Police

Pity our police.

Somehow, I cringe whenever I come close to one of the men in khakhi. It gets worse when I am on our scooter and I see a white-shirt traffic cop straddling his motor-bike with a book in his hand. But what I feel is besides the point.

Pity the men who serve in the police forces.

Yesterday two of them were lynched in Kashmir. By who? Who knows? First it is one religious community. Then another. Tit for tat. My agitation is more vicious than yours. The country can go to hell.

Pity the men who are called to magically bring law and order to bear. Pity their bamboo canes which seems the only instrument the mob listens too. A brutal beating is the way to clear the rabble. Provided there are enough men in khaki to back you up. Otherwise the old look-the-other way takes precedence. In so much of our land the policeman is alone. And ever more often than not - the rabble-rousers are men of influence, known men.

Pity the hands who hold the guns. When the lathis don't work - there are the occasional gun shots. We are not talking about the notorious 'encounter killings' here - where crack police forces keep 'gunning down' criminals who are not left alive to tell much of their stories. The score always seems heavily stacked in the favour of the police in those 'encounters.' No, we are talking of the garden variety policeman who has to shoot. The bullets inevitably seem to find someone.

And then the sickening glorification of the dead as 'martyrs' and 'victims'. Politicians of all stripes descend. Large sums of money are promised (sometimes even given) to the survivors. Cries of the family : Our son is a good son. He would never do something wrong...

Where does the mob come from then? Each pair of hands, each hate-twisted face is someone's 'good son'...

Pity our underchallenged, over-worked, often lack-luster police force. We are not surpised to know that HIV is a major issue for the Thane and Mumbai police. The easy money that is available from bribes and the high pressures of the job mean that alcohol is many a cop's seeming best friend. Multiple sexual partnerships follow on. HIV doesn't look at who it infects - where there is sexual networking - you can expect HIV to show up sooner or later.

Pity our police. Pray for them. Be a true friend to our men in khaki.