Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Any thoughts?

I was returning from the college to my house, Banerghatta road was rush as usual, one truck was parked on the road loaded with iron pipes. Parking on road, parking on no parking area is a normal thing in so called high tech city Bangalore. To my luck, as I crossed the truck from right, one of the pipe fell down just missing me, my scooty's wheel just slipped and I fell down from the scooty. One old Punjabi couple stopped by and helped me settling down, thank God, I found some people to share my grief. We noted the truck's number and tried calling 100. Now two scary looking guys came on a bike and started shouting and told they are the owner of the truck. They said sorry to me as if they are threating me saying , game is over, now go home and don't do anything about this. Incident over, as a dutiful citizen, I have informed about this to police by calling police control room dialing 100, after not of much wait , someone picked my call and started asking many questions, which I got to believed that it could be part of their process. I have answered all the queries and was assured that our dutiful cops will be coming to the spot as soon as possible. I waited for arround 20-25mins and left the place with the truck's and bike's number noted.
To my surprise, I got calls from Traffic police of my region and from cops who surprisingly visited the place, never thought that cops are really working. My conversation:
Cop: Said something in kannada(Local language in Bangalore,Karnataka)
Me: Didn't understand a bit except accident.
Cop: Tried to convince me to speak about the incident to him.
Me: errrrrrrr....didn't understand a bit, I know even if I explain, he won't be getting anything out of it.So asked him to give the phone to someone who understands English or Hindi.
Cop: Said something and cut the phone.

After sometime...I got a call again, now this time someone who understands and speaks hindi.
Cop: Is the truck there?
Me: (As if I am a superwoman, have power to stop the truck with 4-5 men on it, if so, why the hell should I have to call you idiots!) I said, I have left that place and truck was already left that place, when i called them.
Cop: Asked me to make a police complain in XYZ layout Traffic police station.
Me:OK.

Then me and my husband went to the above said Traffic police station.
Cop in that traffic police station: Asked about the incident.
Me: Explained the above incident.
Cop: Truck was parked, pipe fell down....it's a law and order case, traffic police can't do anything on this. You need to report in on same XYZ police station.
Me: Should the truck be parked on the busy road ?
Cop: Oh...mam, that's parking on no parking area, how much fine ? Rs.100/-. Case over!

If you have read the incident, you can easily figure out, it was all because the loaded truck was parked on the road, anything could have happened because of this.

Anyways, without much of argument we went to XYZ police station. In all Police station ultimate boss is not who sit inside, but the Boss is who sits outside, the constables. I don't understand why they give such a weired look and the way in which they talk to you, as if you are his maid. Such a horrible experience there, anyone who ever visited any Indian Police station can feel this.Most of the Police stations in India are like this. Some how we make our way inside to meet one sub-inspector, this miracle happen because that constable couldn't understand English/Hindi. Finally we explained all the incident again to the sub-inspector, now not to our surprise, he asked us to report this to the ABC police station as the incident happened in that area.

Still I wanted to report this incident, so we both went to the ABC police station, after asking many people and searching the way to the police station, we finally reached the place.The Police station is in such a place, that no one would ever want to go there, as no one would able to easily find that, no sign boards on the way.The approach road was not good, it was muddy. We wrote the complain on a piece of paper and came home with assurance that, they would inform us if they catch the truck :-)  I don't understand, if  they inform us, what should  we do ? Do we help them to teach how to tie the pipes or how to load stuffs on the truck or how to park on the road ?

Police didn't act actively because my wounds are not so serious to file one FIR against someone. As every time I explained them the incident, they were asking about the injuries! Though I was not sure against whom should i report, should it be the truck driver/owner, the traffic police in that region, the police,or the mayor or the system....etc.

I can remember one poet saying  Zindagi sasti he, maut kimti he yahan pe(Meaning: Life is cheap here, death is priceless). If something would have happened to me, cops would have acted seriously.This incident would have some value added to it, to make it eye opening for others, if I would have dead.

Now you reader, if you are sensible, tell me what you would do, if you land up in such a situation. How would you react to our so called system, which I don't understand, I wonder how it's operating for so many years, how people here are living with such idiots as their care takers.

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