Rescue of the Chair

Certain universities have chairs of medical specialties. Those are the positions of heads of the concerned specialties. In that vein we can say we have a chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology in our institute, if the post of professor and head can be considered as the chair of obstetrics gynecology. That chair was not under any threat and did not need to be rescued. This story is of the chair the head of obstetrics and gynecology used to sit on before the repair and renovation work started. It was a nice chair, with cushioned red seat and back, comfortable arm rests, wheels mo make it mobile, and rotation mechanism so that it could revolve. The hospital would never provide a comfortable chair, it being considered the privilege of the boss alone. So we had found a donation and purchased six such chairs, which were actually laboratory chairs. Since I headed the laboratory too as an administrator, I got one of them. Life was good sitting in that chair when I could find the time to sit down, which was not very often. Good things don’t last, they say. This comfort did not last. They ordered us into transit area when they decided to repair the building. When we moved, I moved this chair to the transit area we were to use as staff room. I got a number of other chairs there for the other staff members to sit on. During the first couple of weeks they respected my chair and kept it vacant for me. But who does not like comfort? Perhaps Hindu Sadhus and Yogis don’t. But many of my staff members did. They sat on that chair in my absence, and later on even in my presence. I did not have the heart to make them get up. After all, I had not brought it from my home. But one day disaster struck. One of the heavyweights in my department sat on it and the base of the chair broke into two. After all, it was not designed for such people. Some of the chairs in the laboratory had been broken similarly by laboratory heavyweights. It almost broke my heart. I had the base replaced, and spoke to all the heavyweights requesting them to use wooden chairs so that they would not fall down by breakage of the chairs. However the story did not end there. There is a fellow in my department who in his opinion should have been the Dean, and if not, at least the head of the department. It is evident in the tantrums he throws (though the Dean and head of department don’t throw tantrums themselves), his frequent sentences like ‘I will not permit this’ when he has no authority to permit anything at department level, summoning juniors for explanations, authoritative criticism of others, which he has probably seen some department heads and Deans do in the past. He started sitting on the chair and continued to occupy it very regularly, as if he had brought it from his home. In the meantime, I was sitting on wooden a chair in my table space in the bill section. When the building repair work went on for one year (instead of projected period of six months) and had no signs of nearing completion, and this fellow started being rude to me (without any reason, though I cannot see how he could do that even with a reason), I thought sitting on that chair was giving him ideas. So I got it shifted to the bill section, where the bill clerk is content to sit on his wooden chair with a cushion, and hopefully will not sit on my chair. I am back to my sitting pleasure while I work.