Many many years ago......
The polizemaan and I are returning from a late-night movie show. We spot K, a batchmate, walking on the sidewalk. K’s all by himself and so the polizemaan suggests we give him a ride. I comply. But barely have we gone a kilometre or two down the road when we’re accosted by policemen. Oblivious of the romanticism of ‘three men in a boat’, these are men who don’t take kindly to three men on a bike. A challan hangs over us. Now just a few days before this incident, a friend had narrated an episode about a similar encounter with traffic policemen, and about how he’d gotten away using a cock and bull story about a brother in the police services. The story is fresh in my mind and I repeat it verbatim. It seems like a smart thing to do. It isn’t. Our policeman is nowhere as trusting of his fellow humans as the policeman who’d nabbed my friend was. ‘बात करादे तेरे भाई से’, he laconically mutters, as he points to the little kiosk where the landline phone is housed. So there we are, the three of us, walking towards the kiosk. A thousand things are running in my mind about whom to call and how to wiggle out of this. Suddenly, K stops and - very elaborately - turns towards me. He has the expression of a guy who’s trying to come to terms with a great secret that life has just revealed to him. In his wonderful South Indian accent he says to me ‘तेरा बाई(भाई) तो पोउलीस में नई है।’ At first, I can’t believe what I hear. Then I’m tempted to play along in the absurdity and do a Don wala Amitabh on him (सोनिया ये तुम जानती हो रिवौलवर खाली है, मैं जानता हूँ रिवौलवर खाली है, मगर पुलिस नहीं जानती कि रिवौलवर ख़ाली है). But I desist. I just nod to let K know that he’s right. Then we walk some more before K stops to share yet another revelation. ‘तेरा तो कोई बाई भी नई है,’ he accuses. I want to tell him that our predicament isn’t so much a result of a paucity of brothers as it is of his own extra self on the bike. But once again, I desist. Saying this to K would (as De Niro explains in Raging Bull) ‘defeat its own purpose.’ We continue to walk and almost reach the kiosk. K stops again. But this time, he doesn’t turn. He simply asks of the thin air, ‘मेरे पापा पोउलीस में है। मय फोन करूँ?’ And we live to tell the tale. Moral of the story: वो आपका कोई प्रिय हो या हो भारतीय सरकार, धैर्य रखें, जो दर्द देता है वही दवा भी देगा। अमुमन।
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September 2020
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