A coupla weeks ago I was driving to work in the morning.

I turned left at Shiv Sena Bhavan and without realizing it, I broke the signal and was flagged down by a traffic policeman at Plaza Cinema.

I knew the drill…smile, speak Marathi, and ask him to take “Dand” (Punishment) and then give him 50 or 100 bucks…it’s always the same.

Well this officer came to my window and I started speaking in Marathi. He was non-Maharashtrian and spoke in Hindi and then looking at me started speaking in pretty decent English.

He told me that I’d broken the signal and could have possibly have had an accident if I was going any faster. He took my license and then told me that it’d be available in 5 days at the RTO office at Mahim.

I smiled and kept asking him to take “Dand”

When he realized what I was asking he said that he did not have the necessary papers with him to take the fine. I kept on smiling and kept asking him. A few seconds later he smiled warmly and handed my license back to me.

I then took out a 100-rupee note to give him.

When he saw this he stopped me suddenly and said, “I did not want to spoil your morning”.

 Then joined his hands in namaste and said, “Think good thoughts and do good actions” and walked away before I could say anything else.

“Wow”

That’s all I could think…

We all know how strong corruption culture is in our country. From the lowest levels of the bureaucracy to the highest levels of the government, corruption is an accepted part of our daily lives.

But every so often we encounter a person like this who shows us that there is still good out there, a fact that we often forget in this wild world we live in. Someone who kinda restores our faith and reminds us that we should strive to be good too…another thing we forget in the mad rat race of our lives.

I wish more people like him existed in our world. We could sure use them…

So let’s all make a commitment today to be better human beings…to be honest, warm, loving and do good to the world around us.

And let us take the time to celebrate wonderful people like this police officer.