THE OLD SCHOOL IN THE NEW AGE

The Chief was getting worried by the day. Times were "a changin'" for his khaki police force. The RoE or Rules of Engagement with the public were earlier so neatly laid out. Police regulated meetings and processions to the point of banning them, it enforced bans on some or the other book, newspaper or a political organization  and made a show of enforcement of the odd economic regulation pertaining to supply of essential commodities like rice or levy cement and the like. It also investigated cases when they were registered.

In the process it made a few arrests, did not discriminate between the sex of the protestors and evaders, nor between night and day. A bit of third degree was a given, disconnecting electricity and blocking newsprint supply to errant media elements was par for the course, and if the fellows on the streets became too uncontrollable , there was nothing what a good cane charge or even firing in the air , or for that matter even at the crowd , could not achieve. Besides, people were not expected to raise too much of hue and cry over missing persons. 

With the passage of time, quite a few practices of this Old School had changed but it had not rattled him much. Okay, you could no more allow people to go missing as courts were getting transfixed with this habeas corpus hocus pocus. The charm of the old handcuff was gone and he tried hard to recall the days when it was so easy for a mofussil police station constable to manacle and walk down the road with  two arrestees  or even carry them,  sitting on their haunches on the foot of the rickshaw, to the court . Arrests now entailed a lot of scriptural work , what with issuing of arrest memos and medical reports of daily check up. Conservatism had set in, and now male constables could not arrest women nor herd them together with the males in the same lock-up. You could not disturb a person's nocturnal privacy, privileges and pursuits and arrest him just like that, you had to wait till his body stirred and bowels moved.

The DoUF Directives of Use of Force had also undergone a change in the New Age policing .  No protest could ever be termed as violent because venting anger was a legitimate right of the public. The good old firing with muskets was now a big no- no -- whatever be the provocation. There was an Ucch Nyayalaya judgement which declared the  police regulation on procedure to open fire at an unlawful assembly as unconstitutional because the court refused to believe that the firing party commander could have  such an accurate and  telescopic vision so as to identify  the main instigator from a distance. As a result, police could now fire only in self defence which was not quite the same thing in affording legal immunity as would firing to disperse an unlawful assembly would. The new mantra was risk- averseness rather than risk -taking and the Principle of Minimum Use of Force was increasingly being sought to be replaced with one of No Force. 

But what had really got the Chief's goat was the emerging trend of PP or "photography policing", not insubstantially influenced by one of the new Western BPs or Best Practices . The police of a European country had decided that it was not quite worth it to open fire and maim or kill people when they burnt cars and shops because these things were insured and the victims could justifiably seek claim from the insurers. They just filmed these acts , started cases and requested the courts to issue summons.  One of his bright colleagues who had returned from a training course abroad and was now  heading the police force in a BIMARU state did precisely that when supporters of a caste leader went berserk during his funeral procession. Police restraint in the face of such expected and prolonged provocation was effusively complimented by various human rights groups and all criticism of police inaction was termed as reactionary, unfortunate and insensitive. 

PP made its way to police training curriculum and modernisation plans as more than riot drill, video recording of agitations came to be taught in PTCs or Police Training Colleges and more than riot drill equipment , video and other cameras came to be purchased  entailing such procedural irregularities that even the friendliest auditor could not help handing over a slew of paras in the annual audit reports. Soon a new brand of photographer policemen became the new poster boys of the department , filming violent protests rather than curbing them, and the more entrepreneurial ones, especially the Selfie experts,  took to filming couples in parks and seedy hotels, and became intrepid extortionists in the process. The Chief had intense dislike, and even morbid fear,  of PP because it had led to a sunderance within the department - all kinds of disgruntled and devious characters were shooting scenes of robust interrogation, extramarital dalliances in police quarters, pithhoo drills  and even colourful Mess parties that immediately made way either to the media or to the government.

But even these the Chief took in his stride. He knew that despite the New Age policing practices that had corrupted the majority and diluted the efficacy of the organization , he could still expect to gather around him a substantial number from the Old School  and stand in between violent, warring factions and rampaging crowds. But what was giving him sleepless nights were the activities of the  NWPs or the New Wave Protesters and the MORPOL or Moral Police , the restlessness also exacerbated by the gnawing feeling that these elements were infiltrating the police force as well which he also felt was due to extensive coverage given to them by the News Channels. 

