e-Beat

It was 0220 Hrs on Sunday morning (or should I say Saturday Night), I was busy reading a book, when I heard the gate to my house open. “At 2:20 am???”, I was curious. So I ran to the door to check out who it was? And outside was this huge more-than-six-feet-tall guy, wearing a monkey cap, and a hat on top. He was wearing a green sweater and was carrying a four feet long rifle on his shoulder. I really cannot recollect what I was thinking then (Was I even thinking??). I just stool still, frozen by that fellow’s stare. He took out a device that looked like a Nokia 2100 phone (I could only see the back of the device) and pointed it to my window. I was curious, scared and am sure my face had gone pale. What was this guy upto?? What was he doing in front of my eyes?? Then he lowered the wool that was covering his mouth and gave me this wide all-teeth-showing smile and said “ebit saab”.
Me: What???
He: Hum rooz ek se che bajhe tak bit marthe haen (Phooof…only then did I realize that this guy was a cop and that his “bit” was actually “beat”…for those who do not understand Hindi, he said he does beats around the area from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m.)

During the conversation, he told me that they are a group of 3 constables who cover this area at night and that they do four to five beats. He added that, “out of these five beats one of the beats has to an e-Beat”.

During the eBeat, the cops carry a device (I did not have a camera then, so I could not take a pic of his device), which they call the recorder and which is the size of a mobile phone. All the houses in our area are fitted with this white-plate. In my house this thing is fixed to the window. Have a look at these pics.



That’s my window, and you can see the white plate at the bottom right.

Zoooooom!! Close up view.

When the cop points the mobile-like device on this plate, we hear three beeps and on the third beep a number gets recorded on his instrument. Cool huh!!
The police department is becoming hi-tech. I have heard of e-Mail, e-Business, e-Commerce, e-Ticket, e-Banking…….but "e-Beat", was something really novel. I was very impressed. A really useful idea to monitor and make sure the whole area is covered by these constables. At least we can be sure that they don’t get paid for dozing the night away.
It feels safe when you get to see the cops do such things, especially when you have got yourself a new bike. Hehehe…

Way to go Bangalore Cops!! Way to go!! Hats off to the Karnataka State Police Department.