Some Lessons From History - For The Fucked Up Indian Police: Take #5

Now, Queen Elizabeth The First, the "Good Queen Bess" as she was affectionately called by all her loyal and devoted subjects, was a very good queen indeed, and she was a very good Queen only because she knew how to choose and select her advisors as well as her lovers, all of whom were VERY GOOD MEN. Very early in her long and illustrious reign, one of these GOOD MEN told her:

Win hearts and minds - and then MEN will lay down their LIVES, as well as their PURSES, for you.

And so the Good Queen Bess had Sir Walter Raleigh as a lover, the man who brought tobacco to England, and it is a well known story of how Sir Walter Raleigh ever so gallantly laid down his Cape upon a puddle, so that the Good Queen Bess would not get her Royal Feet muddied.


And all around the Ancient and Fair City of London, there are many, many ancient PUBS, and all these ancient pubs bear plaques proclaiming that the Good Queen Bess drank there.


Yes, the Good Queen Bess frequented London's pubs, to sit and drink and converse with her subjects - and, of course, she TAXED their ale, but they did not mind too much, because they all LOVED their Good Queen Bess.


Now, QE2 is very different, what with her "quantitative easing" and all that. There is nothing "sterling" about the paper British Pound today - and QE2's crowned head is printed on this completely non-sterling British paper pound.


Today, no one can even AFFORD to drink a pint of lager in any Ancient London Pub - because of the fuckin' high taxes. And you can FORGET about tobacco and the good knight Sir Walter Raleigh, for tobacco is more or less banned in Britain. And it is very heavily taxed, too. Today, no one can smoke tobacco in any London pub, not even The Sherlock Holmes Pub, and so, if Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson ever came there today, to enjoy some pale ale, and to THINK as to how a "Three Pipe Problem" could be solved, they would have to FORGET about it, and the "Three Pipe Problem" would NEVER EVER be solved.


I saw a lovely cartoon once - and it showed Sir Walter Raleigh leaping to his death from out of the window of his London hotel room, because this was a non-smoking room on a non-smoking floor!


And all the good Rastas of London hate QE2, too. There used to be an old Rasta tune in the old days that went, "England is a Bitch - And There is No Escaping It."


There is an ESCAPE, of course - and that is GOA. Thousands and thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of Englishmen and Englishwomen, old and young, flock to Goa every year to ESCAPE, but - Alas!  - the escape is cut short, and the Immigration Authorities of the Government of India send them right back!


Alas! What a sad, sad, English word.


And, talking about Rastas, some years ago, QE2 gave an award to a London Rasta poet - and he REFUSED to accept this award.


Let us now turn to the Indian Police.


They are all HATED throughout India.


Now, as you all know by now, I did spend some years as an Officer of The Indian Police Service - just as George Orwell did, and just as The Sage Valmiki was once a member of a GANG OF DACOITS.


But these were NOT "misspent years" as such. I learnt plenty of Good Things at the National Police Academy in Hyderabad - like riding horses. Like Unarmed Combat. I learnt a good deal of Law - The Indian Penal Code, The Code of Criminal Procedure, and also The Indian Evidence Act, which was my favourite, an excellent Act drafted in extremely precise legal terminology by none other than Sir James Fitzjames Stephen himself. I learnt Forensic Science - and also attended a Post-Mortem. 


And I was an EXCELLENT CADET - and won prizes in the 4X100m Relay, in the 4X400m Relay, in the English Debate, and in Marksmanship & Weapons Handling. And I sang many good, English songs in the Officers' Mess there, accompanied by my own guitar: Dylan, Cohen, and stuff like that. I conducted many Quiz Competitions there, too. Interestingly, every one else who sang there, did so in the vernacular - and none could play any musical instrument.


In the National Police Academy, my lover was an Officer of The Royal Bhutan Police, who wore a Blue Uniform. And I never spent much time with all the guys and gals in khaki. Kezang and I would drink lots of booze together every single night; she would cook her dried beef in her room for me; and we did a LOT of Rock-n-Roll. And it was she who told me Her Secret of Happiness: Aum Mani Padme Hun, or "The Jewel is in The Divine Coitus." And it was she who presented me with the songs of the Patron Saint of her country, Drukpa Kuenley, "The Divine Madman," all very ribald songs, and even to this very day Drukpa's Kuenley's Mighty Phallus is worshipped in Bhutan, and it is called:

The Flaming Thunderbolt of Divine Wisdom

I learnt a LOT from my lover in a Blue Uniform. We would ride on my 350cc PRIVATE motorcycle every once in a while to a booze shop down the highway to stock up - and she LOVED me for the NAME I gave to this boozeshop: I called it PARADISE! Drukpa Kuenley LOVED to drink chhung.


