A Cop Walks Down Memory Lane...!

Book excerpt: All the memories of a man in his life, whether it might be of heart-warming or heart-breaking, should not go buried along with his last breath, but should leave some inputs to his family members, relatives and friends to make them aware of his past life track for their future guidance. At the same time, if the same man happens to be a person who had served in any public service organization, then his memories should not go vanished away along with his soul. However, such memories should necessarily leave a lesson to his successors and all the common public to learn the morals and to realize the things, as to how the problems are raised in societies and how the same could be prevented. Unlike the other departmental officials of the government services, the police officials would not have an opportunity of second innings to continue their services in any other sector after their retirement, as the police service is entirely different from other services of the governing bodies, like technical, educational, medical, and commercial services. Because of this, most of the retired police officials would feel themselves isolated and spend the remaining part of their lifetime in a lackadaisical manner. Under such circumstances, it is my son Arulmurugan, and my daughter Sivasakthi, who are now living respectively in Michigan and Arizona States of USA, have suggested me to write some useful articles in blog, a kind of website, to share my thoughts in good faith with hundreds and thousands of readers over the months and years. My children's encouragement and guidance empowered me to enter into such blog-writings and publish the same in my blog site. As far as the police department is concerned in olden days, our traditional practice was to write everything manually by our own hand for all kinds of script works until the police department was modernized. As I had been accustomed for a long time only to such manual writings, I gradually learned the system related works and started to login into my blog site and write the articles directly in my blog after my superannuation. Initially, I was writing on some social issues in my blog. Then, a spark came in my mind as to why should not I write short stories in my blog, based on the cruxes of some past occurrences that came across in my police service. Since I had been in the regular habit of preparing my case diaries and the investigation reports in my own handwriting throughout my service, it was easy for me to recollect some past occurrences and shape up the same in the form of short stories, adding some spicy essence to pep up the style of writing. While writing such short stories, I shaped up the same with an object of giving some moral messages, thrill, fun, and some social thoughts to every reader, without touching the sentiments of anyone. The names of the characters in the short stories and the articles have been changed. I have spent almost all the days, after my superannuation, in writing fifty-five episodes, most of which are short stories and few are satirical article to poke fun at some social evils and injustice, with a narrative style of a professional storyteller. At this moment, I would like to make a self-explanation. Yes! Some may think as to why this Policeman has written this book in English. First, I would like to state that I love my mother tongue Tamil, the most ancient of all other languages. Anyhow, I had a little passion of learning one more language in addition to my mother tongue, because of which, I had a brief interest in grooming the English language in me. I have written this book in English with an idea of conveying my short stories and thoughts to all the people irrespective of linguistic variations and regional differences. - K.Manickavasagam Dy.Superintendent of Police (Retd)