Blog@GraceJunction

India. A Monday morning in the May of 2008. It’s his first day at duty and the only thing on his mind is: “to make a difference“. He is determined to be unlike the ones before him. He would be clean, uncorrupted and only stand for the law and the rules. He will enforce it and propagate it. He takes up position at one of the main traffic junctions.

He soon realises that culprits are ‘dime a dozen’. They are everywhere. Most riders are without their helmets. Some drivers do not have seat belts on. Others have dark films on it. Still others have no colors prescribed by the law on the lights, bumpers or the back. Still others have heads tilted while riding and many a drivers are juggling while driving - trying to finish the most important telephone call of their life. Many more are standing in the wrong lanes! God only knows how many of them have licenses.

Our man is confused as to whom to catch first. Then he spots the loading rickshaws with overload and over sized goods and the passenger rickshaws stuffed with God knows what - oh no….its stuffed with kids! Then he spots the bicycle riders who are ever jumping the signal or crossing the ‘Stop’ lines and the pedestrians who are walking everywhere else but the footpath. Even as he is still trying to prioritise his catch, there comes, in all his majesty, the city’s elephantine public transport bus, and this fellow, he cares for no one, because one of his relatives owns the road and another owns the public tranport system and still someone else is a top cop! Our man sees his determination evaporating in the rising hot sun even as all these events add to the heat.

He remembers his oath and the promises he made to himself and then jumps to catch the first offender who come across him. It is a loading (goods) rickshaw driver. He has stuff in his vehicle that is bulging out from all sides! The driver starts begging and lementing. Our man, the custodian of the law, takes out his book. It was a fresh and new beginnning in the battle against lawlessness. He asks for all the legal papers of this driver. He gets them all, but yet he has stuff in his vehicle that were dangerously placed. The fine is Rs.200. As he begins to start filling the slip, the driver makes his pleas more stronger and keeps telling about his children and his poor home situation et cetera.

As our man tried to reason with him and tell him about why he was taking a stand in favor of the law, he sees scores of other offenders passing by, some more meaner, more arrogant and more careless than the subject in front of him. Suddenly the driver flips forward a Rs.20 note and begs our man to let him go. The first reaction is that of anger and fury. “Please adjust with this. This is all I have got. Please sir. If you take that Rs.200 fine, my kids won’t eat today. Please show mercy.”

Justice or mercy. Our man is confused. If he let’s him go scot free, it’s not good. He will continue doing it and perhaps hurt someone else in the long run. If he agrees for the Rs.20, there is no clause in the rulebook by which he can book him for that paltry a fine. What to do? He finally relents and assumes the role of a Saviour. That looked the most rational, pragmatic and reasonable step. It was not a moment of corruption but a moment of redemption. Redemption for a family and yet a minor punishment of Rs.20 so that he never repeats the crime again!

The driver is Rs.20 short but he speeds off the location with a smile! He just saved Rs.180 and his acting skills have done him good again. Our man is richer by Rs.20 but he decides to give it away to someone! Did he? We never know. Maybe he himself had an urgent need coming up! And what about the driver, did he mend his ways? He went away more confident about his assumption: ‘We can buy any policeman on the street for Rs.20′!

After some time our man starts sulking and thinking. The feeling of glory was only fleeting, he was rather feeling very guilty. But what to do!? The reality was so convincing. He had no option but to do what he did! It was a new beginning but no where near the way he wanted it to be. The day was young. He was determined to make up with some stricter enforcements. But during the day, sparing a few really deserving offenders, most of the people managed to argue their way out of paying their fine, because our man cared. Cared not just for the law but also for the people and their realities. He knew the pressures on an average man, how squeezed he was, with how much difficulty each month passed. ‘Live and let live’, he thought.

With each passing day, the custodian of the law was almost assuming the role of a judiciary. He was not enforcing the law. He was making his decisions on the fine, the seriousness of the offense, and the amount of the penalty, all by himself. He was making his own laws. In time, from a preachy mode, he was reaching a place, where he cared just about himself. He enjoyed the power he had over people and he liked it most when he let offenders of the hook with small fines. The story under the sun, continued as before. There was no difference made except in our man.

So his act of ‘Mercy’ was no good after all! For anyone!

I know for sure, that no one likes this man. No one respects this man. They fear him for the authority he has. But there is not an ounce of reverence. He is made fun of in the talks and he is called names. All he intended was to save the people from severe punishment but he was only seen as corrupt. He only showed pity, but he had become an offender himself because he did not do his duty, infact he assumed more authority than he was authorised. But our man and many more like him, not only in his kind of job, but everywhere else, now care not. Life’s like that.

‘Mercy’, out of turn and out of place, does no good. It only spoils.

Bending of the law and corruption under the feeling of good, under the veil of help, under the guise of mercy is widespread and rampant. We all are offenders in that regard, be it the law of the land or the voice of our conscience.

Maybe the law of the land will never corner the offenders for many obvious reasons, but no so with life. If there is a God, he is a judge, a giver of justice and if he is just, he has to exercise justice equally to everyone, without an iota of partiality, and if so, no mercy will be shown when he assumes the role of the judge. God is not ‘our man’. You cannot buy him nor his favor.

Today is the time for mercy. Now is the time God cares. It is now that we have access to his mercy. Its now we have access to his Grace. Let’s make the most of it.

‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts’.

Fear God’s justice and impending wrath. Now! Before the God’s court is in session. Once it is, only justice will be proclaimed then, for ‘mercy’ will become out of place.

Think about it. Good day.

Tags: Bribe, Corruption, Law, police, traffic

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Articles, Geo, Society, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.