Tirunelveli people cannot picture their newly elected mayor and third-time councillor without his decade-old bicycle. As he doesn’t know how to ride a bike, the bicycle has been his companion for years. He visited the corporation office, took ward rounds, participated in the election, and even came to the office to take oath as mayor on his cycle.
But on the day he took charge as the mayor, the cycle got special treatment. It was allotted a unique place in the office and was garlanded—more like a farewell, as in the evening, for the first time, Ramakrishnan left his bicycle at the corporation office and returned home in his official car.
‘Intelligent’ unit
How intelligent are our intelligence unit officials? Recently, when this reporter had a brief encounter with a top officer of the intelligence unit at the Coimbatore Commissioner’s office, the top cop started boasting about how he helped in reducing the number of poaching cases in Gudalur. However, in reality, the policeman had only helped with one case, from which he was drawing conclusions about the ‘dip’ in number.
When the reporter shot questions regarding the Kattu Erumai (gaur) population in the region, the official, to much surprise, replied that the Coimbatore forest doesn’t have Kattu Erumai, except for some people who get drunk and behave like the animal. Journalists in the area are wondering how a top official in the intelligence unit, who has been working in a sensitive region like Coimbatore for years, does not know its wildlife.
(Contributed by S Senthil Kumar & Thinakaran Rajamani; Compiled by Sneha Joseph)