Chowkidars rob and steal sleep

The nation has a new pastime, prefixing ‘Chowkidar’ to names. So General V K Singh may now be known as Chowkidar General V K Singh  or General Chowkidar V K Singh, whichever catches his fancy ; the latter ,though, would seem a climb down for a retired army chief.  Forgotten is the quibble over the body count of terrorists killed in Balakot or where exactly to place credit for safe return of Abhinandan -the 56” of Mr Modi, or Trump, or Xi, or Prince of SA, or UAE, or.....

Today ‘Chowkidar’ buzzes whether it be ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ or ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’. The freshly minted Chowkidar Ravi Shankar Prasad , Law Minister, is euphoric. Mr Modi’s lonesome existence as Chowkidar is over. If the hashtag #MainBhiChowkidar on Twitter amassing 20 lakh tweets and 1680 cr impressions is any indication he has mammoth company.  If a mere 10% of those impressions sufficiently impressed people to take up chowkidari  not only the whole of India but significant number of chowkidars would still be left over to patrol rest of the world. Already , Chowkidar Prasad ,points out, one crore people have parroted ‘main bhi chowkidar’. Does the nation have that many chowkis to place them ? 

Still it does sound hugely comforting to have so many chowkidars suddenly erupt all around us. My own exposure to a chowkidar ,though, hasn’t been entirely salubrious. His nightly  rhythmic whack of stick on the road, ‘tuk, tuk, tuk ‘ accompanied by staccato bursts of the bellow, ‘Jagte raho, Jagte raho, Jagte raho’ would break Hynos’s spell just as it took hold. Miraculously I survived sleep deprivation but kept asking myself if people jagte rahe and be vigilant what for his services?  Further, twice a year, Holi and Durga puja, he called to claim

 the customary ‘parbi’  in cash. One Holi he demanded double of what we offered, we flatly refused and he left in a malevolent mood muttering foul curses under his breath.That night we slept soundly, uninterruptedly. The morning, however , brought no cheer for we found to our chagrin all the four cane chairs in the balcony gone, stolen. From the office of the Housing Society we learnt the chowkidar had not reported for duty the previous night. Eureka, that is why we had slept soundly. He was never seen again. Whether our loss of chairs had anything to do with his disappearance we shall never know but the coincidence lay heavy upon us for a while. 

That’s the problem with chowkidars , they won’t let you sleep in peace and they steal. Incidentally, the neo-converts to chowkidari are all ‘parbi’ dispensers unlike chowkidars of yesteryear who were a poor ‘parbi’ collecting lot. But then a suit boot ki sarkar needs suited booted chowkidars to go with it.