Earlier, bans or sanctions were decreed and promulgated by the government , but now prohibitory orders could be passed by non- government actors like the MORPOLs. Some of them had  issued orders against kissing  and all forms of PDAs or Public Demonstration of Affection, some had started to raise awareness against the evils of indecent  dressing and also prescribed dress codes for women in line with Sanskriti, Sabhyata and Shariat. While many complied out of fear, a very large number borrowed from western forms of protests which were flowing freely on the cyberspace . Soon a train of hokchumban kisses hooted past the streets , the city promenades and boulevards  reverberated with footfalls of SlutWalk and when LGTB issues also got entwined like serpents in heat, colourful processions of NWPs with colourful placards and body paints and tattoos lit up the towns and energised the TV channels to become more of an audio medium than visual.

It did not end there. Novel protests  to raise awareness of gender issues  dotted the country and what were earlier whispered in hushed tones monthly  were now displayed as protest symbols almost daily. Protestors were writing slogans on sanitary napkins and hanging all kinds of linen on gates and walls of public buildings and lamp posts. The Chief particularly disliked asking his men to remove such objectionable items as these were converting dour faced cops into a bunch of teenage gigglers with all kinds of double entendres flying about, especially when there were women police also around. 

After one NWP went about wearing a bra written Khuli Khidki  during a protest against a Vice Chancellor , similar cup cards soon replaced the placards in most campus unrests . The Chief's police once had a particularly harrowing time when, to placate the MORPOLs, it intervened to stop an act of "bra obscenity" by a few boys during a campus protest.

When the police party reached to seize the objects of "nuisance and indecency", the girl students demanded, through rings of cigarette smoke,  of the police to show where it was written that men could not  wear bras, in which legal statute the bra was mentioned as obscene , and if wearing it was obscene, why were the policewomen wearing it, and if at all bras  were to seized, were the police trained to alphanumber, label and pack them. Finally, inspired by lofted notions of gender equality, the girls said that if the bras were to be seized from the person of the boys, they had to be seized from the girls as well, and inspired by TV footage of Jal Samadhi protests, they locked their elbows with the boys and formed a ring. Naturally the police, both male and female, not used to opening bras in public, bid a hasty retreat amidst raucous catcalls and wolf whistles from the girls and disappointment writ large on the boys.

Incidents like this were happening all too frequently, the Press ridiculed, the government fumed, and the PP poster boys increasingly upped the pressure to yield to their brand of "No Action, Only Photographic Prosecution" policing. Then one day one of his batch mates , now retired,  came over and asked him to hang up his boots and walk in the sunset.

" Yaar, why don't you opt for premature retirement. I am sure the police will also get a favourable OROP if they protest properly, which should not really be a problem for them," Gopu told him one day at the Mess  where a small batch reunion was in progress.

" No, let me just dig in and stay," he said to no one in particular, and just stared at this cellphone, an old one without a camera. 

THE SMELL OF PUJO

When is a good time to flag the Durga Puja , or simply the Pujo, in Kolkata? Since  I don't leave Kolkata during this period, I am not off to a quick  July-August start , firming up the travel arrangements,  like so many others. Unlike many,  I don't quite  consider the Vishwa Karma puja as the trigger- even though it has the elements of chanda, pandal( to rhyme with candle) , thakursthapana  and visrajan.  Earlier, when I used to stay in a government housing estate in Ballygunge Circular Road, the residents' committee whose secretary was my wife would start early to organise and I would be sucked in, but now I don't stay there any more. For the last few years, the on-your-mark-get-set-go gunshot has been either  the publication of Pujo articles in newspapers or Sharadiya Sale graffiti on shops or sometimes even a  bad traffic jam on account of roadside pandal construction. 

