Skip to main content

A signboard (Top Secret)

Below is one of the signs I saw at the extremely busy Platform number 1 of Allahabad railway station recently --->


I wonder, How 'secret' or 'intelligent' the department's services would be !
Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous11:22 AM, April 06, 2008

    I don't think that you quite grasped what the word 'Intelligence' means, in context of Govt. Departments, that is - and this is quite surprising given the fact that you are a grown up guy, rather than being a disgruntled teenager!
    These are the branches that most of the public service departments of the GOI have. Their job is to provide & receive covert intelligence reports which act as a pre-warning against any form of malicious activity against the concerned department(railways, in this case)- be it sabotage, or an impending terrorist strike. It is manned by a hand picked lot and presided by high ranking IPS & Railway Security Force officials.
    And if your superficial post was a rant against the 'inefficiency' of such branches(which is a favourite past time for most of the young Indians), always remember that for every strike encountered, there are at leat a hundred strikes neutralized, more often than not by the same 'Special Branch Intelligence' you so stupidly mocked.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Shop @ Amazon

Popular posts from this blog

An area of darkness ?

The title of this post finds its origins in a novel with simlar name written by VS Naipaul. Set in India, some 40 years ago or so, this is a kind of travelogue of author's brief stay in India where he found it to be full of superstitions, ignorance and darkness! Many decades and many MNCs and malls later, few parts of India seemed to have chucked off that tag, but there are many places that haven't and continue to remain shrouded in ignorance. Move few hours away from a city, travel in a second class train compartment or a dilapidated state transport bus and you get to see the dark underbelly of India Shining. As one of the characters in the movie Rang De Basanti says "Yahan zinda rehne ki jung mein logo ki zindagiyan nikal jaati hai" . So true it seems! My day today was spent being kind of lost in similar thoughts. To start with, I when I boarded the ST bus, a woman was wailing. She may be in her 20s or something, but she was crying in some peculiar musical tone. At
13 comments
Read more

The local train

That was when I saw her. She had almost missed her train. There was another in 8 minutes, but she always preferred to catch this one only. It was a long ride - Mira Road to Churchgate and it took nearly an hour to reach there in a fast train. More than three hours a day she spent in commuting. It could have been more had her home not been near the railway station. I had moved to Mumbai recently and was still trying to catch up with its pace. I was yet to get accustomed to the local trains. Slowly and steadily I would. Sometimes I wished that I stayed near my office, but it was too expensive. So I chose a distant suburb, trying not to dig a hole into my pocket and screwing my life inside stuffed trains. This continued for few weeks. I always noticed her getting to the station, catching the train and alighting at the destination before briskly walking to her office. Mine was nearby, but that was it - I never manged to talk to her. She was somewhat reclusive and I didn't have any p
3 comments
Read more

Cycle

After a failed attempt at jogging, I roamed about aimlessly when an idea struck me to have a ride in a cycle, couple of which is lying in the “recreational area”. I was longing since long to ride a cycle sans motor. There was no particular reason for this feeling; it was that just I wanted to have a ride. The 2-3 km ride was a tiring experience, especially for one who is having this after a long time; but I was gleeing all along. As an infant, I loved going about in a tricycle. Then I became too big for it and got a cycle. After several attempts and many falls, I mastered the art. I used to flaunt it in front of my friends, who flaunted theirs. As I entered teens, the bicycle seemed smaller; so I got a bigger cycle. As years progressed, I learnt to ride a 2 wheeler. Now I started to find the bicycle too childish for my tastes. I tried to reason out why I should get a 2-wheeler to go to a particular place. Sometimes I succeeded to get it, and sometimes I didn’t and had to go around in
5 comments
Read more

Gunaho ka Devta

During last few days, I had a privilege of reading one of the most accomplished works in Hindi literature - "Gunaho ka Devta" . This was the first time I read a Hindi novel after being highly recommended by 2-3 different people. I was kind of compelled to read it after initial 15-20 pages which were largely in an unfamiliar territory of Hindi literature! It is a novel set probably more than 50 years ago, and is a philosophical cum love story. It is one of those books where I can't be sure about how I feel. It is an excellently written book ( ... or maybe it was the first time I was reading a Hindi book ... but probably this is not the explanation!) , with the entire spectrum of emotions thrown in generous doses. The scenes are recreated almost poetically, emotions mentioned perfectly. But at times I am tempted to question basic assumptions of it all. At times I am tempted to say that he is preaching many things which I don't believe in, which I find improper, but the
4 comments
Read more

Just aise hi ...

That lady was probably in her early 30s, seemed like a resident of a well off locality, probably wife of some well off businessman in the town. (SEC A type, in marketing jargon!) . She seemed to be coming after a shopping spree, although calling it a 'spree' would be an exaggeration, as all he had was a small bag. It seemed that she could not get a car that day and hence decided to take a rickshaw to her way back home. "Ae rickshaw" , she blurted After some negotiations, the elderly rickshaw-waalah obliged, and she kept calling that person as "rickshaw" ! I was just reminded of a sequence from movie Lage Raho Munnabhai where Gandhiji says - "If you want to judge a person, observe how he behaves with a person having a lower standing than him" !!! I smiled, nodded my head once and went ahead !
4 comments
Read more