Whenever there is an opportunity to bash the cops - of course, only verbally - and their moral fabric, all of us pounce on it and make the most of it, because they are one of the favorite punching bags, alongside politicians, for an increasingly corrupt society to pin all its unjustified sense of indignation on and to feel a sense of sanctimony. While the politicians may have sailed past the stages of salvation, the cops once in a while prove that they are as human - and humane - as the next human being. Today I got the chance to see one such an instance.

I just took the late night's bus service to reach the railway station. With me some cops also boarded the bus. Almost all of them were female cops, with one or two male ones among them. And, it was obvious that all of them have only recently joined the service - young, tired but enthusiastic, as the demands of their jobs haven't taken a toll on them yet.

They all took their seats here and there and settled into the gossip of the day's evening. A couple of stops later, a group of women boarded the bus. Some of them old, two of them mothers carrying their toddlers in their arms. The lady cop who was just sitting next to them was a very young girl. She was visibly exhausted from all the day's work at the grueling heat of Chennai. With a  small, fresh wreath of jasmine flowers adorning her hair, she could have been mistaken for a school student, were she wearing civilian clothes instead of the uniform, but let me not digress.
The moment this young cop saw the women, she didn't wait, she didn't think, she didn't talk. She simply got up from the seat, gave her seat to the woman with the toddler. Seeing her, the male cop, who was sitting in the seat across, also got up from his seat and gave his seat to the other woman.

Our lady cop, got a free seat by the next stop and the first thing she did was to lean on the window pane and sleep, with all the fatigue of the day visibly telling on her.

Witnessing all this, while most of the able bodied men didn't even make a show of getting up and the young lady cop showing the very basic and yet the rarest of human courtesy, I felt this - cops are neither good nor bad. They are just as human - and humane - as we are. :-)