=====================================================================
I love bureaucracy. Its trappings, attitudes, protocols and complexes amuse me endlessly.
If any Indian bureaucrat reads the above sentence, he will get enraged; and thereby proves me right.
If I had written, say:
"I love Teaching. Its trappings, attitudes, protocols and complexes amuse me endlessly"
or:
"I love Medicine. Its trappings, attitudes, protocols and complexes amuse me endlessly"
and a Teacher or a Doctor reads it, he would only laugh it off.
That is the specialty of our Bureaucrats.
The Prima Donna of all Bureaucracy is the Secretary.
I use the word Prima Donna chiefly in its second sense (also, metaphorically, the first one which refers to the Lead Female in a troupe):
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/prima+donna
Again, no Secretary can Post a Comment objecting to that sentence; he proves it thereby.
It is a debatable point whether the Secretary came first or the Secretary Bird; there are two opposing views about it between Naturalists and Unnaturalists.
But the following picture says it all...
"It makes no difference"
Their chief characteristic is the plume. The secondary one is the mouth.
Things seem to be no different in America. For, Thurber invokes the Secretary Bird in his monumental Fable for Our Times:
"The Owl Who Was God":
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/10/thurbers-owl.html
*******************************************************************************************************
The Natural Habitat of the Secretary is called the Secretariat.
Now, there are Secretaries and Secretaries. So, one shouldn't confuse one with the other. For instance most every Secretary has a Secretary in his office...she is generally referred to as his Steno [see Item (1) of the top quote above of Parkinson: "multiplication of subordinates"]. If you confuse one with the other and approach her instead of him with your application (supplication), injurious results may transpire (to use the Secretariat Jargon).
I have not done a Google Search but I did hear of:
Cabinet Secretary, Principal Secretary, Under-Secretary, Assistant Secretary, Joint Secretary, and a host of intermediate designations (This is a blog and not a thesis).
Again:
Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Finance Secretary, Defense Secretary, not to speak of Culture Secretary (Agri, Seri, Pisci....).
******************************************************************************************************
For twenty years between 1975 and 1995, myself and DB were sharing a Double Room in our Physics Department. Although we never collaborated, we gossiped a lot.
We started as lowly Associate Lecturers, then rose to Lecturers, then to Assistant Professors and then to Professors congruently (or is it 'concurrently'?)
We started with two small broken tables and four broken chairs that could be dragged at will. And remained true to them. It speaks volumes of the ruggedness of IIT Furniture that we never needed to change a chair or table...they remained as broke as ever.
But, in 1995, the then HoD visited us and asked us to move to separate Single Rooms:
"Why, sir? We are happy here"
"Juniors and Subjuniors are asking for Single Rooms and getting them and there may be a Question in the Senate regarding Protocol that I don't want to answer"
So, we split and shifted.
When I was shunted to a Single Room, I got very sentimental and superstitious about my Table and Chair and asked our HoD if I could take them with me to my new room.
"Furniture doesn't belong to individuals but to Rooms"
So, I had to part with my beloved table and chair (not to speak of blackboard).
When I entered my new room, I was stunned to see a Table twice the size in my old room and didn't know how to fill it up...just to look busy. So, I got six Glass Plates from Prof RSS to cover the wooden table and placed all the Picture Post Cards and New Year Greeting Cards that I had been getting from my students for all those decades and placed them underneath the glass plates.
Prof SLS visited my new room (out of curiosity) and mocked at me:
"I have ten times the number of picture post cards, and you think I would display them vulgarly like you?"
I kept quiet as usual.
And then a Dean entered my Room and the first thing he said was:
"My God, GP! You have a Secretary Table!!!"
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/secretary-table.html
*********************************************************************************
"Parkinson's law is the adage first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson as part of the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955:[1][2]
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
...Much of the essay is dedicated to a summary of
purportedly scientific observations supporting his law, such as the
increase in the number of employees at the Colonial Office while Great Britain's overseas empire declined (indeed, he shows that the Colonial Office had its greatest number of staff at the point when it was folded into the Foreign Office
because of a lack of colonies to administer). He explains this growth
by two forces: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not
rivals" and (2) "Officials make work for each other." He notes in
particular that the total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done".
In 1986, Alessandro Natta complained about the swelling bureaucracy in Italy. Mikhail Gorbachev responded that "Parkinson's Law works everywhere".[3]
********************************************************************************************************
I love bureaucracy. Its trappings, attitudes, protocols and complexes amuse me endlessly.
If any Indian bureaucrat reads the above sentence, he will get enraged; and thereby proves me right.
