Book sales are a wonderful opportunity to pick up usually unaffordable coffee table books (or the complete works of Sherlock Holmes with the original typescript & illustrations). To me, they also provide occasion to pick up stuff that is not on my books-i-must-read or books-that-sound-vaguely-familiar list - a reasonably interesting storyline with the bonus of nice paper, a nice or unusual typescript or an attractive cover is usually enough to seduce me.
This year at the Landmark sale, my focus was on light reading – which means a bit of fantasy and a lot of detective fiction. I wanted something different from the variety that I usually read, and it was sheer coincidence that I stumbled upon The Laughing Policeman on my way out to the billing counter.
The blurb sounded interesting, the paper was slightly yellow (I dislike Rin-white paper), the type just the right size (not scrimping on paper), there was a lovely green hard bound cover and a recommendation from Sunday Telegraph on the authors (the Swedish communist couple Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo). On a depressing Wednesday evening when the inclination to cause serious bodily damage – to your boss, spouse/boyfriend, parent or self – is at its peak, the perfect antidote to the unfortunate realization that you cannot commit murder is to read about one.
It turned out to be a delightfully different read. The authors’ communist leanings are revealed in the first chapter itself when the police are reported to be busy because “they were obliged to protect the American ambassador against letters and other things from people who disliked Lyndon Johnson and the war in Vietnam”. And so a small girl holds up a placard that says “DO YOUR DUTY! KEEP FUCKING AND MAKE MORE POLICE!” while an old woman waits in vain for a patrolman to smile and take her across the street. Meanwhile we meet Superintendent Martin Beck and Lennart Kollberg playing chess – with the former attributing his inability to win to a lack of chess sense!
Soon, the crime takes place in the cold November rain and we are slowly introduced to the other policemen - Kristiansson & Kvant, Gunvald Larsson, Hammar, Ake Stenstrom, Melander, Ek and Ronn. As the investigation unfurls at an excruciatingly slow pace, the reader becomes better acquainted with these men as their characters (and personal lives) are slowly revealed in vivid detail.
Almost the entire story unravels through the actions of the officers, either in the police station or on the beat – and the wry humor and commentary on world happenings during the conversations is what makes the book transcend an ordinary thriller. There are digs at America (the frequent mass massacres there and how it is possible to ‘order a gun by mail order’, Vietnam – the book was written in the 60’s), the press, The Great Detective General Public, politicians, bosses and consumerism. The sentences are short and simply worded (possibly because it’s a translation) with barely concealed irony.
The policemen are painted as ordinary humans, with their foibles and special talents and stupidities. As the photographic memory man Mellander remarks on the public’s distrust of the police: The reason is that the police are a necessary evil…The crux of the problem is, of course, the paradox that the police profession in itself calls for the highest intelligence & exceptional mental, physical and moral qualities in its practitioners but has nothing to attract anyone who possesses it.
And so, when Ronn is dispatched to get a possible statement out of the dying man who was still dying at XX Hospital:
(Ron) had carefully thought out two questions, which for safety’s sake he had written down in his notebook.
The first one was:
Who did the shooting
And the second:
What did he look like
Or, the reflection on the personal lives of Beck & Kollberg:
She (Gun) was exactly what he (Kollberg) wanted, but it had taken him over twenty years to find her and another year to think it over.
Martin Beck had not spent twenty years in search of his wife. He had met her seventeen years ago, made her pregnant on the spot and married in haste. He had indeed repented at lesire, and she was standing at the bedroom door, a living reminder of his mistake, in a crumpled nightdress and with red marks from the pillow on her face.
The title is derived from a record named The Adventures of the Laughing Policeman by Charles Penrose – a Christmas gift to Beck by his daughter that is unsuccessful in her attempt to make him laugh. Beck does laugh at the end of the book though. After the mystery is solved, he discovers that the answer lay all along on the desk of his murdered colleague - Beck & Kollberg had forgotten to check under the blotter when they kicked off their investigations in Stenstorm’s office. An appropriately self mocking conclusion to a book that refuses to take anything too seriously - a good lesson for life, or something like it!
Monday, September 22, 2008
Encounters with Officialdom (2) - International Driving Permit
It started with another of my peculiar obsessions – I wanted to obtain an international driving permit. Why, I still haven’t figured out - given that I have successfully driven without one on four continents. Perhaps I can blame it on the scare I had in Lille when the French nearly denied me the car I had booked for my driving vacation!
