Quandary of a Police Department

Riding my bike on a cloudy evening always gives me immense pleasure. With the cool breeze hitting my face, I will always be racing against time trying my best to sneak into gallis and space between vehicles to ensure that I reach the destination as soon as possible without getting wet. Having spent most of my life in Bangalore, a cloudy evening has always been an all time gift. It was one such evening where I was racing home after office at around 8PM. I just happened to encounter a red signal at the Lalbagh west gate. Very unusual of me, I jumped the signal (had done this after months though) and to my bad luck, there was this Head Constable (HC) Sidayya waiting for me with his boss!

I was stopped right away and I promptly paid him Rs.100 upon acknowledgement of a receipt. One more individual followed me and he too was stopped; but to my surprise, he was allowed to pass through. Then was my time to protest the act of not filing against the other person. I put the stand of my bike and set out to quarrel with the HC. After a hot initial talk, the conversation turned into a discussion and the funniest part was it turning into a grievance session where the HC ended up letting out his frustrations on the traffic police operational inefficiency!

The traffic police are set daily targets of around Rs.3000 - Rs.4000 depending on the inflow of traffic in the area of operation. The night duty policemen detecting the drunken driving case have a target of Rs.5000 per night! That day, there was a high profile meeting of the politicians near the Vasavi School and hence our Siddayya and his boss were asked to do the traffic control duty on this day till 11 PM in the night though his house was 35Kms away. It was his boss’s wedding anniversary that day and he was there on the streets controlling the traffic flow since 9 in the morning! He had to literally beg his higher authorities to leave for the day as he had still not met his daily target.

Now, isn’t this frustrating! To add more to it is the fact that they are not given even a single leave in a month and they have to work for 6 days in a week after being paid peanuts! Now, where will anybody get motivation to work under such an environment? Seeing all this, our Sidayya rejected a promotion to the post of a Sub Inspector few years back. This is the current motivational level of the traffic police! This is not just the case of Siddayya or his boss here. It is the question of the entire police department. Even the area police departments have the same issue. Their targets are in terms of crimes though.

It is a basic HRM related issue which may be a bigger bomb if not addressed as soon as possible. Considering the criticality of the department, it is very important for the government officials to consider this as a high priority issue. If the issue is kept apart and one goes to think about the approach of tackling crime, it Is very shameful to see the targets set on the amount of crime done! It seems as though the basics of prevention being better than cure have been forgotten. Hope the new age policemen are allowed to have a say in things and a more intelligent system in terms of planning emerges. But I definitely praise the act of innovation of the police where they have adopted Bluetooth and other advanced technicalities for operations!

PS: Names changed for security purposes

Amedikallu - An early monsoon trek…

It was the first week of July’10 and I was held up with a little extra work on hands. But as always, ‘The woods were calling…’ I happened to have a random check on the BMC website and found an unseen name – Amedikallu. I was not sure of a 2 day trek initially and had almost decided for a night trek on a Saturday. But eventually I could not avoid the desire to be amidst the Western Ghats. Amedikallu through BMC on the 3^rd and 4^th of July it was!

Amedikallu is a part of the thick shola forest range offered by the Charmadi Ghat section of the Western Ghats. Amedikallu has a huge monolith at the top which appears like a giant turtle and 3 huge stones which give an appearance of a stove. This peak is surrounded by many other important peaks of Western Ghats. It is considered to be one of the toughest in Karnataka and is a two day trek if one wants to make it to the peak comfortably.

All set to go, I got a call at 10:15PM on the 2^nd of July. Kiran, our super enthusiastic trek coordinator from BMC had a quick check with me on the people waiting to board the Swaraj Mazda. After a small round of introduction, we took off from the city life that night and after a super bumpy drive, we arrived at the home stay at Arasinamakki near Dharmasthala (http://streamofjoy.com). It is very simple to reach there. You can catch local buses also to reach this place. The route is (from Bangalore - 260 KM): Hassan- Sakleshpur- Gundya- Enjira (take right diversion here)- Arasiamakki. You can always contact Mr.Kashinath ( 09343206307, 08251-268225 or 09845088088) for any details of it. I can fill this blog by describing the home stay alone, but the best part which I found to be really worth is sitting on the banks of the Kapila river flowing next to the huts where we were staying.

