I said, “I know it. But do you want me to have a character certificate from someone to whom I cannot give a character certificate?”
He scratched his head. He said, “Perhaps you are right. What about your vice-chancellor? What about your head of the department of philosophy?”
I said, “You know perfectly well my vice-chancellor is a drunkard. Do you want me to get a certificate from a drunkard about my character? I cannot certify my vice-chancellor for his character.
“My head of the department of philosophy has never lived with his wife, has been living with another woman. He keeps his wife and children in Delhi just to avoid them, so that he can have all the women he wants. Do you want me to get a character certificate from him? I know him better; perhaps you don’t know him that well.”
He said, “It is a difficult problem.”
I asked him point-blank, “Do you want to give me a character certificate? Do you think you are qualified? No politician in this country is qualified to give me a character certificate. Either you accept my application without the character certificate, or you refuse it.
“And I am here and you are asking for a character certificate. Look into my eyes! Look into my face! And do you have any understanding? Then don’t ask foolish questions.”
He immediately gave me an appointment in a college. I took the appointment order from his hand. He said, “This is not the right way, it has to go through the post.”
I said, “When I am going to the college myself, why unnecessarily waste postage stamps?”
He said, “You are a strange fellow.”
I said, “That’s correct. But to be a strange fellow does not mean a man without character.”
So I took the appointment order, and the next day I appeared in the college where he had appointed me. The principal could not believe it: “Just in one day…where did you get this appointment order?”
I said, “Directly from the education minister.”
He said, “This is not routine. It should come through the post.”
I said, “Just because of this routine your whole bureaucracy is stagnant. I remember many cases…. One postcard traveled from Katni to Jabalpur, only eighty miles by road, in forty years. Do you want me to be appointed alive or dead?”
He looked at me, and he said, “That’s true, I have also read many cases where a postcard has traveled for seventeen years, eighteen years.”
So I said, “That’s why I have brought it with me myself.” But he was a little hesitant. I said, “You can phone the education minister in front of me. If you cannot trust me, you can phone the education minister.”