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Friday 9 October 2020

The Unknown Employee

A Kashmiri Professor misreads W H Auden's poem 'The Unknown Citizen'

(Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un
This gravestone
Is erected because he was a practising Sunni)

He was found by the Department of Higher Education to be
One against whom there was no official complaint in his Service Book,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the Kashmiri sense of a practical word, he was yet another 'kalle' in the system,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Muslim Community.
Except for Curfews till the day he retired
He worked in this Industry and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers (high or low) at various GOVT. COLLEGES 
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Committee reports that he annually overpaid his CA,
(Our report on his pay statement shows it was sound)
And our overeducated, polite non-teaching workers found
That he was popular with his mates and loved to gossip.
The Press are convinced that he bought a government funded newspaper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his health-card shows he didn't die, plying in public buses, even in pandemic situations.
All SOs and other officials declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the NPS, GP Fund, arrears, allowances, increments
And had everything necessary to be a Professor,
An expensive Mobile phone with an active WhatsApp account, an attentive listener and a house on loan
Our officials at higher places are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there were elections, he went for duties: when there was B2V duty, he went.
He in fact married, to prove his manliness, but added only one child to the population,
Which his family and in-laws declare was not the right number for a parent of his profession.
And our senior professors (now working as Principals) report that he never interfered with their institutional policies.
Was he updated about his subject? Did he teach well? These questions are absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard
From his extensively-active-social-media-no-post-yet- locked-profile-picture mashallah happily married male/female collegues.

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