TROUBLE TRAVELS ON FOUR LEGS

People  tend to make up  imaginary stories of daredevilry about catching criminals. Who can forget the saw mill owner Jagdeep bragging to a bunch  of locals  in Sholay about why  he became angry with Jai and Veeru ( Mujhe iss baat ka gussa aaya ki mere ilaake mei aa kaise gaye") and about the sound thrashing he gave the duo  with his  danda  " Sataa sat, sataa sat" ? Bollywood movies are united by their love  for music, dance and dhishoom- dhishoom bashing up of twenty villains by the hero single-handedly - in an arc which could at times exceed 360 degrees. 

Within the police community, too, there are many stories of courage and valour against  local  toughs and  roughs, extortionists and and terrorists - quite a few exaggerated, but a large number of them true as well. However, what has bugged me no end is how so many cops, otherwise gutsy and courageous against the two- footed criminals , come a cropper against the four legged. Recently, during the visit of POTUS to India, the only time a finger was pointed at the security set- up when a dog managed to breach it at Raisina Hill. 

In March,1994, the police, despite having no training in catching four legged hazards, beat up and captured a  rogue jackal who was reportedly disturbing the CM's sleep. However, the Press, animal activists and opposition parties continued to raise a stink for days.The matter did not end there. At a political rally held soon after this incident, some members of the main opposition party carried a few pups in their hands and shouted " Mukhya Mantri ko kya hua, hukka hua, hukka hua" even as the frightened yelps of the poor pups completed the comic.Then they proceeded to release the nervous pups near the women's enclosure in the rally ground to derive voyeuristic pleasure from a splatter of alarmed women jumping and falling over one another in inelegantly revealing heaps. The police were blamed for not being able to prevent this stampede caused by the four -legged toddlers. 

But even worse were the dressing- downs the hapless police personnel routinely received on account of the shenanigans of cattle in a VIP  locality abutting what was then called Calcutta. A few fun-loving members  of this bovine community  would  routinely compel the convoy of the CM  to swish, slalom and screech dangerously to avoid accident. 

The Alpha Male of this pack, nicknamed Jhontuda , was an imperious bull  with a heavy hump, majestic mien and a deep dewlap. The driver of the convoy would often complain that Jhontuda  not only irreverently chewed cud but also smiled at him - the kind of a smile a butcher has when he selects one among the bleating goats before slaughter. Instructions were issued to round up Jhontuda and his band of merry cows, find out their owners and prosecute them under section 307 IPC which related to 'attempt to murder'. On a couple of occasions when the policemen were able to catch a few cows, they were unable to trace the owners who never turned up-  and smiling cattle told no tales. 

At the beginning of 2014, a few buffaloes were kidnapped by some people near Shehzadnagar in Uttar Pradesh causing much public berating by the minister-owner.  The resultant largest ever buffalo- hunt in  the history of animal heists was launched and it was rumoured that  even helicopters were used. The search was personally led by a Superintendent of Police. A  wag mentioned that searches included raids at mental asylums since police initially thought that no sane person would ever think of stealing buffaloes from the house of such a powerful politician. 

That the police were  singularly unfit  to track theft/missing of the four leggeds had come  out in the open, much earlier. In  the year 2005 ,  not a single recovery could be made by them when thirty two dogs, eight cats, ten hamsters and nine rabbits  ( amongst them Tinku, Sanya, Johnson and Pyare) went missing from the the VIP areas of Lutyens Delhi.  What got the policemen's goat was the not the lack of faith  the VIPs had  for the police's poor investigation skills, especially in matters canine,  but their marked indifference and unhelpful attitude.  When the personal staff of an MP tracked down Pyare, a chihuahua which had been officially reported as missing , they did not even bother to inform the local Tughlaq Road Police Station even as SI Mukesh Kumar, who was heading the SIT, was going about  moving heaven and hell to track it down.

But even though in the cases  revolving around the  bovine, canine,  equine, alpine or anguine  the police personnel escaped with red faces or a few bites,  in matters porcine they  once almost lost their lives. I am talking about an incident concerning the pigs kept in Bhagalpur Kotwali Thana in 1990.The story of how pigs came to stay in thana is quite entertaining. However, this may not be the place to narrate it in full. To cut a long story,  let me just mention that they were ordered to be kept against a zimmanama, as  Intestate property , by a magistrate who was cut up with police after his daughter had eloped with the  raffish brother- in -law of a police driver.

