An anecdote of …

I was driving back from office one Saturday. Traffic was quite sparce. It was during some elections and it may have been an election holiday or something. Driving from Powai to Chembur via Eastern Express was always a pleasure and with no traffic I was enjoying it even more. I had picked up my uncle on the way and we were both merrily chatting away. Just after I had crossed a signal across a major intersection, I found a police van with a blazing siren behind me. I made way for it to pass only to find it blocking my way and asking me to stop. As thoughts raced through my mind - did I break a signal? - Was I speeding? I brought the car to a halt. I asked my elderly uncle to stay put in the car and stepped out. Two constables and an Inspector got out of the van. The Inspector called me over and said they had been informed about weapons being carried in the car. I was flabbergasted and didn’t know what he was talking about.  As I opened my mouth to ask him how he could accuse someone of such a thing, a constable simply opened the rear door of my Zen, reached out in the Boot and picked out a gun. The Maruti Zen in those days had a flap board over the boot which was usually used to keep tissue boxes and such. The gun was an extremely good replica of a revolver which belonged to my 8 yr old son. It was ceremoniously handed over to the inspector who examined it and found out what it could do or rather not do. Despite the farcical situation (me being surrounded by policemen and interrogated) I burst out laughing (the reason behind this is another anecdote altogether). Apparently someone in a car behind me had seen the gun and informed the police. After all the explaining and apologizing was over I asked the inspector to return the gun only to be told that he had to ‘confiscate’ it since there had been a complaint.

Despite it being proved to be a toy gun, I could not argue with him (the rule is not to take panga with a policeman) and returned home.

I wonder what happened to that gun! Probably the inspectors son played chor police with it!!!

…….gun travails