Doing the needful’ is a particularly Indianphrase designed to indicate that the person being requested to do it is about to
launch on the kind of irrelevant, convoluted, tortuous, meandering maze that would makeKafka break out in hives.
Take, for example, my simple desire to use the swimming pool at Sri Fort Sports Complex. The lady at the desktold me, "You just fill in a form, do the needful, baas." The ‘needful’ turned out to be: takinga number to stand in queue on the single designated day of the month assigned to this purposeto get an application form for temporary membership. Filling in that form and attachingtwo passport sized photographs, countersigned at the back along with a banker’s draftfor which you need to go to the bank for the amount, which must then be deposited withthe correct official during those brief moments designated as
‘office hours’, to be issued with a temporary membership card that you need to then put inyour application to use the
pool. This requires another form from the front desk, which is to be completed and accompaniednot only by another draft necessitating another trip to the bank but also a doctor’s certificate toassure the authorities that you will neither dissolve nor have a heart attack in the (at this pointincreasingly unlikely) event that you will actually come into contact with the water.
In common British slang ‘the needful’ is specifically used to refer to ready cash, asin: ‘Have you got the needful for a second-hand car?’ But although ready cash can sometimeshelp cut through the red tape in India, more often whatone needs is the stubbornness of an ox and the patience of a saint. Needless to say, myswimming costume is still dry.
This article originally appeared in Delhi City Limits, April 30, 2006