It was a very strange HYPOCRITICAL place, this National Police Academy in Hyderabad. Here, the Officers' Mess has a Big Bar, made of expensive wood, but NO BOOZE is ever served here. Those who want to drink, must do this sneakily in their rooms. But once, a brave Anglo-Indian officer sang a song in this Mess about this hypocrisy, a song in English, that he had composed himself. The Indian Police is NOT like the Indian Army; rather, it is marked by HYPOCRISY over drink. In Gujarat, for example, the highest incidence of liver cirrhosis is among policemen - and there is Prohibition there. 



I also smoked ganja in the National Police Academy. One very early morning, two old friends from Delhi landed up in my room, carrying a LIT JOINT: and these were Dr. Alok Sareen, a psychiatrist from Delhi's AIIMS, and Dr. Hemant Paul, from that same, elite institute. We had quite a few joints together that morning, after which they left. And I attended my morning parade in a very good mood.


On another occasion, around Holi, I think, a tall Bihari officer from Delhi University who was keen on the idea, SP Singh, of the Rajasthan cadre, and I drove on my PRIVATE motorcycle to Hyderabad city, where SP SIngh knew where to buy the stuff. This was bought. We returned. And had a good time.

Anyway, the happy year in Hyderabad ended, my Lover in Blue and I had to part, for our nations were different, and the chosen pathways of our separate lives were also very different.


I then went on an Army Attachment to Ladakh. This was great. I have travelled all over this bleak, scary landscape. I have spent nights in freezing sub-zero temperatures. And driven Army Jongas through high-altitude deserts, watching wild horses running by. I have been to Leh - by an Air Force plane in which I had to take off standing, holding on to a rope, and land the same way, too. No seat; no seat-belt either. Why can't poor people fly like that? And we can call it "Airbus." I went on to Kargil - where the Army served us brandy in heated gazebos at 10am. I wanted to see the Siachen area - but we were forbidden from going there. And that crazy "war" is still going on.


Next, I spent some hard months at the Punjab Police Training College in Phillaur, known to be the physically toughest police training in India. This was during the height of Khalistani terrorism - and Indira Gandhi has been gunned down just a few months earlier. But I enjoyed myself there. And I learnt to play a little golf. Great place, Phillaur. A fort - now used as a police academy.


From there, I came to Pondicherry.


And I have already told you all that I learnt in Pondicherry, walking up and down Beach Road every night, accompanied by my dog, who was never on a leash; how I discovered that a "natural order" existed; and that Thomas Hobbes was a compleat moron.


I actually resigned from service while in Pondicherry. But outside interference made me withdraw that resignation. This was perhaps the biggest mistake of my life. And I will forever regret it.


I finally left the Indian Police in 1989, after short stints in Arunachal Pradesh and Delhi - and took off to The Department of Government at The London School of Economics & Political Science, for an MSc Programme, with particular focus on Comparative LOCAL Government - and I have already told you all about the morons who taught me there.


This was BEFORE the Berlin Wall had been torn down and the Soviet Union had collapsed - and I was already on the side of Capitalism. And I was looking at LOCAL - and not CENTRAL - government. My mind had been made up. I just needed to go on acquiring all the relevant knowledge. The events in East Germny, Eastern Europe and the USSR only made my resolve stronger. And so, I kept on persevering.


After that, in Delhi, I briefly worked for Jain TV - along with Advani's pretty daughter, Pratibha, and I have told you all about that. But thanks to this job, I bought myself a 500cc Bullet motorcycle - on installments, and that was my horse for many, many years thereafter. This bike is still to be seen thundering down the narrow lanes of South Goa, in excellent condition, but with a new owner.


And then, I gave up television for good. And I became a freelance journalist in the PRINT MEDIA, because I thought the written word was more important, contributing to all the leading Indian dailies, and surviving with difficulty on the crumbs they hand out for such contributions.


And then, for 5 long years, 1998-2002, I worked as an Editor of The Economic Times in Nude Elly - and I resigned this post too, because they were always editing my editorials. The "punch line" - the SUCKER PUNCH - was inevitably deleted. The final straw was my editorial against sonia gandhi, which ended with the following words:

The People Need Liberty. 
The People Do NOT Need Another Caesar.

The next day, this important editorial of mine appeared in such a garbled form that anyone who read it would think that the editorial writer was  looking for a job as an advisor to sonia. As though I am a fuckin' Plato - and not a Socrates, or a Diogenes, the Cynic.


And so I WALKED OUT - without any "notice period," and since a Notice Period was mandatory in my Contract, I lost some 50,000 rupees, or more.


