The Kingdom.

[A. G. Maisey]

This is not a post about keris.

At least, it may not appear to be a post about keris.

When left school I went to work for a very large government organisation. It was an engineering based organisation with over twelve thousand people. This was the 1950's. In those days organisations such as the one I joined were structured like minor kingdoms. At the top we had the General Manager. The King. Gifted with infallibility, there for life, and with the power of life and death over everybody in his kingdom.

I gained employment as a junior clerk. This was one step up from the bottom. On the bottom rung of the organisation we had the "clearance kids", whose job it was to move from one office to another, the masses of documents that made the Kingdom function.

Eventually these documents finished up in the File Office where I, and other junior clerks like me, sorted and classified these documents, and placed them in pigeon holes and folders according to the classification of the document.

Actually, for a 16 year old, it was a pretty important and enthralling job. I got to handle all of the pieces of paper that made the organisation function. I was frequently and forcefully made aware of the fact that if I failed in my duties of correct classification and placement of one of those documents, I could bring the entire Kingdom to its knees. I think I probably believed that if I allowed this to happen I would be taken down into the basement and shot.

Well, I didn't screw up, I classified and placed all those documents correctly for a year or so, and over time I was given ever more responsible positions within the organisation.As I moved up through my organisation I came to learn about and understand the duties and functions of all of the other people who worked in this minor kingdom.

There were the senior clerks who busily shuffled documents all day long, and moved them from one tray on their desk to another. They didn't really understand what the documents were all about, but they knew how to identify and extract a piece of information from a document and put that piece of information somewhere else, where it could be used to produce even more documents.

There were the accountants. They sat at their desks all day looking worried, calculating interminably, and working out how much money the King had in his treasury, and how to increase that amount of money. The accountants were able to put a value on everything.

There were the Engineers. Everybody was very wary of the Engineers.

You never, ever addressed an Engineer by his first name:- you always gave him his full and correct title. You were overly respectful towards all Engineers, and if one happened to unexpectedly cross your path, you immediately fell to your knees and touched your forehead to the floor until he had passed.

You see, the General Manager, His Highness, The King, was selected from the ranks of the Engineers. Effectively the Engineers were Dukes, Earls and Barons. Offend an Engineer and there was no telling what might befall you. At the very least you could grow old and grey and never move from the desk at which you were currently situated.

Now, we all knew that the Engineers deserved this extreme respect, because the Engineers KNEW. They Knew everything, most especially they knew how things worked. The Engineers were the Creators. Every document that kept the Kingdom afloat on a sea of paper had at its source, an Engineer. It was simple:- no Engineers:- no documents. No documents:- no organisation. No organisation:- no job.

Hidden away in a dusty little office on the top floor there were some people that nobody spoke of. If it was absolutely necessary to say the name of these people you looked around to see that nobody was listening, then you whispered it as an abbreviation:- The IA.

I remember I had to go into that office once when I had only just started work. Piles and piles of documents. You couldn't see the people there---they were all hidden behind piles of documents. They all looked like either gangsters or policemen. These were not nice people.

Everybody in the organisation was very, very careful of what they said in front of these people. Even the Engineers were polite to them.

Most importantly, any document, any record, any report that existed anywhere in the organisation could be accessed by these people. Nobody could refuse them anything they asked for.

Only His Highness, the General Manager stood above these people, and even His Highness was not safe from them, because in some circumstances they could bypass the General Manager and go directly to the Premier of the State. God.

These people were the Internal Auditors.

They gained their power from the fact that they knew everything about everything within the organisation. Nothing was secret from them. They probed into every little nook and cranny and they asked questions about things that other people did not even know existed.
They spent their days probing, questioning, researching, thinking, recording and being incredibly difficult whenever they interviewed anybody.

Nobody loved the Internal Auditors. But the fact of the matter was that the Internal Auditors as a group knew more about the organisation than anybody else in the organisation. They even knew more than His Highness, the General Manager.

Most especially, they understood perfectly the documents that made the organisation function.

So, this organisation was made up of "clearance kids" who shifted documents from one place to another; junior clerks who classified and filed the documents; senior clerks who played with the documents; accountants who calculated what the documents were worth; Engineers who generated the documents; the General Manager who didn't seem to do too much of anything except go to lunches and be driven around in an expensive automobile; and the Internal Auditors who knew how to interpret the meaning of every document that held the organisation together.

Now, while I was lingering over breakfast this morning, seeing how long I could make my coffee last, and watching the pelicans paddling past my shoreline, it occurred to me that the world of keris collecting and study is very similar to the organisation that I used to work in. If this is so, perhaps we could ask ourselves where we would like to fit into that Kingdom of the Keris.