| “How soon does he want to become a Syed?” Aftab asked. “By next Saturday.” His colleague Javed replied. “I explained to him that we only work half-days on Saturdays but he insisted. Kept muttering about it being a matter of life and death. A matter of life and marriage it turned out to be but I suppose for him it amounts to the same thing anyway. He wants to get married to a girl from a Syed family and of course he isn’t a Syed, not yet is. By the time we’ve finished with his ancestors though…..” |
| “What doe you mean ‘we’? You had better count me out, Javed. I have got to trace out fifteen genealogies by Saturday apart from wretched revision case. You know how much time I spent tracing that Account 379’s ancestors back to Isfahan and now he has written back to say that he wants them re-routed to—guess where—Sarmarkand. And all because this little Romeo’s Juliet can trace her ancestors to Samarkand. At least Shakespeare had the good sense to have his ill-matched lovers decisively and piously dead rather than having them fumble through a prefabricated family-tree searching for a common origin. You remember Account 379, don’t you? The one who couldn’t remember beyond his fifteenth forefather.” |
| “I know the one you mean. Tall swarthy, without any helpful traces of inbreeding on his face.” |
| “That’s him,” Aftab continued. “The sooner he settles his bill the better I shall think of him. His file has almost worn a place for itself on my desk.” |
| “Aftab, do look at this new chap’s case for a moment. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate for the time being but all the same the poor boy is in such a fix that it would be cruel to turn his away. He came to the office after you had left, just as I was packing up in fact, and pleaded frantically for a family-tree by Saturday at the latest.” |
| “No. This chap has been even more foolish. He had been trying to impress his beloved’s parents with his mileage and thought he’d reinforce his pretensions with a story about being waylaid in Sind by bandits, and of how he effected his escape by convincing them that he was a true-full blooded Syed.” |
| “You mean that they actual believed that story?” Aftab gasped. “The Sindhis, yes. The parents, alas, no. They deflated him by commenting that had he been a true Syed, he would have been martyred on the spot and found himself the reluctant foundation to a mazar. This, as you can imagine, set him back a little and now he wants to make another determined attempt with one of our hand-written, vellum family-trees.” |
| “Wouldn’t Family-Tree No.239 do for him?” |
| “That’s what I had hoped,” replied Javed, “if only we had some left some in stock. There’s been such a drain on our popular numbers since the marriage season has gained momentum that I just haven’t had time to have fresh copies cyclostyled. We shall have to do an original job for him.” |
| “I hope you have told him that it will cost him more for an ‘a la carte’ family-tree, Javed.” |
| “Yes, he’s resigned to the extra charge. He has paid us an advance already and intends to pay the balance after marriage to the loaded little heiress. Will you help me with it, Aftab?” |
| “Since you obviously think he is worth the effort, I suppose I shall have to. But we shall have to split up the ancestors. You make up his father’s line and I’ll tackle his mother’s.” |
| “I’m sorry, Aftab but somehow the Mughal period just fascinates me.” |
| “That’s all very well, Javed, but we have a reputation for originally to maintain. Out clients expect an impartial professional standard of us. When we start having computers in our line of business…..” |
| “Computers?” exclaimed Javed. |
| “Yes. Didn’t I tell you. After all our office routines and activities have been programmed……..” |
| “Programmed? But ours is all inspiration, creative. We may do commissioned work but we are as imaginative in our creations as any of the truest artists are.” |
| “Back to earth, Javed. ‘Programmed’ is what I said. A memo is already on the Manager’s desk outlining the possible procedures to be adopted. To an extent the system I have in mind will depend on the digital capacity of the punched card but in principle it should work roughly like this. Every human being would be given a number. When two humans are married, their numbers would be united also, with the number of the female following an oblique after that of the male.” |
| “Father is 23789, say, and Mother 36758, and so after marriage they become 23789.1.36758. |
| “Right, Javed. There will be a little psychological reorientation to be carried out on those females who are used to preceding their husbands in every thing but they fortunately are in a minority and could therefore be indoctrinated fairly easily.” |
| “And what about the children?” |
| “Children would follow the joint numbers of their parents and would be separated from them by a decimal pint. 2378936758. I would be …..” |
| “Me?” ventured Javed. |
| “That’s right. Of course, Adam would have to be numbered 1 and eve would therefore become 1/1, and the rest of the numbering could continue from there.” |
| “I can see a lot of numbering going on.” Mumbled Javed. |
| “Inevitable, I’m afraid, but definitely worthwhile in the long run.” Aftab consoled. “Think of the advantages marriages could be arranged by the computer without any risk of inbreeding. A population census could be extracted at the mere depression of a button. Most important of all, the whole of mankind could at last feel one vast happy family of related digits.” |
| “That’s all very well, but a lot of people are not going to like it Darwinians, for one. It was difficult for them to convince people that they were physiological improvements on the ape—some of them anyway—but to get them to believe that their ancestors were also numbers swinging from tree to tree …… impossible.” |
| “Javed, your levity is out of place.” Aftab said, his face hardening. |
| “And what if,” Javed continued unabashed some poor chap’s decimal point was not put in the correct place. I mean, clerical errors could occur. The chap would end up by being his own grandfather.” |
| “The chances of human error in the computer room would have to be safeguarded against, of course, and ………..” |
| “Human error, Aftab? You haven’t considered the spiritual aspect. What about reincarnations? How would you know which number was a repeat?” |
| “My dear Javed, incarnations do not suffer from amnesia.” |
| “Perhaps not, but the incarnation would be born of different parents each time and since the parents would have different numbers, one identifiably singular spirit could have four or more parental combinations, depending on how many times he came on earth.” |
| “You have a point there. An obtuse one but undeniably a point. Any more ‘off-the-punched card’ suggestions?” sneered Aftab. |
| “Well, since you mention punched cards, presumably each person shall be carrying his own identification card on his person.” |
| “That’s right.” |
| “Then why don’t we aim at a complete sociological break-through, a decisive progressive leap into the future. Let’s rid ourselves once and for all of our animal past. Let’s abolish this antiquated insistence on identity cards, passports, etc. and have instead……..” |
| “Have what instead?” asked Aftab eagerly. |
| “Have the identification number tattooed on the person’s left rump.” |
Printed in THE PAKISTAN TIMES, 21 July 1968. |
