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Playing it safe

What we put up with for that secure feeling!

Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

ORWELLIAN OVERDRIVE Hold it! There's something definitely dodgy about that mannequin...

Gone are the days when security meant the watchman who stood outside your apartment every day, catching a nap when he thought nobody was watching. In today's world of 24-hour news channels and successive terrorist plots, the word takes on new meaning even as ordinary citizens have to contend with being under watch, apparently for their own well being.

While having to come in to the airport or railway station an hour early every time one has to travel doesn't seem too unreasonable a request, the other insidious ways in which security affects our daily lives can sometimes be quite frustrating. Schools in the city, for instance, seem to have the bomb squad over more often than they do guest faculty, wasting numerous hours that might otherwise be used to impart valuable life lessons.

And now, with the increased focus on "soft targets" — as malls and other consumer destinations are affectionately referred to — watching a movie or getting a bite to eat can feel like that much-hated visit to the dentist or the annual physical exam.

To enter one of the malls in Bangalore, for instance, one has to walk through a metal detector, then get patted down and probed with another hand-held device and even empty the contents of one's bag, just in case one might have some plastic explosive handy.

Walk up to the multiplex and you find out that you can't carry your helmet into the theatre, although handbags are allowed for reasons best known to God and the mall personnel who "are only concerned for your safety". They politely inform you that you must deposit the offending headgear at the ground floor outside the mall. On your way in and out following instructions, the metal detectors and body searches ensue again, at both the entrance of the mall and the multiplex.

And so, while everyone else knows the Matrix isn't real, you grope forward unenlightened, cheering for the nice men in black suits and dark glasses because the film started 10 minutes ago. Once you're done with the movie and want your bags before you move onto the shopping, the whole rigmarole repeats.

But all this is worth the effort, you console yourself, if it means that the terrorist gets stopped. Then you notice that the metal detector beeps as each person walks through, but none of the metal objects on them are checked. And at the multiplex, the pretty girl who wails oh-no-the-movie-has-already-started passes through without her bags being checked. Ah, that great feeling of security is unbeatable!

RAKESH MEHAR

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