We Need Be In a Police State

We Need Be In a Police State
                                 

                                   Nidhu Bhusan Das

            Since we are civilized, we must be guided by the norms of civilization. We need a police state. Our leaders may dismiss this suggestion as uncanny and take me to be a lunatic. They would chide me saying,” You are anti-independence and ignorant of the fundamental rights guaranteed in our constitution which is sacrosanct. You don’t deserve the rights and the status of a citizen.” I dare not contradict our versatile leaders who are our guardians and the protectors of our meaningful democracy.
            But this is what I am constrained to believe. I won’t share this belief. This is just my loud thought, a soliloquy which, I am certain, none will share if I tell. I see daily how we the civilized people in India depend on the police to remain disciplined. We cannot use the streets in the absence of the rule of the traffic police. Before the deployment of the police at traffic points and after they leave the posts we don’t care about the automatic traffic signals because we know the signals cannot catch us if we ignore them. The one- way lanes become the free-for-all space for driving along. Thus we create chaotic situation and invite accidents.
           We spite anywhere even when we are eloquent about environmental pollution. We are granted freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1) (a) of our constitution as a Fundamental right and merrily abuse the right. How? We fail to discharge our duties at offices ,spend time gossiping during working hours and/or coming late and leaving early don’t miss any opportunity to lecture on discipline, honesty and public service from the pulpit. We are vociferous against corruption in public life but fail to understand we, as individuals, are not free from corruption.
            We cannot do without the guardians of law and revel when we can destroy public property, disrupt public life in the name of public good. Our political bosses like guardian angels inspire us to do so striking works and destroying public property, as if we work for colonial masters and under colonial rule and the property we destroy does not belong to the nation. We occupy the roads halting traffic movement holding political rallies or wedding procession to exhibit our power and pomp. This is our dominant characteristic and tendency because we tend to believe we are civilized and know we are independent. We chant slogans and in the process lose the energy and will to work. This is the highlight and beauty of democratic values we hold dear and cite constitutional provisions to justify our actions in contravention and distortion of the same.
 I tend to believe people without pomp and power like me harbour the idea that we need be governed in a police state for a period as we need to be lessoned in democracy and civilization. But I am afraid I should not share this publicly to be counted and quarantined as a lunatic.
   



Frog’s Dream

                 Frog’s Dream
                         
                                          Nidhu Bhusan Das

          Professor Kola is the dean of the Faculty of Hypocrisy at the University of Imbecility in Frogland.The University is the only centre of excellence in the whole land. He is the Emeritus Professor of Frog-psychology and teaches frogs how to lie on their backs. He is known and respected as the Machiavelli of Frogland.He has a fascination for the term Mafia, which like Machiavelli has an Italian overtone. Professor Kola isn’t aware that Italy had been the birth place of European Renaissance in the wake of the fall of Constantinople, the Capital of eastern Roman Empire, in 1451 to the Turks. Nor has he heard of the Bengal Renaissance of the nineteenth century.
       Professor Kola has learnt to lie on his back and walk with upside down always dreaming of hypnotizing others to his profit and prospeirty. His four hands remain always suspended in the air. They are used as tentacles to catch the imbeciles living in Frogland.He claims he is a bibliophile. You cannot disbelieve. He takes all and sundry to his home where he has a stock of books he cannot read. To show his love for reading, he keeps books open on his huge table and when he shows he reads the books are always held upside down. This increases his importance to the visitors as they think this is the way of reading by great scholars. Once he lectured a visitor on Communication thus: “Your no,Kamanikason geret ata of waking on hed and lain on bek.I is a geret kamanikator.I is a motarkor of kooson popr of Kamanikason in d univociti.”The visitor from Apeland took pains to decipher the Froglandian English thus: “You know. Communication is a great art of walking on head and lying on back.I am a great communicator. I am a moderator of question papers of communication in the university.”
    Everyone and every political party and social organization likes this great scholar and learns from him with delight lollipop of knowledge. He has been warned by his grandpa Kola the Wise not to eat the fruit of knowledge because it is dangerous as aphrodisiac. The lollipop of knowledge keeps you unaware that you are naked. So the Apeland visitor sang his parting song:

     “I’ve met one in the queer land
      Who always chews lollipop
      Licks pages of books
      And never knows he’s nude
      But proud being the butt of joke.”


       When the visitor said ‘You are really an education mafia’, the professor smiled and said, “ Hapy..hapy!”

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