So when I went home to Delhi in March, I enlisted the help of Mrs B, the trusted lieutenant who has helped everyone in my family navigate the complex and murky Transport Office world in our bid to acquire the precious DRIVING LICENCE. For her unique brand of assertive charm well disguised under the “Sir”’s and “Please”’s is just what one needs to deal with the officers at the RTO.
The fun began when we got the application form. The documentation required a medical certificate from a doctor and a signed affidavit from a legal practitioner. I was mentally agonizing over how to locate a doctor and a lawyer at such short notice, forgetting that the motto of Indian bureaucracy is: rules are made so someone pays to break them. Sitting right outside the crowded and dirty office building were two women with typewriters, calling out the rates for a medical certificate and a legal affidavit the way hawkers sell onions & tomatoes in a bazaar. Yes, the first was a registered doctor, the second a practicing lawyer – and each had hit upon the golden goose of her profession. For a princely sum of 250 rupees, I would get an official stamp of being in sound mental health and of being a bona-fide citizen with no existing criminal record against me - no questions asked.
And did I mention that the women took shade under a large banner that proudly proclaimed the celebration of National Traffic Transparency (Anti–Corruption & No– Bribery) Week? But in India – sab chalta hai.
Documentation ready, Mrs. B employed her charm to snake to the front of the long queue for the submission of the documents (Bhai Sahib, please make way for ladies!). The next step was a personal interview with a ‘senior officer’. We were ushered into a miniscule room that was just about the size of a regular office cubicle. An extremely fat man dominated the room – his back rested against the wall, and his stomach supported the small table in such a way that it was impossible to distinguish the boundaries between flesh and wood. I briefly wondered how many people were needed to pull him out, for I certainly could not imagine him being able to pull his weight to a standing position on his own. Maybe he went around with the desk attached to him….my reverie was interrupted by a loud blob as the ‘officer’ spat some beetle juice into the waste paper basket conveniently placed at his feet. My interview was about to begin:
So you want to apply for a driving license?
Yes, Sir (this was Mrs B)
Do you know how to drive?
I quietly showed him my driving license issued 10 years ago, restraining myself from stating that this very office had issued the same to me.
Why do you want an international driving license, Have you ever been jailed before? He was clearly not impressed with my credentials.
I looked at him in surprise, wondering if he really expected an answer, when Mrs B discreetly stepped in – Sir, her mother is ..., her father is …., very respectable and educated family Sir…”, thus cutting off my sharp response of “ If I have been to jail, you have surely served life imprisonment ten times over!”
Did you write this application yourself, he continued belligerently?
I did, I reply quietly (I really did, even though the ‘lawyer’ had offered to fill it for me for free).
Write on the legal affidavit that you have filled the application yourself, and that all the information declared herewith is correct.
I looked at Mrs B in surprise – isn’t a legal affidavit meant to affirm the truthfulness of my details? She nodded imperceptibly, and I began to write, when our man cut in – Write it in Hindi. I shrugged and defaced the legal affidavit with a handwritten statement reaffirming what the affidavit already stated
By now, the officer had run out of other insults to throw at me - or maybe he was saving them for the long queue waiting outside. He affixed his stamp & signature on the application, and dismissed us with another spat of beetle juice.
Why have you written on the affidavit in hand, it is illegal! - shouted the clerk on the ground floor when we returned to him. Ask your officer, he made me do it – I snapped at him, ready to slug it out if he dared to refuse my application. But the clerk was evidently used to the ways of our man – he quietly accepted the documents and ordered me to return in the evening to collect the license.
I made my pilgrimage in the evening, only to join a queue of ten others ahead of me. The clerk at the counter reluctantly drew out a big file and started filling in the driving application for the first candidate in the line – in a laborious and illegible hand. I will spare the details – suffice to say that it was another hour of shuffling between floors, pasting slips in a notebook and trying to decipher the clerk’s calligraphy before I was handed my license.
So where are you moving to in the US? asked the guy behind me as we were leaving (we had become friends by now). Nowhere, I muttered. So why did you apply for an international permit, anyway you can drive on your existing license in any country if your period of stay is less than 6 months, he asked me in surprise? I am probably a crazy sadist, I mumbled.
