Odds & Ends

With big cuts -as much as 65 per cent - in the approved budgets of universities one leading garage took no chances when it repaired the vehicle of a senior don. It promptly removed the new parts it had put into it and released the vehicle. Now the don tells us that the garage had in fact misplaced the payment cheque. So the varsity had to cancel the first cheque and issue a fresh cheque to get the job redone. All’s well that ends well.

These cuts have been most unkind to university libraries, one librarian griped last week. So ordering any more periodicals had been stopped. The Treasury certainly must be scraping the barrel last month. One university had not received a cent of its monthly allocations from the Treasury even to meet recurrent expenditure. Fortunately, for this premier seat of learning, it had its own internally generated funds to meet its immediate commitments. These internally generated funds from the conduct of post-graduate and external courses as well as from research work, which should actually go into investment, are now being used for its very survival.

Rats ready to bolt

Whether the ship is sinking or not some rats are clearly checking which way the wind is blowing before abandoning it. One veteran pole-vaulter flies a kite about how low the inflation had been during his mama’s days. Another keeps away from his ministerial office and a third pow-wows with a hope of jaya mangalan, even though he was seen garlanding a big man recently with a shawl.

Not Caesar’s wife

When commissars went to present their yearly report to the palace recently, the big boss took the opportunity to tell how the department treats some more equal than others, particularly citing the case of ‘que sera’. Hats off to the lady chief magistrate who originally spotted the special treatment accorded to ‘que sera’ and told it so in public for the whole country to hear. At least there is one thing that we can be satisfied with - having some judicial officers who act without fear or favour.