Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Today something happened that reinforced my faith in humanity and also took me down memory lane. I got a ticket for riding my bike against the traffic on a one-way street. Yes, that hasn’t happened in at least 4 years now.

But the fact that the cops are doing their job is not what kindled faith in a cynic like me. It was a very small event. The lane on which I broke the traffic rule is right in front of a popular college in Bangalore. For the past couple of years I have cut down riding my bike simply because I seemed to have lost focus. Either I’d forget that I was on a bike or space out and forget where I was going. But old age notwithstanding, of late I have been using my poor, abused bike to go to places close enough to my house.

Anyway, I was returning home this morning, not really focussing on the road, when I got lazy and barged into the one-way street. A bunch of college girls were waving their hands frantically in front of my face and yelling “Cops!” “Turn around!”  Sure I figured what was going on, but I was so surprised by their enthusiasm that an angry, huffing old traffic policeman trying to stall my escape didn’t really bother me. May be the girls were having fun the expense of those cops, may be it was really an act of kindness but their gesture changed something. Either way, it taught me to loosen up a bit.

Anyway, I proceeded to face the policeman who was chiding those girls for acting smart. He already had about 5 more guys around him who had fallen into his grasp. He asked me to pay him 300 bucks. Luckily, I had some cash on me else I’m generally a person who avoids carrying money and just swipes her card. So I hand him a 500-rupee note. He looks at me and asks me in Kannada, “Are you really going to pay me 300 bucks?” I say that is precisely my intention because if I ask him to lower the amount he’d say it’s not possible then I’d haggle some more and both of us would waste our time. I said all this to him as a matter of fact. Just as I was wondering if that might trigger his temper, he smiled, asked me to pay 100 bucks and wrote me a receipt, even as another guy was pleading with him to reduce his fine because he was a student.

So, today was double-whammy for me. It’s possible that I have become so cynical that these random events have the ability to surprise me enough to make me wonder if there is some goodness out there. May be there are a few good men. Then again, the rest…..