never been in the race. All in the family Everyone knows Indians don't like football too much - cricket's their passion. But residents of 10, Janpath are a different lot. Since the local cablewallah doesn't include Ten Sports, a dish antenna has been installed specially for Rahul Gandhi, who seems to have come back to India for good, is an avid football fan. So is bro-in-law, Robert Vadra. But while the former is pegging his hopes on a Brazilian victory, the latter has put his money on the Germans. Note, no one is rooting for Italy. Not even mama Sonia, who isn't too interested, except in the final outcome. Footnote / Politicians are like that only Who said Indian politicians are an uneducated, unruly lot? Suresh Pachauri, for one, is anything but. The four-time Congress MP in the upper house is currently doing a course in law from Bhopal's Barkatullah University. Recently, in the midst of all the politics and politicking, conscientious student that he is, Pachauri forgot that he had to sit for his examinations in Bhopal. By the time realization dawned, it was too late to board the train for Bhopal. Worse, no regular flights were available to the city. What now? At his wit's end, Pachauri then approached a senior Congress functionary who arranged for a chartered flight to Bhopal. The bill? Rs 70,000/- only. But when the news of such extravagance reached Bhopal, it upset a lot of local partymen. What a waste, they said. Of course, it was. But don't for a moment think that their objection had anything to with morals or principles, or any such thing. 'We could have asked someone to write the answers for him for under Rs 2,000,' was their grouse. Now that's more like Indian politicians.