Civil Servants

Manoj Makker served in Customs and Central Excise for 24 years before seeking voluntary retirement. At present, he is part of a consultancy firm at Jaipur. Manoj's passions are trekking and shooting. He has participated in 16 trekking expeditions in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, besides undertaking numerous personal treks. He still finds time for his other love: landscape photography. He is a prolific writer on various aspects of life.

In the year 2005 I was posted in Jaipur. The Pink City is tremendously gorgeous city and gifted enough to keep its populace in cheerful mood. Besides high happiness index of the city, I had an added advantage of my posting in a beautifully located office. It was wonderfully situated at the bank of forest area of the capital city. Especially, during rains the panoramic scenes of lush green Aravallis from the rooftop of our office were not less than the scenic beauty portrayed by Coleridge in his wonderful narration ‘Kubla Khan’ conceived in trance.

Arun Jain has been working with Customs and Central Excise since March, 1992 and is presently posted as Superintendent of Customs at Ahmedabad. He is a post draduate in Physics (specialized in Electronics) and also did his Masters in Business Administration, both from Gujarat University.

He has been writing small anecdotes in a Facebook Group called Anand Sabha and has come forward with similar writings to be disseminated by the readers of this esteemed and widely read E-Magazine under inourdays.org also.

Editor's note: Shri Arun Jain passed away on January 29, 2020 at a young age. He leaves behind a grieving family: inourdays.org pays a tribute to this smiling cheerful and a good officer of the Department of Customs and Central Excise.

In 2012 my sepoy sent me fulsome quantity of crackers, mostly consisting of innocuous one viz., sparklers, whistlers, cracklers, etc. The sepoy normally did this business during Diwali time. In the meantime, my son Chaitanya, nearly 15 then, was participating in his school campaign against bursting of crackers on the note of preventing both air and noise pollution.

Jaipal Singh Rathore began his career with Indian Railways. After three years he joined the Department of Customs & Central Excise. After serving for 21 years, Shri Rathore took voluntary retirement as Superintendent in the Department. Presently he is the Head of Corporate Affairs with a reputed public limited company. Shri Rathore is also a prolific writer on a variety of subjects including Philosophy of Life.

यह सच है कि हम में से हर कोई जीवन के किसी न किसी चरण में या पड़ाव पर तनाव का सामना अवश्य करते हैं. तनाव या Stress के कई कारण हो सकते हैं. अपने कैरियर की चिंता, दोस्तों की नाराजगी, नौकरी, धन, बिजनेस, गर्लफ्रेंड, आदि आदि, यह भी जरुरी है कि हमें तनाव को झेलने या फिर उससे बचने का तरीका भी मालूम होना चाहिए अन्यथा इसके कई बुरे परिणाम भी हो सकते हैं, कहते हैं तनाव चिंता को जन्म देता है और चिंता तो चिता के समान होती है, इसके हमारे शरीर पर कई कुप्रभाव हो सकते हैं ।

Subhash Mathur was born and brought up in small towns in Rajasthan. During his school and college education at Jaipur, he was keenly involved in sports, journalism and public speaking. His civil services career has given him a platform for spreading his ideas about modernising tax administration to benefit the common man. Post retirement he is devoting his energies, along with his wife Tilak, to public and humane causes.

My tryst with the Raj Bhasha circus started when I was posted at Ahmedabad from 1987 to '92.

I had two more interesting encounters but let’s dwell upon the first one.

First things first.

A simple letter at the beginning of September '90 from the Directorate of Inspection informed Commissioner Bakshi that a Joint Parliamentary Committee of both Houses of Parliament on Raj Bhasha would be visiting his office for Parliamentary oversight and to review progress in the use of Raj Bhasha in official work. The visit was being scheduled for the middle of October. The exact dates were under finalisation with the Speaker.

All hell broke loose.

Somesh Arora is an Indian Revenue Service officer of the 1986 batch. He voluntarily retired in 2008 from the rank of Commissioner of Customs and Excise. He is now an advocate, journalist, tax author and columnist. He has a keen interest in astrology and poetry.

