A classic causality dilemma is the ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ one; the dilemma is a product of observation that chickens lay eggs but chickens hatch from eggs. So which is the cause and which one is the effect? Appropriating Plutarch’s philosophy to Madras’ classic representation of its police force, I ask myself, which came first — cops being reduced to a mere punchlines in Tamil cinema and public perception thereafter, or the police behaving a certain way and cinema’s authentic representation of the same.
A quick Google search takes me to listicles of Tamil cinema’s best cops, not what I was looking for, but I stay on the site anyway — from Vikram’s iconic Saamy to Kamal’s down-to-earth Raghavan, and more recently, Surya’s loudspeaker-esque Singam — it’s all there; cops turning to superheroes, ignorant of the system, self-righteous, and more often than not, anything but procedural.
But the cops who show up on the big screen are of two kinds — the superheroes and the punch lines. The ones that span sequels and have its protagonists show off their culinary skills with a juxtaposition of alcohol and idly belong to the former, while the ones who turn up late, are comically corrupt, and don’t shy away from being the butt of the jokes, belong to the latter. Having been a resident of Madras who encounters and sometimes eludes cops on a daily basis, I don’t think I’ve come across either.
The cops in Madras are nothing like the ones you see on the big screen — they don’t shy away from being funny, but they aren’t the punch lines. Of all the cops I have run into, from my sans license driving days to my music-riding aficionado days, I have noticed a pattern – cops in Madras like banter. It could be about anything - from your workplace to how old your bike is to where your mother works; I have had cops stop me for having my earphones plugged in, and go through my playlist to see if I had it plugged in to take calls or if I was listening to music.
The first time I came to terms with the fact that listening to music while riding a bike was an offence was when I had discovered indie rap; I had a Kendrick Lamar playlist on shuffle, rapping along to the lyrical flow of Humble, at 4 pm, cruising through Chennai’s clover-shaped flyover, I stop as soon as I got off the Kathipara bridge; not to get my earphones out and pay heed to traffic rules, but change songs because I only knew the lines of two songs.
I stop outside one of the city’s more popular hotels, known more for its late-night parties that turn into early-morning breakfasts. I notice a security guard dressed in standard black and white uniform walking up to me. As soon as I see him approach me, I have my defense prepared in case he spewed “You are not allowed to stand here” rhetoric at me. Instead, the closer he got to me, the faster he started blowing his cover. He started stripping, and underneath those innocent black pants were traditional Tamil Nadu khaki traffic cop attire.
Cinema has always been a cultural informant of sorts to me, but never in the history of Tamil cinema, have I come across a scene that has led me to believe that traffic cops dress up in plain clothes to catch violators of the law. It was too late to run by the time he got to me, and I had to hand it to him, he single-handedly undid the conditioning that Tamil Cinema had done with its outlandish representation of the police force.
Bhargav Prasad
Twitter @CFLlightSabers
The writer specializes in first drafts, making observations on what makes Chennai, Madras