Police Story I
Recently, I was face-to-face with a police inspector. Or was he someone superior, I can never say. Or judging by how unwilling he was to help, he must have been someone superior. It takes years of experience for apathy to morph into farce as you'd realise if you've not stopped reading yet. As Marx said (and I don't think quoting Marx makes anyone any popular anymore, but he got it right), "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce."
Anyway, to set the context, my brother was paying me a visit. A brief getaway from the morose existence in an engineering student's life. Somehow I feel that the charm of an engineering college diminishes for its students, once they have been 'placed'. Or is it withdrawal pangs, knowing that they'll soon be leaving a place of such abundant, sparkling creativity, none of it an outcome of the actual course they'd gone there to pursue.
He took the bus on Wednesday night at 11.30 pm and reached home at 6.00 next morning. As he settled down and was thinking about his next smart alec facebook quote, he discovered that the laptop he distinctly remembered putting inside his bag last night was conspicuous by its absence. If it happened to me, normally I’d reenact the scene, wishfully thinking that perhaps I was hallucinating the first time.
But since he is not I, he sprang into action, literally. More sorrow was in store. The pair of sunglasses that he’d bought on his not so distant birthday was now out of his shivering, unsure grasp. So was the pair he was getting for me.
I was still groggy-eyed, when this hail of metaphorical punches was rained on me. He got up and started pacing the room, to and fro, here and there, idhar se udhar. Someone, please teach us how to becalm such a jumble of distraught nerves. In one fell swoop, the unseen assailant had in his possession a laptop and 2 sunglasses. He left behind the slippers; perhaps his were better suited for fleeing.
It was all gloom from there on. I don’t even want to get into the ear-splitting, piece-of-mind sermon my brother received from bereaved parents. All his woe (past-recorded and imagined) seemed to be a result of this one act of ‘carelessness’ that others might call sleep. I am not sure how many silent pledges of redemption he’s taken since, but if I take into account my own experiences, they’re all self-destructive.
Next shocker was when we went to the police station to register what is called the First Information report (FIR). I don’t know but if you’ve been to one, do you feel that the place has an aura of “I don’t give a trap” about it. Visiting police-stations isn’t exactly therapeutic. But I was amazed how deftly our mai-baap tried to turn the tables. “You have instigated a man to become a criminal,” thundered the mustachioed maven of justice. Aghast, I tried so direct his attention towards reason. Undaunted he continued, “Because of your negligence, a person has been forced to do something he normally wouldn’t.” It must be hard on the nerves of my brother.
Before he could anoint our lily-white, wrongfully astrayed, silent assassin as the next Sathya Sai Baba incarnate, we left.
Anyway, to set the context, my brother was paying me a visit. A brief getaway from the morose existence in an engineering student's life. Somehow I feel that the charm of an engineering college diminishes for its students, once they have been 'placed'. Or is it withdrawal pangs, knowing that they'll soon be leaving a place of such abundant, sparkling creativity, none of it an outcome of the actual course they'd gone there to pursue.
He took the bus on Wednesday night at 11.30 pm and reached home at 6.00 next morning. As he settled down and was thinking about his next smart alec facebook quote, he discovered that the laptop he distinctly remembered putting inside his bag last night was conspicuous by its absence. If it happened to me, normally I’d reenact the scene, wishfully thinking that perhaps I was hallucinating the first time.
But since he is not I, he sprang into action, literally. More sorrow was in store. The pair of sunglasses that he’d bought on his not so distant birthday was now out of his shivering, unsure grasp. So was the pair he was getting for me.
I was still groggy-eyed, when this hail of metaphorical punches was rained on me. He got up and started pacing the room, to and fro, here and there, idhar se udhar. Someone, please teach us how to becalm such a jumble of distraught nerves. In one fell swoop, the unseen assailant had in his possession a laptop and 2 sunglasses. He left behind the slippers; perhaps his were better suited for fleeing.
It was all gloom from there on. I don’t even want to get into the ear-splitting, piece-of-mind sermon my brother received from bereaved parents. All his woe (past-recorded and imagined) seemed to be a result of this one act of ‘carelessness’ that others might call sleep. I am not sure how many silent pledges of redemption he’s taken since, but if I take into account my own experiences, they’re all self-destructive.
Next shocker was when we went to the police station to register what is called the First Information report (FIR). I don’t know but if you’ve been to one, do you feel that the place has an aura of “I don’t give a trap” about it. Visiting police-stations isn’t exactly therapeutic. But I was amazed how deftly our mai-baap tried to turn the tables. “You have instigated a man to become a criminal,” thundered the mustachioed maven of justice. Aghast, I tried so direct his attention towards reason. Undaunted he continued, “Because of your negligence, a person has been forced to do something he normally wouldn’t.” It must be hard on the nerves of my brother.
Before he could anoint our lily-white, wrongfully astrayed, silent assassin as the next Sathya Sai Baba incarnate, we left.
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