Every life has a different story with a purpose of its own. The jigsaw puzzle of life starts falling in place and is always better understood when in the later part of life one takes a hindsight view.

A small incident in life prompted me to come to the Department. It was in 1970’s when I had just begun my college life.

Harish Kumar Kanabar is government servant by choice, critic by nature and comedian by instinct. Harish is a commerce post graduate from Nagpur University. At present he's working as Suprintendent CGST at Nagpur.

भारत मेरा देश है। सभी भारतीय मेरे भाई बहन है।

भारत एक कृषि प्रधान देश भी है। भारत की ७०% जनता कृषि पर निर्भर है। कृषि को आयकर से छूट है। आयकर के दर की बात करना हमे मनाही है।

Jogendra Singh finished his Masters in 1968 and followed it up with a Law Degree in 1970. He joined the Indian Revenue Service in 1971. He retired in 2009 as Chairman Settlement Commission. On superannuation he started writing poems in Hindi and short stories in English.

हिंदी की कुछ कवितायेँ :--

1. नन्ही बदली
2. गर्मी की दोपहरी
3. बैल और किसान
4. तितली और तूफान
5. कुछ यक्षप्रश्न, जरा हट के
6. मंदिर

नन्ही बदली

गर्मी चरम पर है। जीव जन्तु सभी बेहाल हैं। अचानक कुछ होता है सब कुछ बदल जाता है। कैसे ? यह कविता पढ़िये और जान जाइयेः 

नभ में सूरज की छटा खिली थी।
कडक धूप थी,गर्म लू चली थी।
दूर से उडती नन्ही बदली आयी।
रुक सूरज नीचे चादर फैलाई।

Subhash Mathur was born and brought up in small towns in Rajasthan. During his school and college education at Jaipur, he was keenly involved in sports, journalism and public speaking. His civil services career has given him a platform for spreading his ideas about modernising tax administration to benefit the common man. Post retirement he is devoting his energies, along with his wife Tilak, to public and humane causes.

My civil services interview, popularly known as viva voce those days, happened in May 1971. It is of no use as guidance for the aspirants of today but perhaps worth recalling because some of the underlying principles involved in judging personalities persist even today.

After the results of the written exam were announced in February 1971, I began to brush up and get ready for the viva voce. Initially I thought that perhaps I may be called in March or April.

Suresh Mandan is a graduate of St Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad. He joined the Intelligence Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs where he saw action in many trouble spots of the country. After a career span of 36 exciting years, he retired as Deputy Director. He served a short stint with Conflict Management Associates, a venture of former Punjab Directors General of Police KPS Gill and Julio Rebeiro. Suresh now lives in the USA, working for an information technology company based in California. He is enjoying his retirement with a purpose.

It was somewhere in the middle nineties that I, as an Intelligence Bureau (IB) Officer, was called to meet the then Sah Sar Sangh Chalak of the All India RSS in their office at Kankaria, Ahmedabad. It was personal-cum-officio meeting arranged through a friend from the RSS. The backdrop was the bombing of the RSS office in Madras (now Chennai), Tamil Nadu.

The Sah Sar Sangh Chalak who was from the South of the Vindhayas was a very humble man. The room where he was staying was just basic with a small bed, a single chair and some odd furniture. I was impressed with his and the organisation's simplicity. The office of the Organisation which was a headquarters for the state was itself very spartan, unlike offices of the other organisations which display so much of splendour.

Subhash Mathur was born and brought up in small towns in Rajasthan. During his school and college education at Jaipur, he was keenly involved in sports, journalism and public speaking. His civil services career has given him a platform for spreading his ideas about modernising tax administration to benefit the common man. Post retirement he is devoting his energies, along with his wife Tilak, to public and humane causes.

Year 1995 saw some significant events in my life. I got my super time scale after a protracted uphill struggle over 13 years. Our family had a jing bang get-together at the end of the year after several decades.

However at the beginning of 1995 a unique and new experience came my way. I was then posted at Gwalior with Central Bureau of Narcotics in charge of cultivation of legal opium.

CEC Sheshan decided to extend the limited experiment of posting ‘Observers’ in ‘92 Punjab elections to ‘95 Bihar Assembly polls on a bigger scale.