Off the cuff | Senate secret saga

At Bharathiar University’s 88th senate meeting on January 31, things took a dramatic turn. An IAS officer was running the show, but a senate member threw a spanner in the works—raising questions about alleged saree purchase scams and shady dealings in the herbal garden. The principal backed the demand for answers. The response? A polite promise of an “investigation”.

Then, out of nowhere, the principal got a transfer order—far, far away. Coincidence? Not quite. A desperate plea to the Chief Minister’s office stopped the move. But the message was loud and clear: at Bharathiar University, speaking up can come at a cost.

Baa-rmy release

In Perumanallur, Tiruppur district, a goat thief’s luck turned out to be better than the goat’s. A local police team, during a routine night patrol, caught a man stealing a goat from a farmland—apparently for a meat shop. The cops hauled him to the station, ready to take action.

But then, the meat shop owners stepped in. Allegedly, they flexed their influence. And just like that, the thief walked free. The case? Quietly buried. While the goat’s fate remains unclear, the incident has left locals questioning who’s really calling the shots in Perumanallur—law enforcement or the meat mafia.

Exam lunch woes

Puducherry’s exam centres, it seems, have developed a rather hearty appetite. Not just for the usual government school teachers and supervisors, mind you. Now, private schools, flush with fees, are also demanding complimentary lunches. And not just any lunch, from a menu of their choosing. One imagines the scene: “Yes, we’ll have the biryani, hold the raita.”

Affected schools, quite understandably, are reluctant to complain. The fear of marked-down grades, you see. The School Education department, meanwhile, remains notably silent. Or, perhaps, they’re simply too busy scheduling the same teacher for two meetings at once. “How can we expect them to address our grievances?” a school representative asks, quite reasonably. In Puducherry, it seems, public exams come with a side of… well, whatever the exam centre fancies.

The love triangle

In a twist reminiscent of a romantic comedy, an RTI nodal officer received an application for the personal and salary details of a person working in the same department. Intrigued, the nodal officer shared the request with the coworker, whose details were sought. The coworker then discovered that the applicant was the ex-boyfriend of the woman he was about to marry.

It turns out that the jealous ex had a classic case of: “I can’t let you be happy” and was merely trying to see if her fiancé was financially ahead of him. Meanwhile, our nodal officer was left in a pickle—torn between professional duty and the drama of a love triangle. Nothing says “wedding bliss” quite like using bureaucratic means to stalk your ex’s new partner!

(Contributed by N Dhamotharan, P Srinivasan, Bagalavan Perier B, Nirupama Viswanathan; Compiled by Dinesh Jefferson E