It took us only 30 minutes to freshen up as most of us decided not to take bath that day (provided that it will rain anyway during the trek; else you will anyway sweat). This is the best part of a trek for me where you don’t give a damn about anything else! Nevertheless after a little round of loitering around and an early morning photography, it was time for nice hot ‘taTTe Idlis’ (Plate Idlis - A South Indian dish usually consumed during breakfast or as an evening snack) and amazing ‘Coconut Chutney’. We then packed our lunch and set out for the trek. The 10 of us, Saikat (the guy who can eat anything for existence), Abhijit (he looked like a nerd initially ;)), Sudhansu (the odIya babu), Pradeep (the to be IITK grad), Kiran (the tiger), Sekhar (the Chennai musketeer), Guru (the silent killer), Animesh (Animation though :D), Deepika (the joyous lon(v)ely lady) and myself were accompanied by the trek coordinator Kiran and a local guide.

It was a pretty decent start at 8:30 in the morning. One usually needs to go through the shola forest range to reach the peaks at the Western Ghats. Though we knew that leeches will be there, we were not much bothered about it until we saw them climbing our shoes. Then came the series of ‘S**ts’ and ‘F**ks’ from all of us. The forests were so damp that there were leeches falling from the wet trees, every few steps we took, we were assured of shaking legs with one leech atleast… But after a while, we got used to it and we had mastered the art of plucking them away without salt or fire.

After we crossed the forest range, the contact with the leeches came down and we were amidst the elephant leaf filled grasslands. Since it was early monsoons, the height of the grass was not much. But if a five footer visits the place post monsoons, the group will surely have a tough time locating him! The grass was sharp enough to cut your skin upon application of a little pressure. Around 12 noon we halted to have a quick lunch. After the lunch, 8 of us decided to move ahead and the remaining 4 stayed back. After climbing some distance, myself and Guru decided to stay back as the rocks were really slippery and we took a call to halt there for a while and join the group of 4 in sometime. I would love to visit the place one day to complete it though!

The wait for the 6 of them who had gone ahead almost to the summit was looking like never ending. The weather became tough. Rains, mist and breeze looked to be a deadly combo offer by the Mother Nature. A little bit of internal heat generation via ‘Pranayam’ helped me to stay without a jacket here. I realized the importance of keeping your body metabolism intact. Later we decided to descend before the others returned. As we were returning, we heard the voices of the rest of the people. So, the group of 12 again started to climb down. Except for a few places of only grass, we were able to figure out the way. A few of us decided to literally run through the forest range as we were not ready to treat the leeches after the rains. This was another amazing event where I found myself running alone amidst the thick forest range. We had the pre-historic communicators (via quick shouts) to ensure that all of us are heading the same way.

Finally, at 4 PM, we were back to the place where we started from just to discover that a few leeches are there inside our shoes! After a quick cleanup, we left to the home stay where hot ‘Mangalore bajjis’ (A Mangalore special evening savory) was waiting for us! A good round of talk and dinner saw us through the time before we slept peacefully.

‘Get us guys!’ was the call at sharp 6:30AM in the morning. It was Deepika waking us all up in the morning to ensure that the next day’s itenary is not affected. ‘is badmaash ko flush out karo!’ was the next set of phrase I remember where Abhijit and Animesh were on a mission to kill the leeches inside the room! Before we set out for the day’s activities we had a very good breakfast of Dosas where Mr.Kashinath informed me that the previous night a snake just went behind me while I was having dinner. I was like damn, I missed it again. Till date I have not seen a snake in its natural habitat…

A quick visit to the Shishileshwara temple (Fish temple) and the lovely stream of the kapila river leading to Dharmasthala made our morning on the day 2. We left for the day heading out to the city thinking that the activities are done for two days. But the TT driver proved us to be wrong when a Tata Sumo banged the bumper in the heavy traffic of Bangalore. A 20 minute negotiation and we were done with it. It was time for me to take leave from this amazing set of people with whom I had another memorable weekend!

Cheers,

Shreyas