Whatever you are doing, drop it right now, everything unless it is your baby. Because I have obtained some shocking information regarding our National Security - information that I am going to reveal to you now, despite the chilling fact that, by revealing it, I am placing myself in direct peril of winning a Nobel Prize for Peace or appearing on National TV News shows whichever comes earlier. **: Conditions apply.
This information will be the greatest single security threat to our nation, as measured not only by the magnitude of the vote bank politics, but also by the number of condemned Ravan movie CDs.
That's right: I am referring to our National Security Policy. As you may recall, we are still to have one in place, yet the parliament continue to dream of having one which is running at very high efficiency. Why do I say it, just look at the Naxals, they are better communicated and planned than our security forces. So why am I been so paranoids and finicky about this issue? Well I have been frisked more than the whole population of Guatemala in total.
What has this got to do with me, I am being frisked all the way from my office till I reach my home and for no reason. Look at it this way, I was stopped yesterday night near my office entrance, asked to blow for alcohol traces and then frisked for dangerous weapons and drugs. I am at work just finishing off a bug tracking status call. Imagine what would be my feeling.
It’s not the frisking that bothers me but the way they do it. Let me walk through a sample scenario.
They make you walk though a wooden structure that continuously displays a sign “WALK” and makes a beeping sound much similar to buffalo soldiers by Bob Marley. I judiciously walk through it expecting it not to make a beep sound and get the security officers attention.
Security Officer (from now on the stated person shall be known as Singaram): Sir, this way please.
Myself: (raising my hands and kneeling down) Yes sir.
Singaram does an act like a massage par lour assistant except that his hands do not have oil and runs through my vital statistics. The application speed and hand pressure increase with time and he does this routine till the time I shriek my voice in pain. He then says: OK sir, open your bag.
I think Microsoft makes their laptop OS programmed to stop running exactly when needed viz. meetings, airport security inspection etc. Singaram finds my laptop and asks me to open it and show that it’s a working one. I frantically press few keys, then thump random keys hard and finally jump on it and yet it wouldn’t start. He looks upon me up and down as though I resemble a Colombian drug smuggler (I may look like that but for the slim Charlie Chaplin moustache) with my consignment inside this small laptop.
While this is going on, there is a big built guy, whose arms has a total area the size of Gibraltar and is carrying 2 automated machine guns and a .38 pistol, safely riding on a T-90 tank. He is stopped by Singaram and asked “Sir, Do you have anything to declare as unsafe?”
Guy (in a husky voice): Nothing but these. He shows 2 lays potato chips packet and some confidential reports from his bag.
Singaram: OK you can proceed.
All the while the wooden machine was playing the beep tones and when this unruly big guy passes, it stops and is totally noiseless. Soon as this guy whistles pass me, I am back in contention for singaram’s attention. He now passes my laptop through a baking oven followed by a coolant shower and finally through a CT scan. Yes I am exaggerating a little; the coolant shower was not present there. After all this I am pronounced as a SAFE PERSON and asked to leave.
I am still wondering on that night, why are everybody being checked for which Singaram sincerely answers “Sir, Independence Day is coming next week and these are some safety measures taken in your interest”. My thought are exactly as yours – how come frisking some software professionals at the outskirts of the city where no civiliasation exists make the city any safer than before. Well, you can’t reason out with government policies just like the software quality audits.
Somebody has to let Singaram know not to trust that machine and to look around the world to see things as they are. Well, I can’t get my software quality audit teams to do the same. All they see and ask is for reports and audit points not worried about the actual software content. The auditors are equipped to ask for details and not to look into those details when supplied. Then how do I except these local security guards to do a better job.
The one thing that bemuses me more is, even with this pathetic scenario my city looks clam and safe place. Sometime these things cannot be explained but have to be felt, like in Pammal.K.Sambandam “Aaraya Kudathu, Anubhavi kanum”
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