Being in charge of the thana's storeroom or malkhana where all kinds of case properties are kept, Assistant Sub- Inspector Mishraji, a Kanyakubja Brahmin who cooked his own sattvik meals, took great care  of his drove of pigs  in the police station. No, he did not feed them like Lord Emsworth his Empress of Blandings. The swines were way too dirty or taamsik for Mishraji. However,he meticulously kept a headcount of their numbers , and updated  the malkhana sherista ( register)  with entries of all new born piglets. This task kept him frightfully busy because the swines bred with a fecundity that could  have put the  friskiest of the rabbits to shame. 

But Mishraji had not reckoned  where the legendary olfactory powers of the swines could end up in. Pigs, which have been used by the French to find underground truffles, can also sniff out explosives- intact, that is why they are being preferred  over dogs  by Israeli police today to unearth explosives and drugs. Now in Bhagalpur Kotwali thana, as in hundreds of thanas all over the country, owing to poor facilities in the Forensic Laboratories, crude bombs, following their recovery after riots,  are stored in the open compound in pails of water. It so happened just at the time when Bhagalpur had witnessed communal clashes and the government had posted a young and energetic IPS Assistant Superintendent of Police,  M Vishnu Rao with his office in the Kotwali Thana premises, tragedy struck.

One morning, around 9 o'clock, when the thana had just woken up, Harmajadwa, the only white - coloured pig of the lot, prodded the contents of one of the pails with his robust snout resulting in an explosion which killed him and three other pigs. The splinters maimed the poor tea stall boy Pappua who was playfully dodging his piddle that was dribbling towards him from the wall at which he had aimed. The blast smashed the windscreen of the ASP's jeep,  bared the haunches of the driver Barrister Singh who was throwing water at the vehicle with a neem stick between his teeth. Worse, it shook the thana sentry, Nathni Singh, from his stupor who in turn did the  expected in such situations-he  fired in panic.The bullets  narrowly missed a woman residing in a house across the thana. This triggered a rattle of rumour in the city which was already on its edge.  Had it not been for the young ASP, who could mange to have his wits around him only because he remained  alive, even though momentarily shocked,   this would have escalated into a fresh bout of riots. 

Desperate situations require desperate  measures. After spending the initial hour on recovering from the shock, attending to the injured and a quick recee around at the PS to ensure all was well, the young ASP and his team returned to the thana and formed a huddle.Then, riding roughshod over Mishraji's threats and subsequent protestations, the young Vishnu took his first anti- riot measure. Not the one to be cowed down by Mishraji and court's orders, young Vishnu ordered for the release of the pigs.

" Hujoor, malkhana property hai. Court hum per mukadma kar sakti hai," Mishraji tried to intimidate him 'judicially'.

" Yahan… phata hua hai aur aapko suaar ka pada hua, " Sarju Yadav, the Bada Babu or the Officer- in- Charge spat out.

" Court se hum faria lenge," Vishnu snapped to lead from the front.

" Bada babu, koi pashu chikitsak se sab suar ka maut ka  certificate banwa kar court ko inform kar dijye," the young ASP directed , and immediately earned  respect from the members of a force which had earned no mean a reputation in manipulating records.

"Huzoor, thana ke bagal Bajrang Bali ji ka mandir hai. Kahin suaar log wahan chala gaya toh danga ho jayega," Mishraji tried one more time.

" Zinda rahenge toh danga bhi sambhal lenge," the ASP snapped again, and with that disposed off Mishraji's last arjee or prayer for  Haramjadwa's colleagues. 

