Policing the world's oldest emotion is by no means easy, as the Tamil Nadu police is discovering to its cost. Love may be a many-splendoured thing, but unfortunately it brings with it many complications too. For the Tamil Nadu force, dealing with stolen goods is a cakewalk but dealing with stolen kisses is proving to be something else. It's one thing to crack down on hardened LTTE terrorists or unrepentant peddlers of hooch, it's quite another to come down on infatuated inspectors and starry-eyed superintendents.One can always reach for the revolver when confronted with a murderous assailant, but what good are arms and ammunition when it comes to assailing the incurable lover? Compulsive con men can always be arrested, but how can the heart be informed that it is under arrest? The old lathi treatment can always be employed to round up vagrants, but how can the stick be wielded against the love-struck?Confronted with this conundrum that has no doubt vexed many in positions of authority and not just inthe police Tamil Nadu's director general of police F.C.Sharma has launched what can only be termed a preemptive strike. He has outlawed forthwith all love and romance in the force he heads. Through a special inter-office memo he has instructed everybody to conduct themselves in a ``disciplined manner''. Henceforth, his officers have been asked to stand by in high alert and the moment ``adverse reports come to notice'', they have been advised to ``nip them in the bud'' so that they are ``not allowed to grow into an episode'' which could ``tarnish the image of the police force which is meant for high rate of discipline''. It takes a stern man to issue such an extraordinary circular, but clearly stern measures are called for when hormones refuse to obey regulations and the rule of law. Wasn't it just the other day when a woman DSP of Tiruchi had the temerity to have a liaison with her colleague and an inquiry had to be conducted into the affair?Director General of Police Sharma perhaps may not know this,but his inter-office memo has found an echo in distant Lucknow. Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, who had as minister of communications once banned hotlines inviting obscene phone conversations with the husky-voiced in Hong Kong and Honduras, came down rather heavily on her party colleague and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh on Tuesday.In no uncertain terms she called upon him to exercise restraint in his relationship with the controversial corporator, Kusum Rai, who had recently been made chairperson of the state's Social Welfare Board. Swaraj observed that in a democracy, decency in public life is important and added sternly that it is imperative that public figures place some restraint on their behaviour. So where does all this leave love, that universal condition? Behind bars, if DGP Sharma has his way. But he may, alas, find his to be a mission impossible. As Shakespeare once observed, there are times when even stone walls cannot keep love at bay.
