Why this 'sarkari' fetish for Turkish towels?

BANGALORE: It is a striking feature at Indian government offices and followed rather unfailingly by a minister down to the gazetted officer. But so commonplace this practice has become that one often tends to let this fetish pass by unnoticed: that of a sparkling white Turkish towel draping the 'sarkari' (official) chair.

The chair in question can be among the most cozy ones with expensive Italian leather as part of its upholstery or the heavy iron ones with inter-woven plastic cane for the backrest and the seat. But none seems complete without that Turkish bathroom towel.

This fixation even bumped the funny bone of Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah recently. "Why is it the order of things to sit on a chair draped with a towel in govt offices? Are the chairs not clean? Do the towels hide stains?" he tweeted.

One wonders if there is a protocol behind it.

These various warrants of protocol, as the term is called in officialdom, can be quite elaborate when it concerns the VVIPs. An example: "The bushes around the helipad shall be cleared up to 10 metres and on either side of the road on which a VVIP is travelling."

But none of these protocol manuals cares to mention anything about a Turkish towel on chairs, let alone specify what colour it should be or of what length and width or the minimum grams per square metre (GSM) it must weigh.

Yet, this is practised without fail almost to a standardised format — and none of these VVIPs seem to mind, either. Little wonder Turkish towels are also quite a common item for which tenders are floated regularly by ministries and departments.