DING DONG BELL

The other day I underwent  an MRI for a suspected  meniscus tear. During  the fifty, interminably long minutes when I was rendered hors de combat, I had my loneliness, pain and an assortment of different types of sound for company. The machine made weird sounds of different types in a random disorder- a robot in gastric distress, a washing machine settling to a stop, the squelch and crackle of wireless sets, the rat a tat tat  of a Made in China toy woodpecker, Bhooter Naacch or the Ghost Dance of Satyajit Ray's Goopi Gyne Bagha Byne, the rattle of a chain saw and many others. Sometimes complete silence, not even the hum or a growl,  would cut short the cacophony like a knife. Interspersed with these two were  bouquets of ad jingles, the RJ's chatter and songs on Radio Mirchi tumbling out in a competing tangle. For a person who is a social network addict , this complete break from the world set me reflecting on  sound,  and even  sent me down to the deepest  recess of memory to recollect the sounds of  my childhood. 

A mother's heartbeat in the womb, as everybody knows, is the first connect with life. Our initial encounters with Nature have been by way of the sounds of rustling of leaves, blowing of winds, the pitter- patter of raindrops and claps of thunder. Sound has a therapeutic value- that is why they played the Radio Mirchi during my MRI! It nurtures and nourishes. At a ceremony held to plant a sapling, also called brikharopan,  at Santiniketan - that best thing to happen to Indian higher studies after Nalanda and Vikramshila-  I was amazed to see something quite interesting. After the then Governor Sri Satyanarain Reddy had covered the sapling with loose soil  and sprinkled water , the organisers requested him to wave a palm leaf fan over it and blow a conch . Vayu and dhvani are as central to a plant's nourishment as soil or  mitti and jal, they said. 

Dhvani or sound has been celebrated by poets.  "Man communicates by articulation of Sounds, and paramountly by the memory in the Ear", said Coleridge,  half punning, and developed a theory of poetry. According to him,  poetry  was  "an imagination of words as a path of sound through the air". Even silence is a kind of sound. It is merely suspended, ready to burst forth as in" The mute still air/Is music slumbering on her instrument". Silence can even depict a visual imagery - as in " moonlight steeped in silentness" ( The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere).

It is to embellish this "path of sound in air" that  English poetry employs the rhyme, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia to enhance its beauty. Similarly , in addition to rhyming or tukant, Hindi poetry also employs such techniques which  are appropriately called alankar or adornments - anupras, yamak, shlesh ( of course they are  adorned with arth alankar also). A very large number of Hindi poets  have used these techniques to telling effect, and I am sure my Bengali friends will be able to improve upon this,  citing examples from that greatest of the Indian literary figures, Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

More than museums or art galleries, it is to  musical concerts that people go to. The sound of music is all pervading in the world of arts and has no frontiers of language. I have seen at at a concert " Sufi Sutra" artists from different countries go backstage for less than  ten minutes and  come out to jam for over an hour in a delightful symphony. Our body also understands the importance of sound. That is why perhaps the hearing organ  breaks  down slower than the optic and reproductive. Actually, the ear is the only orifice of the body which does not make a sound and just concentrates to do what it is meant for - save for the occasional dance it does in the 'hands' of some artists. 

Even though sound is not as evocative a mechanism to trigger memory as much as smell or touch or vision, nevertheless, it does perform that function to a large extent. As Wordsworth wrote:

My eyes are dim with childish tears,

My heart is idly stirred,

For the same sound is in my ears,

Which in those I heard. ( The Fountain 29-32).

There are so many memories of childhood which are more auditory  than visual in nature. You would not see them on a particular day but you knew that they had passed through your mohalla  just  by their signature sounds and tunes which could be  adenoidal, high-pitched, guttural, orotund, shrill, boomy or singsong - the ice cream vendor, the locksmith, the raddi wala, the carpet seller, the dosa wala, the mochi or cobbler, the sil lodha repair man,  the bartanwali, the scissor-knife sharpening man, and even the different beggars.  

In Kadamkuan, Patna where I stayed for my Intermediate,  there was this tall chap with a twirled moustache and dhoti kurta who would shout in a nasal voice, much above the traffic din " Taja Makhan" - he sold sweets laced with bhaang. The sugarcane juice wala did not even give a shout- just the jingle of the bells attached to the rotatory would give away his presence.Whenever  and wherever I hear Kundanlal Saigal, the first thing that flashes in my mind is the sight of we three brothers scurrying out of our houses at 5 to 8 in the morning to catch the school bus.