In these 5 long years with this newspaper, I wrote over 1000  editorials - and these are all carefully cut out and stored for the Record of my Work. One of this was a Historic Editorial. It was a Lead Editorial titled:

 "Go Home, World Bank."

I also wrote my fortnightly column, "Antidote."


And I was the Editor of the prestigious "Tuesday Debate" on the op-ed page - and all these important debates on vital issues have all been carefully preserved as well.


I also conducted some important interviews for the prestigious "Tuesday Interview" - of Gabriel Roth, the world's greatest authority on private highways and expressways; of Deepak Lal, India's greatest free market economist; of Guy Sorman, a great Frenchman, who teaches, writes good books, and who is also the Mayor of a small, French town; and some others, and it was extremely unfortunate that my Tuesday Interview with that great South African free-market economist, Leon Leou, a man who has been thrice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was not published. Its publication was endlessly delayed, on some pretext or the other. And then, I WALKED OUT anyway, so this interview has never seen the light of day.


For long, I looked after the "Citings" column on the Edit Page - which featured a Quote of the Day. And I quoted all the Great Masters of Liberty, all of them, day after day after day. But this must have upset someone High-Up - and I was relieved of this happy responsibility, which was handed over to someone else, who turned it into "Spiritual Quotes," and that is what we call "metaphysics."


I wrote only one News Report - and this appeared as a Front Page Anchor Story - and this was a report on the Geneva Motor Show of 2000, which I attended as a guest of Daewoo Motors, my one and only "junket." 


In that news report, I fucked Ratan Tata and his unsexy Tata Indica, which he had taken to display there, alongwith a sexy Miss India, if you please. 


Of course, everyone was looking at the sexy Miss India - and no one even looked at the unsexy Tata Indica. 


And let me tell you that the Geneva Motor Show is the MOST IMPORTANT Motor Show in Europe - and the Swiss do NOT make cars. They have FREE TRADE in cars - so they DRIVE the best cars in the world. 


And, in Hall 2 of this Geneva Motor Show, where all the SEXY CARS are displayed, there are NO sexy women to be found at all, because the cars are all so fuckin' sexy.


And I am talking about Aston Martin Lagonda, about Bugatti, about Maserati, and Ferrari, and Lamborghini - and Porsche, of course.


During my years at The Economic Times, I also regularly contributed to The Economic Times on Sunday - which was a separate operation, with a different editor and staff. I sometimes wrote editorials for them. And, occasionally, wrote their main opinion pieces, too. My Bastiat Award-winning article, "Liberals Must Dump Gandhi," appeared in The Economic Times on Sunday. You can read this article here. I also wrote many excellent book reviews for this paper. During these years, one bright morning, the Editor of The Economic Times on Sunday, a roly-poly Bengali woman who was fond of me and my eccentric ways, barged into my chambers and addressed me thus:

Can you give me a QUICKIE?

I was thunderstruck! And I told her:

What the FUCK, woman?

Right here in the fuckin' office?

What do you think I am: A FUCKING MACHINE?

But all she wanted was a quick editorial - and we enjoyed a good laugh.


My greatest joy during these five long years with The Economic Times was the last year, when they started a "Travel Page" - and I was given a weekly column. I had so much FUN writing this funny column - all about my travels and adventures all over the world, and all over India, and all about the booze, the beer, and the ganja and charas I have smoked in these places. It became the most popular column - and I became the "mascot" of that Travel Page, and our great cartoonist, Bonny Thomas, would every week draw a funny face of me, smoking a big joint, or pulling at a big chillum, and that funny picture would appear on the masthead. I have cut out all these columns, too, and carefully preserved them.


My greatest regret during these years at The Economic Times was that all my writings were in a PINK PAPER - and very few people read pink papers. As a freelancer, I had been contributing to many, many WHITE PAPERS: The Indian Express published me fortnightly, for example. I wrote for some other white papers, too. Except for The Times of India, whose editorial page editor then, Sanjaya Baru, would inevitably return my pieces with the word "Rejected" written on them. This man, incidentally, was chacha manmohan s gandhi's Media Advisor till recently.


But things changed when Jug Suraiya took over this page - and a Planning Commission man named Arjun Sengupta wrote a Leader Article on the financial crisis is East Asia titled "Against The Free Market Fundamentalists." So, I wrote a rejoinder, and took it up to Jug's office upstairs. He said: "We do NOT publish rejoinders." And I replied: "Your paper's motto is Let Truth Prevail."