The fat officer would have spat another round of bettle juice in agreement.
So when I went home to Delhi in March, I enlisted the help of Mrs B, the trusted lieutenant who has helped everyone in my family navigate the complex and murky Transport Office world in our bid to acquire the precious DRIVING LICENCE. For her unique brand of assertive charm well disguised under the “Sir”’s and “Please”’s is just what one needs to deal with the officers at the RTO.
The fun began when we got the application form. The documentation required a medical certificate from a doctor and a signed affidavit from a legal practitioner. I was mentally agonizing over how to locate a doctor and a lawyer at such short notice, forgetting that the motto of Indian bureaucracy is: rules are made so someone pays to break them. Sitting right outside the crowded and dirty office building were two women with typewriters, calling out the rates for a medical certificate and a legal affidavit the way hawkers sell onions & tomatoes in a bazaar. Yes, the first was a registered doctor, the second a practicing lawyer – and each had hit upon the golden goose of her profession. For a princely sum of 250 rupees, I would get an official stamp of being in sound mental health and of being a bona-fide citizen with no existing criminal record against me - no questions asked.
And did I mention that the women took shade under a large banner that proudly proclaimed the celebration of National Traffic Transparency (Anti–Corruption & No– Bribery) Week? But in India – sab chalta hai.
Documentation ready, Mrs. B employed her charm to snake to the front of the long queue for the submission of the documents (Bhai Sahib, please make way for ladies!). The next step was a personal interview with a ‘senior officer’. We were ushered into a miniscule room that was just about the size of a regular office cubicle. An extremely fat man dominated the room – his back rested against the wall, and his stomach supported the small table in such a way that it was impossible to distinguish the boundaries between flesh and wood. I briefly wondered how many people were needed to pull him out, for I certainly could not imagine him being able to pull his weight to a standing position on his own. Maybe he went around with the desk attached to him….my reverie was interrupted by a loud blob as the ‘officer’ spat some beetle juice into the waste paper basket conveniently placed at his feet. My interview was about to begin:
So you want to apply for a driving license?
Yes, Sir (this was Mrs B)
Do you know how to drive?
I quietly showed him my driving license issued 10 years ago, restraining myself from stating that this very office had issued the same to me.
Why do you want an international driving license, Have you ever been jailed before? He was clearly not impressed with my credentials.
I looked at him in surprise, wondering if he really expected an answer, when Mrs B discreetly stepped in – Sir, her mother is ..., her father is …., very respectable and educated family Sir…”, thus cutting off my sharp response of “ If I have been to jail, you have surely served life imprisonment ten times over!”
Did you write this application yourself, he continued belligerently?
I did, I reply quietly (I really did, even though the ‘lawyer’ had offered to fill it for me for free).
Write on the legal affidavit that you have filled the application yourself, and that all the information declared herewith is correct.
I looked at Mrs B in surprise – isn’t a legal affidavit meant to affirm the truthfulness of my details? She nodded imperceptibly, and I began to write, when our man cut in – Write it in Hindi. I shrugged and defaced the legal affidavit with a handwritten statement reaffirming what the affidavit already stated
By now, the officer had run out of other insults to throw at me - or maybe he was saving them for the long queue waiting outside. He affixed his stamp & signature on the application, and dismissed us with another spat of beetle juice.
Why have you written on the affidavit in hand, it is illegal! - shouted the clerk on the ground floor when we returned to him. Ask your officer, he made me do it – I snapped at him, ready to slug it out if he dared to refuse my application. But the clerk was evidently used to the ways of our man – he quietly accepted the documents and ordered me to return in the evening to collect the license.
I made my pilgrimage in the evening, only to join a queue of ten others ahead of me. The clerk at the counter reluctantly drew out a big file and started filling in the driving application for the first candidate in the line – in a laborious and illegible hand. I will spare the details – suffice to say that it was another hour of shuffling between floors, pasting slips in a notebook and trying to decipher the clerk’s calligraphy before I was handed my license.
So where are you moving to in the US? asked the guy behind me as we were leaving (we had become friends by now). Nowhere, I muttered. So why did you apply for an international permit, anyway you can drive on your existing license in any country if your period of stay is less than 6 months, he asked me in surprise? I am probably a crazy sadist, I mumbled.
The fat officer would have spat another round of bettle juice in agreement.
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