Which town?

22

This administrator deputed by the central Government of India, O., a watchful and shrewd man, unlikely to be influenced, had in the course of his long career as a civil servant, been observing the aberrations of human nature in many a place and circumstance, but had never found himself in the presence of such an assembly of individuals, so unique, creative and independent and yet so mutually supportive despite their diversity and internal differences, all at the service of such a vast and yet concrete cause.

This interested him and motivated him to give his best.

*

Ever since the very first day, the light in Her city – in the physical space of the city to come, in its material atmosphere – illumined each being, each incident, each situation, each form, as if at some unexplainable altitude, as if there occurred a dimensional amplification that rendered perceptions at once more precise and more profound. It is still so today, in spite of the constant invasion and admixture – the gesture, the instant, are inscribed in an impersonal presence that gives them incomparable value. It was thus in this unique reality that must be discovered and put in practice the terms of a viable and positive collaboration between the State administration and the heterogeneous assemblage of individual wills and comportments of Her inhabitants. For this, every function and every movement of this collective body had to be identified and made intelligible, accessible and defined.

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