Modern Day Highway Robbers

On the eve of Meter Jam day, here is my two penny contribution to make life a less corrupt experience.
I took an auto from the College campus that had just dropped a customer near the College back gate. As I travel very frequently by auto, I got into this auto and directed the driver to drive me to my destination. We travelled via the back gate, and he dropped me at a hotel very near the local police station.
It was then the drama started.
The normal fare from back gate is Rs.25 (which itself is a bit exorbitant – it should be minimum fare). This guy asked me for Rs. 30. I said I stick to my principles and would not pay anyone more or less than the standard. He refused to accept the Rs. 25 I gave him. He asked me to come to the police station. I refused to give him the Rs. 30, and neither did I think I had any business to be in a police station. So I told him, if you want to lodge a complaint, please go right ahead. A policeman was standing nearby. When I tried to gain his attention, he just pointed his fingers to the police station with a lack of interest.
Since I could not deal with this person anymore, I gave up and entered the hotel for supper. I saw him standing outside the hotel calling on his mobile, most probably other fellow drivers. Soon this driver entered the hotel, caught me by my ID tag and loudly read my name. When I protested, he let go and left.
When I came out of the hotel, this same driver was standing near the entrance surrounded by a few other auto drivers, his cronies. Auto drivers are sometimes like crows. When one is fallen, they all flock together.
These four guys started harassing me asking for the 30 rupees, first mildly saying, why quarrel for such a small amount, and then getting physical. Somehow I managed to escape the clutches of these goons, walked to the local auto stand and returned to college in another auto.
When I was in class for about two hours, I had a surprise. There was a policeman in the class! He said that an auto driver had lodged a complaint and he had come to investigate. How did he know where to find me? From my name the auto driver had given to this "Sherlock Holmes", and then the location from where I was picked up, made the rest easy for him. I was embarassed in front of my colleagues, my teacher and most of all our college principal. And those who didn’t know what was going on were wondering what a policeman was doing inside a College class. I told the policeman I would report to the local police station the next day morning as he requested.
Some of my friends volunteered to come with me to the police station the next day, wasting their precious time and money in the process. But I declined their offer of help, though noble. If they came, I thought it would be viewed as an altercation not between me and the driver but the College community and local auto drivers.
Luckily, my uncle lived in that locality and I went with him to the police station the next day.
We were presented before the station in charge and soon we were joined by the auto driver himself. It was a war of wits.
The auto driver argued that since he was expected to be paid the return fare, 30/- was reasonable. We raised the point that there was no designated auto stand at the College back gate. Where was he returning to? Back from the town or to the town?
The police conceded our point. We also raised the issue of this guy catching hold of me by the tag and also the harassment by his cronies.
The police asked me to pay him only Rs. 25 as that was what was expected in such a situation.
Who lost in the process? I lost my four hours of my productive time, but stood by my priciples, the policemen wasted time futilely. The autodriver? He wasted nothing in the process. He did not even lose his honor for in the first place he did not have any!
What was he trying to achieve? Prove that goondaism against an educated college student would hold inside a police station? Really beats logic.
I agree not all auto drivers are like the person I described, but they are the few who give a bad name to the lot.
Luckily I have an uncle in the locality. But I dare not think what would have befallen a hapless colleague from a far off place with no proper person for support.

Of Arson and Violence

In the wastelands of Western Vidharbha, in a small hamlet, in the eastern shadows of Maharashtra's vast geography, you will be surprised to come across a hillock on which are perched a dozen, tall futuristic buildings. This is the private Science and Technology college that would not have existed had it not been for the fact that this was the village that gave the state of Maharashtra two Chief Ministers. In the midst of parched farmlands and dry wasteland sprung up a miracle in architecture, equipped with one of the best scientific equipment in the country, well skilled lecturers from every part of India, and creme de la creme alumni of the local government college of engineering.
It was no wonder that the reputation of this college spread far and wide. The college had prospective candidates from as far flung states from Bengal to Gujarat and from Kerala to Kashmir.
All went well for a long time, though the college inmates segregated themselves state-wise and then caste-wise, thereby preserving their sometimes aggressive culture instead of assimilating the local. There was always someone from this elite colleage who topped the ranks in science and technology.
A cult of Muslims had made their home in this god forsaken place many centuries ago. They were mostly small time businessmen and consequently higher up the social pyramid. They differed in physique and you could say they belonged to some different race. While the locals were dark skinned and stunted, these muslim migrants were tall and of a very fair color. It was as if there had been an exodus many many years back from some Himalayan region to this wasteland which they had now decided to call home.
The females of this muslim clan were fair skinned, tall and had aristocratic features with grey blue eyes much like Persian women, though they did wear the burkah, some of them the hijab and some even the purdah in the intolerable heat.
It was for one beautiful damsel, the daughter of a wealthy muslim businessman, that a Kashmiri student(lets call him Vikki, son of a DSP in Kashmir) of the college fell for. He promsised to marry the girl and take her off to his native Kashmir once his studies were over. He consulted this young beauty's parents and they readily agreed, considering the fact that they were both muslim and shared a common culture in the vague sense.
But it was the girl's brother who did not take it that easy. He took umbrage to the fact that Vikki and his new girlfriend had take a vacation to Kashmir, with the girl's father's permission of course.
Vikki was stabbed twice in the back by his love's brother when he was out in town one evening. News, or it could be rumour reached the college that Vikki was hanging betweeen life and death in the local hospital.
The Kashmiri conglomerate at the college took serious note of the matter and held an impromptu meeting. They were soon joined by Delhiites, Punjabis... and everyone soon forgot their cultural differences and were out on the road in the mid of night, baying for local blood, calling out "Revenge!", deciding that the event was an insult to the college inmates. There was rioting and arson. Several shops, the very shops whose services they availed of, the local video parlors, cigarette vending shops went up in flames. The Head of Department, computer Science lit a cigarette as he coolly watched tea stalls, ramshackle eating joints, laundry shops going up in flames in a matter of hours just in front of the college gates.
Police arrived in the wee hours of the morning with arson continuing to the early hours. The policemen were small in number; they were local police not trained to handle something of this magnitude.
The unequipped police were pushed back by bricks and stones thrown by the college inmates. Some of the more enterprising and shady of the Gorakhpuris were ready with country made guns(katta) they had smuggled in, and others had cycle chains; and hacksaw blades sharpened at the edges in the mechanical department's workshop to serve as knives.
The police force that arrived that afternoon, however, were not the ordinary policemen these rampaging students had faced earlier. These were the State Reserved Police Force(SRPF) specially trained in handling riots. When the rioting students welcomed the SRPF with stones and cycle chains, they fired at the crowd. Some Kashmiri youth, who had been in riot situations in their native Kashmir before, spread the rumor that the firing was just a ruse, the rubber bullets would not harm anybody.
But what the SRPF fired that day were real bullets, and two Kashmiri students were fatally shot.
Seeing their fallen comrades, the rampaging college students fled in all directions.
As usually what happens in such situations, it was the innocent bystanders who were caught in the cross-fire. The real perpetrators of the riot locked themselves in their hostel rooms and it was 210 mostly innocent students who were simply witness to the goings-on, who were led to the Central Prison that bloody day.
After one month in the central prison treated as ordinary criminals, sleeping next to proclaimed offencers and sharing their meals with murderers, these poor young men were released on bail from judicial custody. The political guardian of the district being a high profile hot-shot hushed up the whole matter afraid of a political undertone. Not a single national newspaper reported it, except a miniscule local newspaper that published a small column that everybody soon forgot about.