My misconception

I was in tenth standard and one fine morning, our principal made an announcement in the assembly about the police from Paro Police station making a visit to our school to sensitize the youth. We all were seated in the hall that afternoon and five police officers made their way towards the stage. All the officers looked amazingly smart, tall, brave and confident in their dark blue uniform, well-polished black boots, fastened belts, shining stars on the shoulders and their nameplates on the chest. An officer who looked bit aged stepped forward and took the main seat which indicated that he was the SP (Superintendent of Police). It was little bad of most of us to not know the SP of our own town. Our school principal immediately addressed the gathering welcoming the officers to our school. After our principal wind up his role on the stage, SP put on the mike and made a long smile to all of us. He greeted all the faculty and students of my school and introduced himself as Tshering Dorji. He then introduced four OCs (Officer-in-Charge) who came along with him. He started telling us what police is and what work police do. He even shared the hardships of being a policeman citing lots of examples they had encountered.

It was a new knowledge for me because till then my thinking and perception about police was completely wrong. I was a typical citizen who cursed police man on various occasion not knowing that what they are doing is for the country and its people. I was very young then, may be 6-7 years when I saw someone whom my mother told me that she was a wife a of policeman and my direct thought was that she cannot do anything bad to her husband because if she did, he will jail her immediately. That was my thinking at that age. And as I grew older, I understood that I was wrong and it won’t happen like that. But I never had that positive note which the policeman actually deserves. I was around 12 years probably when I went with my family to get the blessings from the Guru Rinpoche’s thongdrel on the last day of annual Paro Tshechu. We had to stand in line as thousands gathered for the blessing and I was holding my father’s hands standing in the queue while my mother and sister were standing behind us. We had waited in the line for sometime in the cold but a group of people broke in suddenly and disturbed our line. A policeman came directly to supervise and they thought our family was the one who broke the line and they threw us out from the line immediately. My father got very furious and exchanged some harsh words with the police but my mother was smart enough to pull him back. We didn’t get the blessing that day and I hated police so much then.

That day in the school, SP Tshering Dorji cleared lots of my doubts about how a policeman works, how the police department functions and how are the citizens and country protected by them. I was happy to attend that sensitization program. It is not easy for them to work 24 hours a day; run after criminals, search for evidences, check on every vehicle on the street, rescue victims… They too have a family and it’s damn unfair to let their family suffer only because they have to serve the country. They are truly the heroes who are getting paid for risking their lives in danger all the time. They are spending sleepless nights hunting for criminals and rule breakers so that we can sleep peacefully. We fill ourselves with joy every time a new celebration comes up but it’s just the opposite case for them. Anytime they are called, they have to make their presence without failure. The other four OCs sensitized us on various types of crimes and their categorization of the punishment. It was indeed a very new knowledge I got that day. The work policeman does is something which deserves honor and dignity.