IAS Chronicles: You know you have become a Pakka Sahib when....
1. You are obsessed with ‘Sir’. The world is divided in two kinds of people, those whom you address as Sir and others by whom you are Sir’ed. You start responding less when called by your name and more when addressed as ‘Sir’. The word ‘yes’ for seniors is replaced by Sir and you are often heard talking to them on mobile Sir.....Sir.....Sir, Sir........Sir.
2. You spend half your time worrying about seniority. There are people who are senior to you and people who aren’t, and till you figure that out you never rest easy. You find different ways to decide seniority among different services, jobs and you find it difficult to remember names but you can almost smell seniority.
3. Your name gets IAS a permanent suffix and people address you as Mr XY, IAS. You start having an identity crisis without this suffix. Officers begin to write so in their wedding cards and this suffix remains loyal even in your obituary.
4. Your attention span reduces to two minutes and anything that takes more is not worth your time. By the end of the day, you have solved thousands of problems with devoting an average of one minute to each.
5. You do a lot of work but find it difficult to explain what your job is. As an IAS officer you are supposed to do anything under the sun and your kids always wonder what keeps you busy all the time.
6. You have seen best and worst of places, you have seen best and worst of people and basically you have seen so much in a short time, you become inert/immune to all around.
7. Your formal persona takes over your normal self and you find it hard to laugh freely or cry aloud. Your officer like qualities becomes your routine behaviour and it is difficult for anyone to spot you laugh or cry.
8. You stop opening the door of your car and wait for the chauffeur to open it all the time. It is unbecoming of an officer when you open the door of the car yourself. You also become incapable of sitting anywhere other than diagonally opposite to the driver and this arrangement can never be compromised.
9. You may do weights in the gym but in office, you can never be seen even carrying a diary. A peon will always accompany carrying your stuff and it is beyond the dignity of an officer to have anything in her/his hands. You also become obsessed about sitting on Chair covered by a towel and no officer worth their place in hierarchy can dare not to have one.
10. When you are alone, you find it difficult to cross roads. You risk being run over by motor cars because you are in the habit of traffic being stopped by security whenever you cross the road.
11. You find it difficult to make new friends and your haughty demeanor keeps strangers at bay. You are always worried with whom you socialise and your reputation is more fragile than would be bride.
12. You start claiming free passes like your birthright and whenever you go for a play or concert, you spend most of your time searching who could manage a better pass.
13. Everybody knows all the latest gossips about all around about their personal and professional lives and you have enough real/imaginary material to write a sleazy novel on any officer’s life.
14. In any official parties, right to speak is bestowed as per seniority and pearls of wisdom flow unidirectional towards the juniors. Most of the monologues start like ‘When I was posted at such and such place.....’ and you are doomed to hear this story for the nth time. As you progress in hierarchy, you also find yourself uttering ‘When I was posted at...’
PS: Slowly but steadily, the breed of Pakka Sahibs is becoming endangered but if you spot most these qualities in any person including myself, you know you have seen one ;)
#copied from fb status of anurag sir, ias wb 07 batch iitk 05.
