Rajiv Gandhi, Vehicles and I - Part 1

Read this article this morning.

After 15 years of the dastardly act, the LTTE has accepted the responsibility for assassinating Mr Rajiv Gandhi. It has also issued a public apology for the same and hoped to improve the ties between India and the LTTE. This comes hot on the heels of the EU ban of LTTE and the increased Sri Lankan Government's military action (and a purported military understanding between Indian and Sri Lankan governments).

But then, this blog is not to discuss who is right and who is wrong in this sad episode of South Asian history. In fact, as my son would like to ask, "Who started it first?" A typical answer could be a Nayagan-like "Enakku Theriyaleye!" ("I don't know!")
This post is more to narrate you the first of two comical situations that I had to face which were related to Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.

It was August 1991. I was just out of college and had joined this great multi-national software firm in Bangalore to develop software handling 'debits and credits' while until a few months ago, I was busy counting 'bits and bytes, electrons and neutrons' in the applied electronics course.

Well, Bangalore as you all know was great in those days. Very cool - literally and figuratively. I hear that it is chaotic nowadays - but then I have not been there for almost six years! Such is life!!!

We were lodging in a company accommodation in Jal Vayu Vihar - JVV (for those of you who are not familiar with Bangalore, JVV is one of the first set of apartment blocks which used to look like castles with their harsh unpolished granite outer walls, but great interiors). The place was about 5 km from MG Road and the only way to commute was by your two-wheeler.

I had a faithful TVS Champ (a 50-cc moped), which I used to call as Snoopy.

Snoopy was registered in Tamil Nadu - my home state. In India, if you move to a different state you have to re-register that vehicle and get a different number etc. But then this can be a hastle and you do not want to meddle with bureaucracy in any country - specifically in India. So I was running around in Bangalore on Snoopy with a Tamil Nadu registration number. Of course, if you get caught by the traffic policeman, he would take the obligatory 20-rupee note and let you drive away. [I believe that the numbers have changed but the process is still the same :-]

Fast-forward to action date....

On a Sunday, I was returning back to JVV in the late afternoon, after a hefty meal in one of the MG Road restaurants [Santrupti perhaps?].

Just as I was nearing JVV hoping to catch a nice little nap, a 'mama' (a traffic policeman affectionately called so in Tamil) appeared from nowhere and signalled me to stop.

As a true Indian, who has this great fear psychosis on seeing anything that borders on authority, I stopped immediately, almost whipping out my purse to lose a twenty.

It is worth repeating what transpired then...

TP (Traffic Policeman): Enu idhu TN (tamil nadu) registration-a? (What is this? Tamil Nadu Registration vehicle?)
Me: Avudhu. (yes)TP: Licence Idhiya? (Do you have a licence?)
Me: Illa-ri. Maney nalli idhey (No sir. It is at home.)

Here I have to digress: Guys don't even think that I could speak so much Kannada in two months; mine was as pidgin as it could get; I was the guy who went to a fruit seller and asked 'Baley Hennu' instead of 'Baley Hannu'; Incidentally Hennu means girl/woman in Kannada and I don't even want to know what the fruit-seller understood - he did give me a crazy look ;-)
TP: RC book?
Me: Same as above.
TP: Enu kalasa? (what is your job?)
Me: Citicorp Software
TP: City Corporation-a?

By now, my right hand had already reached the back-pocket of the trousers to extract the purse and the panacea - twenty rupee note. But then our man turned out to be a Holmes. He threw a real googly.

TP: Chashma thagade bidu (remove your glasses)
Me: huh? (I could not understand what he was trying to say)
TP: Chashma... Chashma (signed me to remove my glasses)
Me: (removed my glasses)... still could not understand what he was trying to drive at...

Now the TP looked at my face and eyes with great interest for about ten to fifteen seconds and asked me to get down from my vehicle. I was still confused. Got down from the vehicle and pulled it to the side of the road.

I was trying my pidgin Kannada to ascertain what was running through his mind and he kept repeating: "Neevu Inspector meet maada beku..." (You have to meet the inspector)

Murkier and murkier.

You don't go about talking to traffic inspector for having an other-state registration, do you?

Then the officious looking traffic inspector (TI) materialized after about 15 minutes.
He walked up to me and repeated the same questions above in pidgin English... thank God for such small mercies!

After another round of facial inspection (I wish I had shaved that morning :)), he threw another googly at me:

TI: Is your mother tongue Tamil?
Me: Duh! Yes.
TI: Have you been to Sri Lanka before?
Me: Huh? Never.

It was when it struck me.
You see, I have a problem.

I was born with congenital ptosis condition; for the medically uninitiated it is called the droopy eyelid syndrome. Now added to that there was a bit of 'lazy eye' situation - all on the left eye. It was corrected via plastic surgery sometime in 1982 but what God giveth, you can only alter that much. So, a casual onlooker will still wonder what is wrong with my left eye.

Round about that time in history, there was this guy Sivarasan, who was the master-mind behind the heinous act of Rajiv assassination. He was killed in an encounter in a Bangalorean suburb sometime right after the assasination. The guy was supposed to have had only one eye - and hence his sobriquet One Eyed Jack.

These poor TI and TP were probably doing their job much too zealously; they must have thought that Sivarasan had actually escaped the encounter and now they have caught him again; promotions and rewards must have danced in front of their eyes when they saw me !

Immediately, I went on a big defence of telling the inspector of how I am an important computer (sic) professional with an important company - handing in my business card to him.

He looked at it once and then his manner mellowed down a bit; what is it with the business cards? They don't even have your photograph!!

I laid it thick by asking him to send his subordinate with me to JVV and check the documents. This brightened him a bit and he ordered the TP to go with me and check the documents. The TP climbed on to Snoopy reluctantly - he was seeing the promotion and awards slipping and probably he was going to be richer by the twenty at best!

After a few metres of travelling, the TI yelled at us and asked us to stop. He called us back and told the TP something in Kasturi Kannada which went way above my head. He then nodded at me and asked me to go; but only after sternly warning me not to travel without my documents thereafter!

The last leg of that journey to JVV was the shortest and fastest that I had ever done. Needless to say, the copies of documents were with me always ever since. I think that was the only time that I escaped the brush with the police, without any associated lightening of the purse :-)