That mindset of Policemen being useless and rude and
disgusting and corrupt, changed, changed for some 20 people, right there, my
eyes noticed it, and maybe before I stepped inside that one particular room, many
people must have got out of that place with a positive feeling of safety and
security in Nerul
Well, let me get to the point. Last Friday, that is ummm 10th
of January, a friend asked me to accompany her to Nerul Police Station, in the
evening (you know it isn’t safe to go alone to a police station late evening
for a girl, well just a fear, quite a irony). Anyway so I and the friend went to the police
station for her passport verification. After sitting for like 10 minutes, one
of the policemen made everyone present there, sit in the office of Senior Inspector of
Police, in simple terms the senior in-charge of Nerul Police Station. Nicely
arranged chairs, decent people, clean office and silence, and then enters Mr.
Rajkumar Chaphekar, the Senior Police Inspector- A simple, smart, soft-spoken
and funny man. He takes his seat and starts calling out names looking at the
forms kept on the table, he just wants 2 simple questions to be answered- 1)
Where do you stay in Nerul? And 2) since how long do you stay in Nerul? So one
by one everyone he calls out for answers those questions. Very politely he asks
everyone to give him some more time, as he would want to talk about a movement
he has launched in Nerul for a while now. The movement is called, ‘Safe and
Secure Nerul’.
Now the objective of writing the blog: This particular
Movement, and the efforts that this policeman is taking, made me aware
of the fact that ‘Staying Alert’ is the only funda to avoid mishaps. Fortunately
most of the policemen I have come across turned out to be honest and dedicated
to their work, but as the first line of this post goes, most of the people have
a negative perception of police and a police station.
What he spoke of the next 20 mins, wasn’t boring, did not
make me sleepy, and did not force anyone to get up and walk out of the room.
How with some common examples, funnily he explained that we humans are so
irresponsible, that we just forget to use our common sense and put our life and
our earnings at stake, forced people to listen to him, with attention. The fact that most of the times, we ignore a
crime, happening in front of our eyes, because we don’t want to get into any
problems and waste our time, gives the criminals the confidence to loot us, trouble us and dupe us is
something that we all should understand, but we fail terribly.
All the tips and tricks that he shared with us, were so
practical. No, you don’t have to go fight anyone when you see something
happening, you just have to shout ‘chor chor’ and yes it is going to scare the
chor. No you don’t have to stay indoors; you just have to take some efforts to
stay alert, keep your cupboards locked, and keep the keys with you, not under
the pillow or on the cupboard. Such really simple and common things that we
avoid in our lives, telling ourselves, ‘chalta hai yaar’. We are lazy even to
think smartly. We walk away quietly, when someone is trying to break a car’s
window to steal some cash, walk on the roads, displaying the gold chains, ignoring
to use the safety doors, putting letters for the doodhwala’s and paperwalas on
the door, when going out of town, giving open invitation to the robbers, isn’t
all this so dumb?
Well, this man, Mr. Rajkumar Chaphekar, talks to the people
who come for passport verification to the police-station and tells them some
simple things that we all know, but ignore. He goes to housing complexes,
housing societies and take meetings, to make them aware and help the entire
police force of Nerul to keep its citizens safe. You can invite him to your
housing complex too; he will readily come, teach you in a way that it won’t
ever leave your mind, and also make you laugh with his stories and the art of
telling you the serious stories too wittily.
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