One did not get  up with the sun in the eyes, it was the job of the goraiyyas or sparrows to wake us up with their incessant chirping.  A sound which for a long time had terrorised me after I moved in from Patna to a predominantly Bengali Dhanbad was that of evening ululation from the Bengali households after the evening diya was lit - it sounded  like the hukka hua of  hungry jackals. Much later, at a wedding, I heard this that I  could put the howl and ululation together. The crackle, snap, roar and whistle of an assortment of wood stacked in a heap  are as evocative of the Holika Dahan as swishing fangs of the flames. 

The breaking of bangles is associated with widowhood, but for me the sound of breaking bangles as they flew here and there , softly clanging on the floor, reminds me of the beatings we used to get from our mother. Her multi-coloured glass bangles would break on our backs and shoulders and we three would dutifully collect the broken pieces and hand over to her, sometimes smiling, sometimes sullen.

Food is primarily a teaser for the taste buds.  It is also feast for the eyes  that has led to very snazzy table settings ,  eye-catching garnishing and artistic carving. However, there is a huge scope for ramping up the eating experience by infusion of sound as well. The first thing that attracts you to a sizzler is the sound of sizzle itself. In much younger days, ghee was never served as it is done today- finely sliced onions were  deep  fried in a the bowl of ghee and served hot so as to make a hissing sound when poured over daal- chaaval or khhiccdi.  Of  the kitchen memories one remembers most are the whistle of the pressure cooker and the hiss of chhonk or tempering  when added to the dal . Amongst the many candies of childhood, the whistle- candy stands out as delightfully unique and maddeningly disturbing for the older folks, surpassed only by the pop of the bubble of the gum.

A person's voice is also a unique identity card. The laughter of my late friend Ravi Kant could light up my college hostel, that of my wife assures my children that all is well in the world. No one calls me Vivek anymore like my late father did. I remember his 'Kaun hai" call after lunch on Sundays that would trigger a  tip toe exit by us  three to avoid being caught to massage his feet. More than facial expressions or body language, it is the tone of the voice of a person that conveys his state of mind and mood most eloquently. This has an important implication.

As we move to an era of being heard more than read through our SMSs,  emails and social networking posts,  the range of punctuation marks meant to convey modulation of voice- comma, full stop, interrogation mark and exclamation mark- appears to be inadequately narrow. That is why frequent elisions, triple exclamation marks, double question marks and sundry other emoticons  are being used. One may well see new punctuation signs come up in the near future.

The hissing sound caused by the seam of the cricket ball as it skidded past you was rivalled only by the sound of crashing of stumps. The soft sound when the pin of the friend's latoo  when it landed on yours and spliced it during the game of bella phhad was so  heart rending. Children's elation at Bho katta or severing a rival's kite would rent the air of the colony during the kite flying season. Even today, I don't require to watch an old movie to remind me the sounds of the steam engine. 

Despite such a vast array of sounds, one did not feel overwhelmed and boxed up as today when the continuous honking  and other emission noises of vehicles, clanks and clunks of construction equipment and blaring of microphones compel us to close our ears every now and then.  In our days, if there was a load shedding, you did not put on the generator and disturb the entire neighbourhood - you either endured it, or lit up candles or  lanterns after cleaning the soot from the previous evening- and watched the fireflies and heard the buzz of the mosquitos. The traffic on roads was much less, there was so much of silence around that you had the facility to savour each of these sounds severally- like a good dish whose every single spice or  herb could be dissected and enjoyed. 

However,  one sound has withstood the ravages of  time-  the sound of the  gong of the school. The gong is such a wonderful harbinger of good things. Except when it is sounded five minutes before the conclusion of an examination paper to accelerate a  flurry of helpless  activities and the final "Stop Writing"  one when it comes  crashing on our hopes, it usually  such a happy sounding sound. There is a  hierarchy of gong sounds -  at the lowest lies  the Assembly bell which wrenches  you away from your pre - classes pursuits  of marbles or swings. A notch above this morbidity is  the gong that signals the end of lunch hour which is  also received with much sadness by the eagles circling, crying and swooping up above in the sky. Each gong which would signal the end of a period would be progressively sweeter, the one signalling the Maths more. 