Anyway, my rejoinder was published - on the right-hand corner of the page. And so, I seized the opportunity and began sending a monthly piece for that right-hand corner to Jug - and he published them. Finally, I sent him one on New Public Management - and Jug ordered me to make it into a Full Length Leader Article, and then I began to send him, every single month, these Thunderous Articles, which he duly and happily published as Leader Articles. Even the owner of the paper, Sameer Jain, once complimented me on one of these articles, in which I had written that "cities are the ant-hills of human colonists." He found that "a very profound philosophical observation."


And I have been writing for the ToI even after walking out of ET - but I have stopped now.


During these years with The Economic Times, some of my "batchmates" at the National Police Academy invited me for a dinner, and this dinner was held at the official residence of RK Singh, who was then heading the security forces at Delhi Airport. In attendance was Ranjit Pachnanda, then a Deputy Inspector-General of the West Bengal Police. And, after I had been seated comfortably and handed a very big and very strong alcoholic drink, a third batchmate of mine made his appearance, and this was Ashok Patnaik, who happens to be a son-in-law of none other than chacha manmohan s gandhi. Ashok was then a Deputy Director of the Intelligence Bureau. But I do declare that his intelligence gathering was extremely deficient, for he came up to me, shook my hand warmly, and said, "So you are now a Deputy Editor of The Statesman."


There is some guy with my name who was in The Statesman then, and is now with The Indian Express, but he spells his name differently, and he is a very junior functionary of the journalistic world - and Ashok Patnaik, IPS, Deputy Director of the Intelligence Bureau, OUGHT to have known who the FUCK I was.


Anyway, at that dinner, the one and only time I have socialised with IPS officers, I told them: 

"We must change the economic system."

I also told them another important thing, and that is:

Economic morality is more important than sexual morality.

There is an important article I have written discussing these aspects of morality, but this article has vanished from the Internet.


After all, all these senior IPS officers claim to be "happily married" - an oxymoron if ever there was one. But they never think of the "economic means of survival" they have chosen for themselves, as well as for their wives and their children. The "economic means of survival" these happily married guys have opted for is the POLITICAL MEANS. Their salaries and allowances come from us, the TAXPAYING PUBLIC, we who have opted for The Market as our means of survival.


And all these happily married tax-parasites think that I "sleep around," that we rockers don't love the women who rock us, and they probably think these lovely rock-n-roll women who rock us are all "loose."


Let me tell these morons this: 

There is much more to life than being FAITHFUL TO YOUR WIFE.

What about being FAITHFUL TO YOUR OFFICIAL DUTIES?

What about being FAITHFUL TO THE PEOPLE - the taxpayers?

They are only faithful to the CONgress Party - and all the other "socialist political parties" we have in India. 


And I also asked these serving, extremely senior IPS officers to invite me to lecture at the National Police Academy.


But I NEVER heard from any of them ever again.


And I did lecture at the IAS Academy in Mussoorie - twice. And found out, to my disgust and horror, that the Professor of Economics in this academy is a Marxist-Ricardian, a follower a Piero Sraffa, a complete moron as well as an asshole, who did NOT attend my lectures.


Now, let me tell you something about Piero Sraffa, for this asshole Professor of Economics at the IAS Academy attempted to hand me Sraffa's slim, MATHEMATICAL book with the extra-ordinary title:

On the Production of Commodities by the Means of Commodities

As though commodities produce themselves. As though gold miners are not required to dig out the gold. 


All economic activity is HUMAN ACTION - the title of Ludwig von Mises' great Treatise on Economics. If you want to know what the subject of Economics is all about, and this is a VITAL SUBJECT, because it concerns HUMAN SURVIVAL - not in The Jungle, but in the Urban Market Economy, which is what "civilisation" is all about, then you MUST STUDY this book carefully. On your own. And you must read it many times over, after that, so that, in time, all the points sink home, and then, you can call yourself a self-declared Misesian, an Economist of the Austrian School.


And so, I told this asshole moron who did NOT pay me the courtesy of attending my two separate lectures, delivered on two separate occasions, that I did NOT want to accept his brain-damaging mathematical book by Piero Sraffa, who was Keynes' sidekick, with the crazy title On the Production of Commodities by the Means of Commodities.


I told him to "stick it where the sun don't shine."


Now, let me tell you something more about Ashok Patnaik, the Deputy Director of the Intelligence Bureau who is chacha manmohan s gandhi's son-in-law. We did another course together - a Basic Administration Course organised by the IAS Academy. During that course, I was elected Chairman of a Syndicate Group that prepared a Report on De-Centralised Planning, while Patnaik was elected my Secretary. I penned the Report - and it was HIGHLY CRITICAL of the government. And Patnaik penned a Note of Dissent to my Chairman's Report. And, of course, the IAS Academy failed me in this Basic Administrative Course. They do NOT like STRONG VIEWS - this fucked up IAS Academy.


