The Blaher

My dad’s a cop by the way. Police walla.

I have been watching a lot of hindi movies the whole of today. It’s a Saturday afternoon  you see. I just thought I should write this entry. I was watching this movie where they were showing how the police walla’s are so corrupt. Oh and there is this tv serial that I was watching where they showing how well mannered and how smart the army walla’s are and how crude and brash a cop standing around them was. I find these portrayals extremely irritating.

In fact if I were to ask any friend of mine…whether she found army men attractive or cops attractive she’d say… “Army men yaar! Duh! They’re so smart!”

Army men and army in general is such a romanticized term for all of us. Its synonym to patriotism, love for the country, bravery, courage, sacrifice, honour etc. etc. But I seem to think otherwise.

If you were to ask me who I find attractive, I’d say a Cop. Well for one, unlike it is shown in the movies, not all cops are corrupt. And unlike it is shown in the movies and elsewhere, not all army men are honest. I just think that since police is the force we as normal citizens have to deal with, we don’t like them much. They are the one’s always telling us what to do or what not to do. We go out on the road and they’re the one’s we see. We get to see their functioning, their nonfunctioning, their force, and their ignorance. So we’ve pretty much had enough of them and we don’t like them. Now, if we were to go ask a Kashmiri, a Naga or say an Assamese the same thing, they would go on and on about how terrible and corrupt the army is. How horrible they’ve been to them, how unfair they are to them and how they have had enough of them and want them out of their faces. All I’m trying to say is, simply put, that the grass is always greener on the other side.

 But honestly, some times, I feel really bad for the cops. Take for example an average day of a lower level cop. It starts early. It ends late. Really late, if he’s lucky. Otherwise, there is no end to the working day. He doesn’t go to work at 9 and come back at 5. He doesn’t have weekends off. He deals with rude, boisterous crowds, dangerous criminals, is offered bribe over and over and over and over again, accepting of which even once, is a huge blow on your self respect. He is almost hated and detested by the media and the general public. He has too many seniors, clingy juniors, and demanding politicians all around him. There are constant and irregular transfers. On top of all this he gets paid peanuts. Is provided with a pretty bad to average government accomadation and has pretty much zero time for his family. If you’re killed nobody really seems to care and seems to know. Of course, there are perks like, you getting to boss around some people and travel around in public transport for free but with loathing eyes staring at you all around. Now imagine wanting to be a part of a force that deals with all this. How easy/tough is the decision?

Now imagine this – No particular work hours as such except during war time, getting posted in various places but with fixed time periods, in those places, including the highest peaks or the most barren deserts, there are perfect accomadation, good canteens, very good schools for your child, excellent recreation facilities, clear line of command, long regular leaves, not to forget all the love and awe of the general public, also the feeling of being the darlings of the media who in turn create the feeling of you being super humans, examples of honour, sacrifice and bravery etc.. If by any chance there happens to be a war and god forbid you are killed, you are made a shahid, you are all over the media, your town or village declares you their hero and names a street after you. Now how easy/tough is the decision to be a part of THIS force?

I think the choice is simple. Life is nicer in the later one. Honestly, if you’re a part of this force, it’s a great achievement on your part. You’ve accomplished something great for YOURSELF. You will lead a happy life and your family will lead a comfortable life. On the other hand if you want to get into the earlier kind of force, you’ve got to be “extremely brave, courageous, and an example of sacrifice”. You’ve to forget about your family life. Your life is pretty much all about your work. You’ve to say bye-bye to your nice, sweet, timid soul. Get ready to meet a new tougher you. And say hello to a mean bad world of your own countrymen.

Please don’t think I am being biased because my father is also a police walla. Actually my family is an example of all the forces. My uncle’s in the army. Another uncle of mine is in the CRPF. A few cousins and a few more uncles are in the army and the coast guard. My father and my grandfather however are cops. So I’ve seen it all the sides of the all the forces, military as well as civil. And with that experience of 22 years have I written all this. Trust me; I know cops can be big asses sometimes. I’ve seen it a lot myself. But I think we can cut them some slack. In a country of more than a crore, over flowing cities and towns, shortage of police funds, manpower, resources, it isn’t easy to always be the angel that people want you to be. 

Coming back to that thing of me finding cops more attractive and smarter than army men. I think this bit needed more clarification since this is something a lot of people might find strange. Well first let me compare two young, high ranking officers of both the forces from all my past experience with the two forces.

Take the cop first. Let me start by saying that the young man has just given the toughest competitive exams in the country (The Civil Services Exam) and got where he is. This is an exam which is also given by a lot of IIM and AIIMS students and most of them fail in it. This impresses me a lot. But then again, it makes me think that the guy must be a geek. It turns out though, and this is from my experience of 22 years with being around high ranking police officers of all kinds, he is a keen admirer of various arts, has a lot of interests, he is into a lot of reading, films, extremely well aware, is either a painter, or a musician, an academician, a writer, a sportsman, or a photographer etc. Almost always into a sport he also speaks impeccable English. He can probably speak more than 3 languages and on his way to mastering a 4^th which is of the local region where he is currently posted and officially required to be able to read and write the language. 

Now for the hot army guy. He is fit, extremely well built and smart looking. His command over the English language is about average or below average. But he can speak with a very smartly put accent though. The man is very conscious about the fact that he is from the most admired force in the country. He also knows very well how much people are in awe of army men. He does not refrain from showing off this achievement at any social gathering, whether asked or not. The man is not always very well read and mostly not really well aware of the world and happenings.

Now call me strange girls but I pick the earlier guy. I’d think about the second one after he’s gotten over himself and his efforts to look smart.

My uncles from the army, both very senior officers were once discussing how the standards of the new men coming into the force is diminished. They were discussing how earlier, the men were all well read, had brilliant command over English language and were knowledgeable individuals. They said that you could still see that in the senior generals and brigadiers. I couldn’t agree more with them.

In the end I guess all I’m trying to say is that lets just bring things into perspective. Not get swayed and fooled by the loud, over zealous media and stop the over romanticizing of the army and the over loathing of the police. Discrimination of forces and the tilting of the nation towards a certain force is never good. If we lurrrvvve one too much and treat it differently it gets too strong and powerful. Then you have things like military coups and army chiefs taking over as heads of nations. These are just ordinary people doing their jobs and nothing else.