But the gong that is  more awaited than even the Games period bell is the  one to signal the Dismissal.  Then there is a flurry of activity, hoorays, a few wolf whistles, much jostling and everyone is happy. It is the sound which unites the naughtiest of the students and the most unfriendly of the teachers in a baby- like, gurgling bliss. Who doesn't want to go home?

Even as I my fingers move over the keypad, I remember Salim, the darbaan of my junior school whose job it was to sound  the gong - a yellow, metallic disc suspended on a small iron hook. Such unalloyed pleasure he gave, especially during the Dismissal  when he  would purse his lips, beat the gong harder, longer and finish with a flourish  of the gavel  like an orchestra conductor- waiting  for the approving and excited roar of the children. 

THE AD OD AND SUGAR PETER: A PROBATIONER'S DILEMMA

"Why Wake "

- as my uncle would call me sometimes.

During our 'Basic Training'  in  Hyderabad at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy, a few ground rules were clearly laid out - but none was more sacrosanct and fiercely enforced than the one about Fall -in at the PT Ground at 5.40 am. There were no classroom lessons to explain the advantages of getting up at reveille but it was almost an unwritten commandment that waking up early at the crack of dawn was the most important of the OLQs ( Officer Like Quality)  for a senior cop - like it was for the novices of a monastery to attend the matins. If you possessed  this OLQ, your other transgressions could be ignored. 

So if you were present at the ground in time, you could be  let off with a few ridicules and rebukes even if you broke your fall  in ten yawning movements before a Front Roll, stopped dead before the Horse Vault, walked the Saturday cross country run with hands on your hips or had as much dexterity to climb the rope as a spider in rigor mortis. The sky didn't fall if traces  of Old Monk of previous night's antiquity, as a reiteration of Locardo's Principle, hung around you on the PT Ground like a placard across a photographed criminal. The small matter of solving the Hindu Cryptic Crosswords in Criminal Procedure Code or Indian Evidence Act classes could be condoned, as could be bunking the afternoon  language classes  or the newfangled  MS DOS or UNIX sessions.

But woe betide anyone who would be late at the Fall-in time because then you you strayed  directly into the territory of the Assistant Director (Out Door)  or AD OD. The AD OD traditionally started as a much reviled, rarely loved but by some change of heart that attended most of the batches of IPS officers , would go on to  become the only faculty member who would be hoisted on the shoulders and cheered along at the end of the training. The incumbent  during my time was no different. 

He had a task to live up to the reputation of his formidable predecessors - the Straceys, Pratts and the Spadigams- and though much the quieter  after a recent Commonwealth Exchange programmme in England, was still a force to reckon with. Tall and well- built with a twirled, if not exactly walrus-ish, moustache, he was affectionately nicknamed Penta after a famous Punjab terrorist by that name and his Blue Lambretta was called the Neela Penta.

The early morning sight of Penta, kitted in his riding gear which included a horsewhip, riding his Neela Penta, had the effect which the spotting  of a tiger on prowl in the forest has on the monkeys and birds  - the first spotter shushed everyone, all took cover, people corrected their  state  of undress and slouch, cut their chatter, repaired the grin or smile on their faces and broke into an orderly file or line. 

He would personally visit the sick bay in the hospital and ferret out the malingerers from the genuinely sick. I kept a distance from him ever since his elbow had made a robust contact with my solar plexus in a basketball game.After eight months of life at NPA, we were sent to our respective states for district attachment.

Like my batch mates, I, too, went, equipped with , among other things,  this all important  OLQ . Burdwan it was in West Bengal- a huge district which included the mineral belt of Asansol, the industrial township of Durgapur, an amazingly fertile rural belt that formed part of the "rice bowl of Bengal" and the river of my childhood, the Damodar. The Superintendent of Police (SP)  was in the midst of Parliamentary Election preparation and wouldn't really be too much bothered with a probationer for sometime even though he made excellent arrangement  for my stay and transport. He had chalked out a training schedule which was not exactly very punishing and I pottered around excitedly for a couple of days before I chanced upon a four days' break to go to Patna.

