The journey

                                    

An army of personnel consisting of one driver , one gunner ,one man on telephone duty, two followers and a homeguard , a house ,an esteem car with a blue beacon light, all waited for me as I took charge as SP city Agra. Scenes from my past flashed in my mind……………

It was pouring so heavily that roads looked like drains, the tree branches were stooping with the weight, I and my sister  were waiting for the army truck which took us to school when the phone rang and one of my classmates informed that the DM of the district  had declared a holiday because of the rains……….

As I grew up i  was made to  understand that the civil servants are the steel frame of the country. When asked in the interview why civil services I had proudly told that I believe this the only service where one has direct interface with people and one is in a position to deliver immediate justice to them  where u make a difference in the lives of the people and make a contribution to their well being.

i realized as I grew into the service that “ immediate” will be as immediate as the babu in the office wishes.

I was signing the “daak” in the office ,for the non bureaucrats I must explain it is a pile of hundreds of papers which comes to office everyday to each bureaucrat. It is a conglomeration of complaints, orders and instructions from above and one just sends it to the concerned after scribbling ‘for n.a. please’. A woman entered in the office ,she looked at me and smiled, I tried to remember where had I met her. I greeted her, my mind still racing fast, diving into the sea of memories for that ‘eureka’ moment where I would recognize her. There was awkward silence for some time, then to my relief she spoke, she told me that she had met me when I was posted in Meerut in relation to a case where her mentally challenged daughter was raped by a relative and I had instructed for an FIR to be registered. She had come to tell me that her daughter had passed away after two months and a final report was sent in that case due to lack of evidence but thanked me for getting the case registered. I wondered if this was the “immediate justice” I spoke of……………….may be God intervened to put an end to the mockery of justice ,forget about immediate justice…………

As I settled down on the cane chair in my lawn and started to contemplate I realized I had come far………………………..probably too far