A police officer in the city has recently discovered that celebrations can sometimes end on a sour note, with the note being in the form of a transfer order. The official, who along with his team, had seized a case of liquor bottles from an autorickshaw that was illegally ferrying it a couple of days before Easter. The autorickshaw driver, who first escaped and was caught later, was sent off after being charged for drunk driving, but the liquor case remained in the police station, but was not entered in the register for seized goods. On Easter Day, when the rest of the world celebrated, the cops too joined the fun. Somehow, someone who didn’t like the idea, or perhaps, who couldn’t get to join the merrymaking, sent a pigeon with the news to the city police chief, who, in turn, sent the pigeon back with the transfer order.
Seized stuff was to be entered in the register and stored, not to be enjoyed, was the moral of the message.
Divided over supportThe open support extended by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] to the protest launched by the residents of Kadakampally seeking restoration of their right to pay land tax has created division within the agitating landowners. From the time the issue of denial of the residents’ right to remit tax came up, the CPI(M) leaders have taken cudgels for the landowners and the residents found nothing wrong in the support. But things took a different turn when the local unit of the party joined the indefinite agitation launched by the residents, under the banner of the Kadakampally Land Protection Council, in front of the village office at Anayara from Monday.
Some of the landowners expressed resentment over the cadres of a political party joining the agitation as it would give a political colour to the agitation and dilute the cause of a ‘genuine’ issue. Some of them even stayed away from the agitation on the first day. The pro-CPM members in the council consider support extended by the main Opposition party as one that could put teeth into the agitation.
New titleThe staff at the zoo office in the city have earned a new title, that of ‘valam kachavadakar’ or manure sellers. Not a particularly glamorous one, but nothing could be more appropriate considering that this is the kind of work the meagrely staffed office finds itself most preoccupied with.
Ever since they began the sale of fresh manure collected from the zoo premises last month, the office has been teeming with farmers and amateur horticulturalists. “People walk in uncertainly and enquire where the ‘valam kachavadam’ office is,” said one staffer.
Each sale entails elaborate paperwork, with multiple bills and receipts made and details filled in records which are dutifully passed on to the Revenue Department. Despite all this effort, not one paisa is fed into the zoo’s coffers. As they multitask and manage this business as well, they make do with raving feedback from customers, some of whom go to poetic lengths to describe how a once lifeless jasmine shrub flowered overnight when the zoo’s manure worked its magic.To bring some solace to the personnel, the sale has now been restricted to Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
(Reporting by Dennis Marcus Mathew, Rajesh B. Nair & Kaavya Pradeep Kumar)
