The “Bee” Business

A few years ago, there was quite a bit of unrest in the institute. The Boss was being troublesome when there was no call for any trouble. Heads of departments were harassed for the sake of being harassed. Others were troubled when the department heads were troubled. Lower cadre staff members were encouraged to revolt against superiors if they so wished, and many of them wished. Letters important to department heads were lost when sent to the boss. Appointment orders of new staff members were inexplicably lost from the Boss’ office. The clerical and administrative staff were asked to do unreasonable things using strange methods, at strange times, repeatedly. I recall having to conduct lecturer selection interviews at 10:00 P.M., when all support staff were present, and so were Deans of two other institutes. That could have been done in office hours. After all, the vacant posts had been vacant for ages, and this nocturnal interview did not solve the problem any faster than if conducted during the day time. The Boss even recruited a few favorites who joined in the fun of troubling others. There were a lot of dissatisfied persons in the institute. There was a poet amongst them. He started writing poetry on the happenings around. We came to know about it when he started sending them to all email account holders on the institute’s mail server. We received those poems regularly like clockwork. That person was really good; quite intelligent in fact. The poems were hilarious. No names were mentioned, but the descriptions were such that the reader had no trouble identifying the subjects of the poems. No one knew who the poet was, because the mails came from an email account without an identifiable name. Speculation was rife about the identity of the poet. It came as a shock when someone said they suspected me to be the poet. I had written a large number of books on obstetrics and gynecology, and a novel in Marathi, but no poetry. Even in school, I had to resort to guides to understand what the poet meant in his/her poem. But they said the sense of humor of the poet was like mine. Well, I had read those fun poems and admired that poet quite a lot. I would have loved to be that person, but unfortunately was not. After about six or seven poems, the fellow either got tired and stopped writing, retired and left the institute or just died. We will never know. But I know that long before that I received three emails, one into my account in my own name, one in my obligatory account as head of my department, and one in the obligatory account of my clerk cum typist. The message was the same in all three: “We know you are writing the Bee mails. Stop before someone gets really hurt.” I could have to the police for receiving threats of physical injury, but I did not. A coward who sends anonymous mail cannot really harm anyone, I believed then and I do so even now. I knew who had sent those three mails. Only one person could have known I would have access to all the three accounts, and had sent mails to all three accounts to ensure that I would definitely get at least one of them. I don’t know if the coward sent this mail to other suspects in the institute too. I thought of the ‘Bee business’ yesterday when the documentary maker said I was the Bee poet as she had read on my blog, which was untrue. She had been told so by the same person who had sent me those three threat mails, possibly hoping to bait me and get a confession out of me. It is indeed surprising that consultants have time for such foolish games in a prestigious institute like ours.