If I had written, say:
"I love Teaching. Its trappings, attitudes, protocols and complexes amuse me endlessly"
or:
"I love Medicine. Its trappings, attitudes, protocols and complexes amuse me endlessly"
and a Teacher or a Doctor reads it, he would only laugh it off.
That is the specialty of our Bureaucrats.
The Prima Donna of all Bureaucracy is the Secretary.
I use the word Prima Donna chiefly in its second sense (also, metaphorically, the first one which refers to the Lead Female in a troupe):
"a temperamental person; a person who takes adulation and privileged treatment as a right and reacts with petulance to criticism or inconvenience."
Again, no Secretary can Post a Comment objecting to that sentence; he proves it thereby.
It is a debatable point whether the Secretary came first or the Secretary Bird; there are two opposing views about it between Naturalists and Unnaturalists.
But the following picture says it all...
"It makes no difference"
Their chief characteristic is the plume. The secondary one is the mouth.
Things seem to be no different in America. For, Thurber invokes the Secretary Bird in his monumental Fable for Our Times:
"The Owl Who Was God":
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/10/thurbers-owl.html
'Once
upon a starless midnight there was an owl who sat on the branch of an
oak tree. Two ground moles tried to slip quietly by, unnoticed.
"You!" said the owl. "Who?" they quavered, in fear and astonishment,
for they could not believe it was possible for anyone to see them in
that thick darkness. "You two!" said the owl. The moles hurried away
and told the other creatures of the field and forest that the owl was
the greatest and wisest of all animals because he could see in the dark
and because he could answer any question. "I’ll see about that," said
a secretary bird, and he called on the owl one night when it was again
very dark. "How many claws am I holding up?" said the secretary bird.
"Two," said the owl, and that was right. "Can you give me another
expression for ‘that is to say’ or ‘namely’?" asked the secretary bird.
"To wit," said the owl. "Why does the lover call on his love?" "To
woo," said the owl.
The
secretary bird hastened back to the other creatures and reported that
the owl indeed was the greatest and wisest animal in the world because
he could see in the dark and because he could answer any question...'
The Natural Habitat of the Secretary is called the Secretariat.
Now, there are Secretaries and Secretaries. So, one shouldn't confuse one with the other. For instance most every Secretary has a Secretary in his office...she is generally referred to as his Steno [see Item (1) of the top quote above of Parkinson: "multiplication of subordinates"]. If you confuse one with the other and approach her instead of him with your application (supplication), injurious results may transpire (to use the Secretariat Jargon).
I have not done a Google Search but I did hear of:
Cabinet Secretary, Principal Secretary, Under-Secretary, Assistant Secretary, Joint Secretary, and a host of intermediate designations (This is a blog and not a thesis).
Again:
Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Finance Secretary, Defense Secretary, not to speak of Culture Secretary (Agri, Seri, Pisci....).
******************************************************************************************************
For twenty years between 1975 and 1995, myself and DB were sharing a Double Room in our Physics Department. Although we never collaborated, we gossiped a lot.
We started as lowly Associate Lecturers, then rose to Lecturers, then to Assistant Professors and then to Professors congruently (or is it 'concurrently'?)
We started with two small broken tables and four broken chairs that could be dragged at will. And remained true to them. It speaks volumes of the ruggedness of IIT Furniture that we never needed to change a chair or table...they remained as broke as ever.
But, in 1995, the then HoD visited us and asked us to move to separate Single Rooms:
"Why, sir? We are happy here"
"Juniors and Subjuniors are asking for Single Rooms and getting them and there may be a Question in the Senate regarding Protocol that I don't want to answer"
So, we split and shifted.
When I was shunted to a Single Room, I got very sentimental and superstitious about my Table and Chair and asked our HoD if I could take them with me to my new room.
"Furniture doesn't belong to individuals but to Rooms"
So, I had to part with my beloved table and chair (not to speak of blackboard).
When I entered my new room, I was stunned to see a Table twice the size in my old room and didn't know how to fill it up...just to look busy. So, I got six Glass Plates from Prof RSS to cover the wooden table and placed all the Picture Post Cards and New Year Greeting Cards that I had been getting from my students for all those decades and placed them underneath the glass plates.
Prof SLS visited my new room (out of curiosity) and mocked at me:
"I have ten times the number of picture post cards, and you think I would display them vulgarly like you?"
I kept quiet as usual.
And then a Dean entered my Room and the first thing he said was:
"My God, GP! You have a Secretary Table!!!"
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/secretary-table.html
*********************************************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment