High Road Robbery

To recount a story which no doubt many Indians here would have gone through or will go through in their lives at least once would no doubt be an exercise in futility but my first experience of this is indeed, to mince words here, exhilarating. It was a beautiful Saturday morning on which my friend and I decided to take the bike out and go to a Tata Indicom showroom to get his phone fixed. (And when I say bike I mean a little scooty pep + that I have “borrowed/stolen” from a literally “little/tiny” client(and I mean her height here))) The economics of it became that it was either go about 10 kms further and fix the phone for 100 bucks or buy a new phone for 700. Adventurous that we were and the fact that we didn’t know Pune, we decided to go for a ride. Getting lost and turned later, we found ourselves on a bridge with no entry for two wheelers apparently although there were many two wheelers on the same bridge. Just at that moment, the policeman appears out of nowhere stops us and takes our keys. Here follows the conversation between the three of us(my friend, me and the policeman)Warning alert, in most of this moi was completely useless and thanks to my friend its all good.

Police: Show me your licence(Translated from hindi/marathi to English most of this)!
Me: No sir, I don’t have a licence.
Police: Come along, drag your vehicle and park it at the police station, come along(in a loud and bellowing voice).
Me: Yes sir. (In a sotto voce to my friend, How much money do you have, I have about 20 bucks in my purse? Also the thought running through my head was, ditch the bike and run, its not mine anyway)
Friend: I have some, it should be enough
Me: Sir, please let us go, we didn’t know it was no entry for two wheelers.
Police: Nothing doing, keep the bike and quietly go on your way. Tell me your name.
Friend: Sir, this is our first time in Pune, we were in a hurry that is why we had to take the bike from our friend.
Police: Show me the bike papers!
Me: Sir its in the bike. (Little did I know that they weren’t, and that the bike was uninsured and it failed a pollution test)
Police: You people are driving around a bike with no licence and papers and all!
Me: Yes sir, but please let us go sir. Please don’t book a case against us.
Police: Nothing doing. Here look at the fines you people have to pay.(Its in Marathi which we didn’t know, so he made up no’s based on things I suppose). It comes out to 1700 bucks.
Me: (To my friend in sotto voce), pay the policeman that much money and lets get out of here.
Friend: Sir, please sir, we were trying to find Mangalwar peth and got lost, sir we cannot pay that much right now. Please let us go.(Finally the policeman comes around and asks)
Police: How much can you people pay?
I take out my purse and find that even the twenty bucks I thought I had was missing.
Police: Chalo pick up the bike from the commissioners office. Get out
Friend: (He quietly removes a 500 at which point I see he has more money as well)
Me: Give him whatever he wants, how much ever you have, just give it to him. Give him the purse.
Friend: (In an exasperated tone) Shut up and let me negotiate. Get out of the way
Me: (In a very meek voice) Yes, yes.
Police: 600 rupees and all this could be forgotten
Friend: Yes sir.
Now the policeman changes his tone.
Police: Sir, where do you have to go? (He shows us the directions each time calling us sir and lets us go)

After that, we decided to turn tail, head back and buy a new phone which my friend curses me for. However, I suppose it is one experience all of us go through in our lives, and no matter how many times you hear of it from other people, it is still harrowing nonetheless.

And now breaking off from that story into a different mode of thought altogether, I started wondering about what a value system means and what it is supposed to be. Is it religion or is it personal or is it one that is imposed by a society, friends, family or yourself. This came into being mainly after being called conscience-less being by my manager as a joke, but I figured maybe it is. As a child of two religions, I grew up with two different belief systems whose fundamentals about good and evil are the same, yet different. I started wondering about what are values essentially? Is it being honest, being loyal, being fair and just, or believing in what you do? Not to philosophize at this point, but wondering about it made me think that the choices you make are what defines your value system. Whether the values you hold are right or wrong is not what I am debating about but rather what is it that defines that system. I suppose when you choose upon a particular course of action, you make the choice based on a certain rationale. Whether that “certain rationale” is rational or not is again open to debate, but that “certain rationale” is what the value system is I feel.

At any rate, books that I have been reading. One book that I have read just two days back would include an arbitrary book by Mills and Boone. No offense, but the less said the better about that. Otherwise, other readings would include “The Future of War” which was an enlightening read on what warfare is about, and how it has changed, how rules of engagement and technology has changed the battlefield yet kept the basic tenets of warfare the same. It is mainly about the US military and how US policies are meant to maintain the American hegemony. Other than that, a book called “Statecraft” by Margaret Thatcher, the iron lady herself. It is an assessment of world conditions from a political, economic and military point of view. It is a pretty interesting read as one of the things she deals with is the view of the Middle East from a European point of view and how they see Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.