Greeting the police

After returning home from the lovely relaxing time in Kotah, the five of us were summoned to report at the police station. The police has by now understood that we are here for a while and that we are working with the Kanjars, their favourite target whenever anything goes wrong in the area or crimes are committed in the district.

We sat down with pounding hearts in front of the police chief and tried to answer his questions without lying too much. He asked why we had chosen the Kanjars in particular. Basically, he's worried that we will uncover their scheming against the Kanjars and report to the police in Jaipur that five Western tourists have seen abuse of power and mistreatment by the local police. So he showed off his intimidating talents and called in the chief of police in the whole district to tell us that 'show of power is the only way to maintain law and order'. We were in fact intimidated and tried our best to keep up diplomatic appearances; the hardest thing was having to listen to the same old routine from one of the highest autorities in the town - Jarel houses the worst criminals of Jhalawar, they are all criminals and then the characteristic laugh when we say we are teaching the children math and English. Stine felt like throwing up. I felt like challenging the image. But we all kept the charade.

Then he showed us their 'mug shot' book - an ordinary photo album with 50 pictures of men from Chandiya Kheri (the second village) and Jarel. We said we didn't recognise them, that there has only ever been women present when we're at the villages. At last, he asked which of us were in Jarel. Me, Morten and Nanna put up our hands. He pulled out his mobile phone and showed us a picture of Rakesh, 12-year-old smart kid with proper clothes and a knack for math. We haven't seen him in school for the past week. Now we know why. He's being hunted by the police because he's a criminal. We told the police that we had never seen this child before. Were we mistaken in our judgment? Should we have argued instead...? I'll think about that when I go to sleep tonight.