I hope this letter finds you in good health. With due respect, I wish to draw your attention to the slow and inefficient work that the clerks have been executing at the Examination Block of the university. Not a day passes without coming to hear about the frustrating saga of the students caused by the chiefs-cum-here-there-players and high-chair-occupants. This sucks!
During my graduation times, I had to have an issue resolved in the IT section. However, it took days on end before I could finally give good riddance to the there-go-here-go troubling and enigmatic personalities. Back then, I deemed it right to consider the complexities of their work and went about my way without recalling my annoying experience with them. Fair enough!
Of late, I had to visit the sectional chiefs again, and again I was vexed to the extent that my conscience almost forced me to cancel my admission. I didn’t give in, though. Let me disclose the chiefs’ perpetual authoritarian behaviours as a matter of bringing this to your notice. Submitting the form for the second semester at the website, I faced, quite a few times, certain systematic errors. When I reached my department to resolve the issue, they redirected me to contact the IT section of the ‘Examination Block.’
On the first day, the clerks at the ‘Examination Block’ asked me to wait for some time and write an application mentioning the issue I faced; and I wrote a detailed application with a phone number written on its back page. Fair enough! However, the issue remained unresolved for quite a few days.
The second time, I visited the section again to remind them of what concerned me. ‘Wait’, they replied in a commanding way. Ma’am, the sun was burning up above. Its rays caused my body to drown in sweat. It. Just. Was. Frustrating. And I left the place.
The third time, I reached the place. Again. A competitive guy had seemed to occupy the commanding seat. Now I heaved a sigh of relief. Finally. However, it turned out he was one of the other kinds of chief – a chief in the disguise of a serious-looking clerk. Requests kept coming his way, and they kept falling on deaf ears. Ma’am, I can’t seem to forget his face. I requested him again and again, and he kept ignoring me.
Eventually, after a long wait, and perpetual requests made to him, he replied, “Go to the department and ask them to send a mail to the PD conduct.” Ma’am, if I had to send them the mail, why couldn’t they ask me to do so on the first day? This question keeps coming to my mind over and again. And here I am expressing this to your esteemed self.
Mail done: I went all the way to my department and came back to the IT section. I informed them about the same. I expected my work would have been done now. However, I had to wait again in the burning sun!
A day melted into two and three, and the issue remained as it was: UNRESOLVED. It was on the fourth day that, with some blessings of some Faizaan-pitying magic, my vulnerable self finally took a heavy seconds-long sigh.
Ma’am, this is just a small story within the broader painful stories in which the clerks are the main characters. Come to an issue and a student is lost in the here-go-there-go-or-wait games of such clerks. Kindly intervene promptly and save us our time and energy, ma’am.
Postscript: I hope the next time I had some work in the IT section, I wouldn’t be played upon. Sigh!
The writer is a student of History at the University of Kashmir, and can be reached at [email protected]

Faizaan Bashir