My return journey was by Danapur- Howrah Express which arrived at  Burdwan around the same time  I was used to wake up in Hyderabd. But as a matter of abundant caution, I woke up a couple of hours earlier, much  before Asansol. I arrived at Burdwan, sleep deprived, and worked the whole day as tasked. Later in the evening, alone and a bit in the doldrums at Damodar Bhavan where I had put up, I  walked over to the SP's Bungalow chamber . Shortly the talk of SP visiting Asansol late in the evening, with a night stay cropped up and I, sloshed with foolish and unwarranted keenness, offered to accompany him.

" Yes, why not? Go, eat  your dinner. We"ll start at 9.00," he said. 

So I went back to my room, nibbled at some chapatis, siddho bhaat,  watery daal, a deem curry, jhuribhaja and a piece of very dry sandesh and hopped across.We set off around the scheduled time, driven by his maniacal  driver Ganguly, and reached Durgapur en route where we were joined by the local Additional SP. We arrived in  Asansol quite late  and  I vaguely recall  we went to a place called Mahavir Colliery which was in an utter chaos. Rescue work ( (the review of which was the occasion for the  Chief Ministers's visit the following day) to retrieve trapped workers of the subsidence -hit colliery  was in cacophonic progress. The SP discussed the police bandobast for the VIP visit for about half an hour. It was to be around midnight  that we started for our return journey to Durgapur CRPF Group Centre for our night halt. 

And then it happened. It was now close to twenty hours without sleep and I was swiftly and completely taken over by it. Sitting sandwiched between the two senior colleagues who were talking shop in Bengali, a language I didn't quite understand then, I slipped into what may have started as a doze  but had soon turned into an emphatic knocking - on- the- SP's -left-shoulder sound sleep. Nawal Kishore Singh was reputed to be a man with a lot of patience and even a sense of humour but he could see none in this. 

" Hey! Get up," he said, a tad irritably.

I mumbled my apologies and resolved to stay awake. There are times when your resolve stays with you and powers you to great heights of success. Then there are times when it deserts you completely. This time it just fled away with its tail between the legs, slapped and kicked out  by Hypnos, the God of Sleep, who had totally cast a spell on me. I vividly remember plunging into a sea of sleep, bobbing up and down, swaying left and right, sometimes gyrating in eddies as Hypnos gleefully tossed me around . To cut a long story short, I furiously knocked at the two senior officers  with a force which was as majestic as it was  random. What probably made matters worse was that the potholes added to the randomness so that neither of the two senior colleagues knew who was going to be knocked the next .

" What is wrong with this boy?" he asked the Additional SP, Durgapur after an interminably long wait for his sixth knock, a bit out out of disgust but more out of embarrassment at having been openly and nonchalantly knocked at by a mere probationer. 

Delegated the job, the Addl SP, already  hit thrice on the trot, moved in with a relish, alacrity and thoroughness for which he was to become famous in the service later on. I believe he also wanted to quickly dispel any doubt his superior may have had about him being responsible for the young officer's misconduct . He started with asking me a string of questions about my background, academic qualifications and interests. Engaged thus, I stayed awake and shortly we reached Group Centre, Durgapur without any further mishap.

"Someone show the probationer his room " the SP commanded, and went his way.

I was not sure who among the two was more relieved at my departure. I woke up to a miserable morning, remembering vividly the previous night's episode and wondering what would lie in store for me for the next eight months. On my first effective night  with my training SP, I had knocked the daylights out of his shoulders. As we were driving to the helipad, I decided I must apologise.

" I am extremely sorry for what happened yesterday, sir," I spoke with all sincerity.

 "This will never happen again I assure you," I added, calculating  that an apology , however sincere , must be followed up by robust assurances of good behaviour to have a reasonable chance of being let off  leniently. 

He looked at me, deep into my eyes. There was no anger, just a bit of bemusement. 

"It is not your fault Vivek," he said even as I arched my eyebrows in utter disbelief at this aggressive politeness, unsure whether the gentleman was being sarcastic or  truthful.

 "They teach you to wake up early at NPA ( Hyderabad)  but not to stay awake late."

"In the districts, this is going to be more important," Sugar Peter added with a flourish for effect before proceeding to bark a few orders on the wireless which was by now alternating between competing cackles and strange-sounding squelches.