At the Corner of All Action

There are a whole lot of things wrong about Bangalore. A common answer I often encounter is the city’s inability to suddenly scale up to the blistering growth that came its way. I agree – and nothing embodies it more than the city’s cops. When I first came to Bangalore it was their hats that caught my fancy. They had a neat touch with one side of the brim turned over. If that looked good and smart, any reference to those adjectives in their demeanor was quickly dispensed away. I am not very aware of the cops’ skills in fighting organized crime but it is the traffic police that I find vacillating between ridiculous and comic. They lack the basic knowledge that street crossings are meant to be controlled with unidirectional traffic. I have found the cops asking (on the verge of imploring) vehicles from all roads to come for a quick team-India like huddle at the intersection. This must obviously be the cops’ performance objective because once this is done he quietly recedes to the most obscure corner away from the intersection. Sometimes he just stands there chatting with other cops or just sweeping a curious eye on his magnificent creation that is trying its best to untangle, mostly using blaring horns, abuses (in truly cosmopolitan tongues) and maneuvers that you’d expect only to see on an F1 track. My favorite policeman is the one who mans the Wheeler Road-Asaye Road crossing at Cox Town. On several occasions I have actually seen him helping himself to nariel paani from a vendor after he has achieved his daily target. At most intersections you will see the cop standing at an obscure corner controlling traffic with nothing more than microscopic movements of his hands. It becomes sinister after dark because you have a dim chance of even locating the cop given that their once-white shirts compete with their never-white complexion to provide camouflage cover in their operations. It is said that every city deserves the cops they get. What did Bangalore do wrong?