Case Four: How much is TOO much?

Life of a Slice - PDA Files.

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We were not even boyfriend-girlfriend. We were seeing each other. We were not holding hands or into any such act of affection. We were just roaming together on this street, outside a college construction. It was an afternoon. The street was less filled with people. Perhaps, this is the reason there were police around for a guard.

A policeman came to us and began interrogating. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here? Ye tumhare baap ka rasta hai kya?’ I was staring at the cop in surprise/cluelessness. He sort of appeared all of a sudden and leapt at us. He continued, ‘What’s happening here? Where have you come from?’ His forehead was gathering wrinkles and his eyes were turning wide. He raised his voice, ‘Give me your parent’s number. I’ll call them. now.’

I was 23. My friend was 27. Who was he kidding? I mean, calling our parents for the mere fact that we are roaming together?

My friend, on the other hand, was chilled. There was no panic, no anxiety, no nothing. He was apparently cool. He had said the police that we were friends, just friends. But that, instead of calming the police down, triggered him even more. I could see rage spreading like fire on the cop’s face. So, as if the only option in sight, my friend pulled his wallet from his jeans pocket and stared the cop right in his eye and said those three golden words, ‘Paise kitna loge?’

The policeman's anger collapsed that very second. He did pretend to hold it up, though, until my friend took out almost all the notes he had inside his wallet. The policeman had his eyes fixed on my friend's wallet despite that and it was clearly visible from his face, however hard he was pretending to be unbothered, that he was not satisfied with the compensation he was getting. My friend stretched the mouth of his wallet as wide as he could in an attempt to convince the policeman that this was all he had got. That moment, I am sure, the policeman noticed my friend's debit card.

Next, he took his phone out from his pocket and dialled a (fake) call and said, 'Gaadi bhejo. Do jan ko chowki pe leke jana hai.'

I was scared, no doubt, but more than that I was annoyed. The policeman's intentions were not coming out clearly. My friend put more force in requesting him to let go of us. Also, only out of pressure, we promised him that we won't be roaming together. He passed some rude comments at us, wasted our time, spoilt our moods and then, at last, he confessed what he wanted.

He told my friend to withdraw money from the nearest ATM as what he was being offered was very less and meanwhile, he asked me to stay with him. When my friend returned and handed cash to the policeman, he spread the notes like cards within his fingers, to count the amount. Only then he was satisfied but still, he looked at us in annoyance, which again was just a fake expression he had pulled on because he was suppressing his smile at constant. Finally, after all this drama, he asked us to get lost from there.

This was totally stupid. I felt terrible that day. There was no sense of what had happened. No meaning at all. I was wondering, ‘Can’t I roam with any of my male friends anymore?’ Catching a pair under this circumstance and demanding money from them is not at all ethical. The cops were not supposed to behave like that. For the only reason, we said that we were friends, he extracted money from us. There is absolutely no meaning to this at all.

The male friend’s perspective: I was certain the police wanted money. He wearing his nameplate backside-front was an obvious sign that he did not want to reveal his identity, which concludes that he had something odd on his mind. If I had stood there arguing with the cop, he would have taken us to the police station, he would have called our parents, feed them unnecessary information. You see, it was best for me to smartly deal with him. Trust me, all the money that I gave to the cop, I was going to fill petrol in my bike with it.

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This, what happened to us, is common. People are twitching the PDA laws for their own benefit. At worst cases, people also harass the couple. The couple, I think, in most of the cases don’t stand against these people, especially when there are cops involved. It’s all because of fear. Fear of facing a narrow-minded society.

If only, people would not overreact; if people would not be judgmental; if people would not take an advantage of such a situation; if people would not look down at couples engaged in PDA; if people who think that the couple are crossing a line (as per their mindset because of generation gap or whatever) would tell the couple to stop doing what they are doing with "respect", things would have been far better.

Written by Pooja Kakde The fifth and the last episode of the series releases soon.

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