Knowing a cop

Upamanyu Chatterjee's character in one of his novels when asked for reason to join civil services, replies:

"Because within the civil service, one is likelier to know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who knows a cop. Or so I believed eight years ago. Now that I am wiser, I know that the government can fuck you up bad, even if you are part of it - unless you suck, suck, suck. The civil servant can fellate with the best of them. I say, sir, can we roll another joint?"

I believed that the nested somebodies in the sentence gets longer for people who are not in Indian Police Service. Yours truly being in Indian Trade Service, I thought that two or three somebodies coming in between was normal to reach the right cop.

I once tried to help a friend, a PhD in engineering, who was beaten right outside his home by local goons, and his wife roughed up in front of children when she tried protecting her husband. I met everyone from local inspector to ACP and to the DCP, a fine 2004 batch IPS. I failed to get the FIR registered, despite the 2004 batch shouting at his underlings to take immediate action. The local goons who had roughed up were apparently close to the local MLA and there appeared little that could be done. My friend resigned to his fate, sold his independent home and moved into a gated apartment complex. I thought then that probably if I was in Indian Police Service, I could have helped him a little better.
I realise that I was wrong like the character in Chatterjee's novel, after reading this piece by R K Raghavan, a former CBI director and a very respected cop, in The Hindu today (full article link: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-mystery-of-police-reform/article17431239.ece):

Knowing a cop doesn't help

The queer fever bump on the slope to fitness

Fitness exists in a plateau for me. When I am not very fit, or downright unfit, and not working out for months, I consider myself on an unfit flat plane. I kind of like this state too. Its drifty, peaty, lazy and floaty in nature. I have relaxed mornings, with long coffees, and relaxed evenings with single malts. I know that one day I will rise from this slumber and start working out, and get fit. I have been through many such cycles in last 20 years to know that it shall happen. I am, by nature, not a long term unfit kind of person. 

Then one fine day, long after my paunch has given up embarrassing the newer holes in the belt, I get to working out. My fitness level improves and I fall sick. Random fever types. If I give up at this point, I come back to unfit plane, and if I don't, I continue to higher fitness levels till I plateau. The fitness plateau. I am fit in this plane. My mornings are crisp with a stronger shot of black, and evenings are either abstinence or a single shot. The body disciplines itself to control the diet. 

Then the cycle takes its turn. The reason changes every time for the journey down the slope, but I do climb down after staying at the plateau for some time. On my way down, I encounter another round of fever or illness. With same effects and consequence. 

I find it queer that both up and down the slope there is an illness bump. I cross it both ways. Every time.  I recently crossed it on the way up. 

And as I grow older, I see the cycles taking longer to repeat. The slope is getting flatter, and the plateau on the top is getting closer to the flat plane below.