Be a traffic cop now and then; it’s a lot of fun!

Continued from yesterday

A lot can be written about responsibility in these matters. We can play find-the-guilty. We can burn a bus or thrash a driver (as is often done by way of street-justice). We can point fingers. We can blame the child. We can blame the child’s parents and/or guardians. We can blame the child’s teachers. We can blame the driver of the vehicle that knocked the child down.

We can blame the relevant local government authority for not putting up necessary signs at the proper places, for not anticipating and not putting in measures to prevent such things from happening again and again.

We are all to blame in the end.

We have all screamed at children, at adults, teachers, drivers and others, or at least done so in our minds.

We’ve screamed at Police officers too, haven’t we? Well, not always to their faces but haven’t we all cursed them under our breath? Isn’t it true that Police officers earn our wrath far more than do careless children, negligent parents or bad drivers?

The skit at the Elphinstone Theatre brought to mind many street-tragedies I’ve heard of over the years. It’s been on my mind for a week. I’ve been watching the road. I saw many ‘near-misses’.

It got to a point where I would get tense the moment I see a school uniform.

Interestingly this exercise revealed to me a creature that I had for reasons good and bad tended to treat dismissively; the Policeman. Specifically, the Traffic Policeman.

I’ve never had sweet thoughts about traffic policemen. The wisdom in the street is that traffic cops make things worse.

Law of the jungle

That’s not a scientific conclusion of course because we seldom get to compare the performance of a Traffic Policeman against a situation where the law of the jungle prevails given similar volumes of traffic at the same time of day.

But think about the guy out there on that intersection you pass everyday. We can empathize with the parent of a child who is knocked down by a bus. Do we or can we empathize with a Traffic Policeman? It isn’t difficult. Put yourself in his position.

Think of it this way. Think ‘Bambalapitiya Junction’. The time is 12.30 pm. There’s traffic going towards Kollupitiya, some wanting to take the left lane and some the right.

Pedestrian crossings

There’s traffic coming up Bauddhaloka Mawatha, some on the right lane turning to the right and some on the left also turning left, but to the left lane of the Galle Road (which is one-way from that point).

Then there are people coming up Bauddhaloka Mawatha wanting to turn left towards Wellawatte. There are also some crazies who have come up the right lane of Bauddhaloka Mawatha and wanting to get to the left lane of Galle Road. And a bunch of pedestrians who don’t have the eyes to see or the inclination to look for pedestrian crossings. Imagine that you are standing right in the middle of things. For a couple of hours. Imagine the heat. The dust. The noise. The smoke. The insults darting silently from 20 percent of the drivers and 10 percent of the passengers.

Imagine there’s an accident. Whose fault? We really can’t tell but isn’t it in our nature to blame the policeman?

I was told that the majority of Traffic Policemen eventually succumb to lung-infections.

They breathe the poison that is belched out by vehicles that carry us to work, to school, to parties, to friends, family and lovers. We are imperfect but we will not suffer one sign of imperfection from a Traffic Policeman do we?

I was thinking: maybe it’s all a drama that we are playing. Maybe we are in some kind of post-modern enactment in a larger Elphinstone and that the guy who scripted it had some score to settle with some Traffic Policemen.

I am going to spend the next two weeks ‘being’ the Traffic Policeman, as I have the last two weeks. Try it. It is a lot of fun (for others). It’s crazy out there though for me.

Forget the smoke, the noise, the dust and the curses brother; I am terrified that some nutcase will knock me down. Let me tell you this also: others go to work, I go to die. I am born again when I am done with my shift.

Concluded

[email protected]