Thursday, October 28, 2010

An Act of Violence

Right now, all the Hindi NEWS channels have a new scoop. They are busy talking about a particular Auto-Rickshaw Driver in Mumbai, who doused a traffic cop with kerosene and then set fire to him.

While the act is hideous & violent, one can imagine the anger of the auto-rickshaw driver. It almost smells of the cumulative angst of the entire auto-rickshaw driver community who continuously get harassed by these traffic cops for the smallest of their follies. Having travelled in auto-rickshaws, I myself have been witness to these unwarranted acts of harassment on couple of occasions.

In the auto-rickshaw driver community, this particular driver will probably become a hero. But, my fear is that cop-harassment instances will increase as a repercussion of this one incident. And that’s the inherent problem with any act of violence. It gets into a mindless loop.

ps: The cop is in the hospital recovering with 50% burns and the auto-rickshaw driver is the police-station, hopefully not getting beaten up.

13 comments:

achu said...

There is this film called Fallen Down. It stars Micheal Douglas about a middle-aged man who one day simply loses it and goes berserk for a period of 12 hours in the city. The character is honest, decent, tax-paying American who loses his job on that day and goes through a meltdown. The justifications are there but the director sets up a contrast. The senior police man is retiring that day (played by Robert Duvall). this is last case. and there were enough times in his life when he was close to a meltdown. Yet he held it together.

Well thats what life is about - Grace Under Fire. If you have it then you truly are the King man.

nkshirsa said...

the original concepts in a story called the break out , do read ! (itw not a break up its a break out kinda thing_

Pooja Nair said...

We know that these cops are terribly underpaid and understaffed and under-equipped.

Since this is the system they have to work around - they resort to eagerly waiting for drivers to break the law - to make their daily pocket money from. while we tackle this like a harmless tom&jerry game, auto/taxi drivers end up loosing a chunk of their daily wages to this!!

auto/taxi drivers in turn try to make their extra buck from customers. though this is not as rampant as we make it out to be. In mumbai, they are mostly sincere and stick to the meter...

It all stems from a flawed system. Teachers and cops should be paid highly as these are essentially the most important people in society!!!

And of course, your point taken Meraj. the risk with violence is that violence breeds further violence....

Ninad said...

I know that cops harass these auto and taxi drivers but these auto and taxi drivers are no less. They don't want to follow rules, I have heard of instances of their weird behaviour with women at odd hours. I am not saying all of them are bad. But neither cops nor these drivers can claim to be better than the other. Kisi ek ka side lene se koi fayda nahi.

meraj said...

@ achu, ive seen Fallen Down and its v nice and relevant in this context. youve so righly put...Grace under Fire is the true test.

@ fuzzylogicbaba, i didnt get you...sorry!

@ Pooja, it is a systemic flaw as pointed by you.

@ Ninad, i am just taking non-violence's side and neither the cop or the auto guy.

meraj said...

@ achu, isnt the movie called 'Falling Down'?

achu said...

@meraj u rite



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/

meraj said...

yeah...that's what i was thinking

nkshirsa said...

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=91093307&blogId=356462606

Furry Master said...

Bob cats over here in Sri Lanka do get harassed by the cops but they don't turn violent. Their anger is unleashed via protests and hartals.

meraj said...

@ Furry Master, thats a better approach than using violent measures.

nkshirsa said...

here's one non violent approach :)

andvicaversa.blogspot.com :)

nkshirsa said...

vice is a bads word after all right? :_