Do Unto Others...

Kannapiran was furious with his son. That was few months ago.

Kannapiran a.k.a “Kanal Pori” Kannan, was a mid-rung leader in the party and a MLA of the MSK ("Makkal Sevai Kazhagam") Government. At the time of the incident, he was away on southern districts tour, where he was tasked by his leader, Periaswamy, to use his oratorial skills to recruit members and rejuvenate the party at the grass-root level; which indicated that his star was rising within the party. His wife had called and informed him that his 16 year old son had gotten into trouble, where he and his friends had gotten drunk and ransacked a bar; the owner had filed a complaint with the police. Kannan had to rush back, say the normal “conspiracy of my political opponents” speech, worked the back-room, changed the FIR and got his son released and implicated some other harmless stand-by youngster. In equal measures, he had to use his power, waste away one of the quid-pro-quo’s and strong-arm a bit to get his son out. Kannan believed that he had gone down a couple of notch in the political game with his intra-party rival with whom he was jostling for eminence within the party. Which is why even after several weeks after the incident, Kannan still simmered thinking about the incident.

Kannan had come home earlier tonight, after a meeting with his leader who had praised his effort in the southern districts. He had gone to bed, happy. He heard some commotion that woke him up; and he saw the bedside clock show 2AM and his wife was not in the bed; he got out of the bed as he discerned someone crying loudly; he went downstairs to see that his daughter, disheveled and sprawled out on the sofa and his wife crying loudly over her. Soon he found out that his daughter had gone to a party with her friends, had something to drink and had couple of her classmates and seniors had tried to molest her; but they fled the scene as few men in the bar had challenged those boys. One of them was caught and was handed over to the police.

Kannan was enraged. He called a few people and found out which police station the boy was handed over to. He called his man-Friday (who doubled up as a body-guard and a few other roles) and drove down to the police station. As he charged into the Police Station, he countered the night-duty policeman literally sound asleep. He woke him up and demanded to see the youngster who was locked up – he had every intent to teach that boy a lesson through a sound thrashing.

The policeman stood up, saluted not-so-smartly and said,

“Saar, a few people came in earlier and took him home. We were told not to talk about it, since he was the son of the home minister in the central government”.