This year , it has been a Whatsapp forward a couple of days ago in the form of a delightful ditty  that has  brought in the heady scent, sights and sound of the Pujo. Somehow I had never heard it before. It is a song composed by the late maestro Salil Choudhary O Aaye  re chhute aaye, pujor gondho esechhe ( Hark , the smell of pujo is here) which was sung by his daughter Antara way back in 1977 but has recently been remixed . The remix is an animation video , and I sometimes wonder whether the frames were inspired by sketches which the incomparable composer  would draw  in his spare time.

The animation is wonderfully evocative -  blue skies with the odd race of clouds, green paddy fields dotted with the white kaash phool at the edges,  cascades of shiuli blossoms , dance of the bees, excitement of children as they watch the short train of the flutist, the cymbal boy and the dhaki go past. A line in the  first stanza is lyrically onomatopoeic- dhang kur kur dhang karakur, batti bejechhe. Yes, despite the united colours of pandals and pratimas, Lal paar sarees and panjabis, the tarpan and the mesmeric rendition of mahishasur mardani , the triumph -of -truth- over- evil didactic , the smell and sight of shiuli and the dhunucchi, sindoor khela and visarjan and the gastronomic excesses,  Durga Puja for me is also a Festival of the Sound of the Dhhak. It announces, attracts, engages, energises  and strings the Pujo proceedings.

My fascination for the dhaak goes back to October, 1989 when as a young trainee, bunking training at Barrackpore, I had reached Sealdah Station along with my batch mate, the irrepressible Herman Prit Singh.As the two of us emerged out of this mad mad  Sealdah station building , we were struck, almost like a bolt of lightning, by a terrific crescendo as hundreds of  drummers went about their business. It appeared as if the whole was gripped with a singular activity and purpose - of every drummer or dhakia announcing himself loudly in unison. The dhak is the large drum that men hang around their necks and play with two thin sticks to infuse the frenzied rhythm into listeners.

So captivated were we that we postponed our purpose of bunking- I to meet my young wife tucked away in Ballygunje Circular and he to visit his Mamaji in Elgin Road.  Instead, we  bought two bhaands or earthen cups of chai and sipped slowly to let ourselves soak in the atmosphere. There was no urgency to get away. Besides the fury of sound was the riot of colours of bird feathers that were attached to these huge drums and the plumes on the dhakis' headresses - animal rights  activists had not made their presence felt fully by then. We found out that these dhakis had come from different villages and hamlets from Midnapur, Birbhum, Bankura, North 24 Parganas and even Murshidabad. - and were just displaying their wares to be picked up by the many Pujo organisers. Enquiries made, music and madness enjoyed, tea finished, the trance broken, we went away.

But the dhakis never left us. Wherever we stayed, Burdwan, Barasat, Durgapur, Siliguri, Krishnanagar, and finally at Ballygunje Circular , the dhaki and his assistant, a 'bell boy' ( playing the bell metal or cymbal) would wake us up to the smell of shiuli or harsingar flowers that wafted intoxicatingly during those early , and moderately nippy , hours - a bit like the azaan .

And while the morning perambulation of the duo was accompanied by slow rhythmic sounds, the tunes would become faster as the days proceeded - to ramp up the more energetic ceremonies of Durga Puja like chokkhu daan (eye presentation), patha boli (goat sacrifice), bisarjan (immersion ceremony), sandhya arati (evening offerings), sandhipuja (worshiping at the conjunction of two phases) and the dhunuchi dance.The annual farewell to the dhaki was always after the Bhasan or Visarjan to which the duo accompanied me each of the eight years I personally went to Babu Ghat. From Shashthhee to Dashami, the two were part of the para - just like the pandit and his assistant. 

I would chat with the dhaki. He was from Birbhum, a short, thin, wiry, dark and surprisingly quiet for a man who could bring his dhak to a frenzied pitch. His ancestors were dhakis on the rolls of Malla kings of Bishnupur. Daily pujas were organised for the deities in the palace and the dhakis played a significant role and besides, there was a custom of making announcements of various government programmes through beating of drums - dhol shaharat. But now, the practitioners of this hereditary profession were leaving due to the small performing season and competition from electronic music and bands. And a day would come, he prophesized, when the rising cost of mango wood would push the dhaak makers to use aluminium instead. It will no longer sound the same. This is one doomsday prophecy I would never wish comes true.