Lecturer Rain

There were times when out of 6 posts of lecturers in my department, 5 posts were vacant and we were managing with only one. There were better times when we had 2 lecturers. The best times did exist long ago, when we had 6 six lecturers. The administration decided to keep leave vacancies vacant i.e. Without any one appointed on that post temporarily. Then they started keeping maternity leave vacancies vacant too. When they promoted lecturers to associate professors on ad hoc basis, they kept those posts vacant, in case these were reverted. We remained perpetually short of manpower, while the employers kept saving money for salaries. Patient care did suffer, but they (would/could/) did not care. Overworked staff members left, but they (would/could/) did not care. Finally the Medical Council of India threatened to derecognize the institute because there was a shortage of teachers that was not being corrected despite three notices to the institute. They had to listen to the MCI, though they (would/could/) did not listen to slaves their employees i.e. us. MCI said we had a shortage of 18 lecturers. I still cannot believe it, but the administrators advertised these posts and actually filled them up. Like it rains cats and dogs, this time it rained lecturers. We now have 20 lecturers. Some one said we could have a cricket team. If we include the more senior staff members, we will have two teams. Though we do not have a ground, we can always use the tennis court to play cricket. Now we can increase the time spent on each patient in the outpatient clinic, and on other days we can play cricket because the remaining work cannot be increased to fit the time available. You can take a round only for so much time, and you can operate only so many cases per day, especially when we are in transit area for building repairs and have only one table in gynecology operation theater. We won't play cricket though, because I never liked it even as a child. There are some elderly men and many women (all ages) in the department, who also don't like it too. I am grateful to God for answering our prayer of getting required number of lecturers for patient care, but it seems God has overcompensated for the delay in granting our wish. I am not complaining though. God has a reason for everything He does, and it is us mortals who cannot not see it. (Note: some words are optional, put inside brackets because I chose another word in their place. I did not delete them as can be done on a computer, because they are valid and perhaps appropriate too.