Security in most of India is a facade, discovers Binu Alex.
Fly on Independence Day or Republic Day and you will notice something extra at the airport.
An extra layer of checking. Sometimes even a message asking you to reach early, as if the day itself is more dangerous than the rest of the year.
What is this extra security? Mostly it is an airline staffer at the aerobridge, running bare hands over your bag.
The same bag that has already gone through an X-ray machine. Already been cleared by a security force created for exactly this job.
I once asked a staffer what she could find that the machine and the trained force could not.
She had no answer. Nobody ever does.
That is when I understood. This is not detection. This is a customary code of conduct.
Not to catch anything dangerous. Just to convince the country that extra checking is happening.
It reminded me of the Wagah border, where soldiers on both sides go through their high-kicking daily drama for the crowds.
Both countries do this with equal sincerity. Neither will stop first.
If one side ever calls it off, the other will follow gladly. Fewer knee replacements for men in uniform, if nothing else.
Just to convince the country that both countries are enemies.
Security in most of India, I have come to believe, is a facade.
Like the policeman on the street corner, its real job is psychological. It is there to make you feel safe, not to make you safe.
Years ago I drove into the underground parking of a mall on SG Highway in Ahmedabad.
Nobody stood at the entrance, so I drove straight through.
Then the whistles started. Not one whistle. Many.
I hit the brakes, certain something terrible had happened ahead of me. My family was in the car.
In the rear-view mirror I saw security men running towards us.
They were carrying an Under-Vehicle Inspection Mirror. A trolley with a mirror on a long handle, meant to slide beneath the car and check for a bomb.
Consider the logic here.
A bomber, apparently, will only ever place a bomb under the car. Never inside it.
That is why nobody checks inside. Not the seats, not the glovebox, nothing.
In hotels it is the same ritual. They open the boot. They open the bonnet. The cabin stays untouched.
Long ago, outside a well-known hotel, I asked a security supervisor why.
He explained patiently. There are blind spots on a car, he said, where a magnetic explosive device can be stuck from outside without the driver ever knowing.
Fair point, I thought, just as the trolley reached the front of my car.
But if someone wanted to plant something from inside my own car, I would surely notice.
So the cabin is safe by pure logic. The security men had, in effect, decided I was not a suicide bomber, simply because only a suicide bomber would know what was inside his own vehicle.
But what about after I park and walk away?
There is CCTV for that, the supervisor said, closing the matter.
No escape route for me, apparently. Good to know.
One guard asked me to open the trunk. I did. It was messy, but this did not concern him.
The other guard stood by, watching, doing nothing in particular.
Meanwhile, the man with the trolley was sliding it under every part of the car, very thoroughly, very seriously.
Finished, I asked, as he began packing up.
Yes sir, he said.
As I drove forward, I glanced down and saw the trolley properly. There was no mirror on it.
Just a flat piece of plywood where the mirror should have been.
I stopped. Where is the mirror, I asked.
"Woh toot gaya hai," he said. It is broken.
Then what exactly were you scanning for the last two minutes?
"Dikhana padta hai, saab," he said, without any embarrassment. "Humko bhi upar jawab dena padta hai."
We have to show something is being done. We too have to answer to people above us.
A mirror or no mirror, it made no difference to him.
What mattered was that the trolley went under the car. The motion, not the mirror.
Whether an actual bomb would have been caught, nobody in that parking lot could honestly say.
Most of what protects us is not the equipment. It is simply people agreeing, quietly and without malice, to go through the motions together.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff