I know there is an economic crisis in the country. Things
grown or made in India
are becoming more and more expensive almost day by day. Prices of things
imported are sky high. But economic crisis had never touched civic institutes
before. From media reports, one could conclude that consumption on petrol and
diesel for Babus’ cars always remained unchanged. Air conditioners
hummed unabated. The list is endless. I don’t want to go through the whole list
because that is not the purpose of this post. I am writing about something that
I had thought would never happen.
They used to serve tea to senior faculty called for meetings
with the Boss. Those sitting near the table would be served in good quality
cups and saucers. When the number of attendees was higher, others were accommodated
on chairs arranged behind the first row around the table. These attendees would
be served in plastic cups. One must not believe that the cups would be full and
hence those persons served in cups would get more tea than those served in plastic
cups. The cups would be less than half full.
Some time in between, while the
economic crisis was deepening, the ceramic cups ceased being seen, the size of
the plastic cups became half, and the tea level in the cups still remained
below half. The next indicator of the very poor state of the economy was
cessation of serving tea. For faculty used to getting tea on the house, this
came as a shock. There was a withdrawal syndrome on a mass scale. Every time
the door opened, people turned towards it to see if the peon had come in with
tea. Alas, it was not to be.
“They should not have cut us off so suddenly” someone said. “They
could have tapered the volume before stopping.”
Like corticosteroids are tapered? The next smaller
volume would be the plastic 5 ml container that comes with medicine bottles for
pediatric patients. Surely the speaker did not expect tea in those plastic
measures of medicines? Anyway I did not voice my thoughts. A person in acute
withdrawal state cannot listen to reason.