Now, I have not been a policeman for well over 20 years or more. And I have never ever socialised with policemen, except for that one occasion mentioned above. In fact, I have never ever socialised with corporate media journalists either. I just hang around with some of my smoking buddies sometimes, with my Helga sometimes, with some students who like me sometimes, and some other people, sometimes. I am an Individual. My visiting card says:

One's Self I Sing,

A Simple, Separate Person.

Yet, these fucked up Indian cops have been harassing me and harassing me, endlessly. I have told you all about the harassment I faced during my years in Mangalore. And how the Karnataka Lokayukta did NOT provide me with Justice.


And I have told you of the TORTURE inflicted upon me by the Pondicherry Police some weeks ago.


Now, last night, on Beach Road, I was ASSAULTED by some of these fuckers. My very expensive spectacles were smashed. And, on my scalp, there are some bleeding injuries I discovered this morning, and bleeding injuries, according to The Indian Penal Code, are "grievous hurt" - and a VERY SERIOUS MATTER, a "cognisable offence." 


After inflicting upon me this completely uncalled for "Assault & Battery," these fucked up cops then took me to a Police Station; there, they questioned me; they examined my passport - and then, they released me without any charges. My lovely floral shirt was torn and tattered. And my lovely rudrashk necklace, with a Tiger Claw on it, a necklace I bought right here on Beach Road from a poor woman for 550 rupees, has VANISHED.

They are, in essence, a "lawless police." 

They just go around fucking up all the good people in the town just for the fuck of it.


Never ever forget that Veerappan was MURDERED WITHOUT TRIAL, without any of the "stipulated procedures" of The Code of Criminal Procedure being followed, without any "evidence" presented in a Court of Law against him as per The Indian Evidence Act  - and that I was the only Indian journalist to write the opinion that, if sandalwood trees had NOT been State Property, Veerappan would have been a very rich sandalwood farmer and trader. You can find this article here. This article was also translated into Kannada, and appeared on the Front Page of The Kannada Prabha.

Now, a week or so ago, an EVENT happened here in Pondicherry, a motorcycle stunts exhibition organised by Madras' TVS Motors. TVS Motors put barricades on the footpaths - for crowd control. And TVS Motors deployed some twenty or more of their own, unarmed, friendly, uniformed employees to assist in crowd control. 


It was a very happy STREET PARTY - and there was LOUD TAMIL DISCO MUSIC playing. The three stunt riders, on their TVS Apache 180cc RTR bikes were simply AMAZING - and they STOLE THE SHOW. The entire crowd assembled there was ENTHRALLED by their amazing performance, which continued for over 2 whole hours. I personally went across to shake the hands of all these brave and highly skilled stunt motor-cycle riders - Prashant, Sathya, and Biju. And I personally congratulated many of the uniformed employees of TVS Motors there for having manufactured an excellent motorcycle in the TVS Apache RTR 180cc bike.


And there were these three assholes from the Pondicherry Police there, too, wearing their khaki "uniforms of brutality," their red Inspector Clouseau French hats, all carrying their Big Sticks - and, these fuckers went about BEATING UP the crowd!


In Pondicherry, the Police Department does NOTHING of any worth - and the Traffic Police is a DISGRACE.


They go about BEATING UP poor people who peddle their wares on Beach Road.


And, though they have a Big Building on Beach Road called "Tourist Police," they go about BEATING UP tourists like me.


Now, you stupid fuckers of the fucked up Indian Police Service, think about The Good Queen Bess.


Think!


You are all HATED throughout the length and breadth of this vast sub-continent.


In many, many parts of this vast nation, like Jharkhand, and Chattisgarh, and also parts of Orissa and Maharashtra, in these thickly forested areas, policemen are being ROUTINELY MURDERED.


Just the other year, I read of an Inspector of Police, in his full "uniform of brutality," wearing his Three Stars on his shoulders, his Yellow Lanyard, his broad, black belt with the State Emblem on it, and his Peak Cap, too, being hauled out in public in a busy market in a small Jharkhand town by the local people and being BEHEADED.


Think! You stupid fuckers.


All you do is VVIP Security. I read 1800 Delhi cops guard chacha's residence.


And Patnaik is chacha's son-in-law.


Think!


The Delhi Police is HATED throughout Delhi.


Think of that Great Peter Tosh song:

Downpressor man,

Where you gonna run to?

Downpressor man,

Where you gonna run to?

You're gonna run to the rocks,

But the rocks will be melting...