Loving and Fearing the Uniforms

I can't resist taking pictures of people in uniforms - especially policemen and police-women. It is a kind of obsession. If I am visiting a place and I see police personnel, I always try to take their pictures. Some times, I am a little afraid that they will get annoyed but that hasn't happened so far.

 

The image below has persons from the Police-band in Delhi. I love the beautiful colours of their head-dresses - they make me think of peacocks.  

It is a kind of love-fear relationship or rather fear-fascination relationship. Instinctively, I am afraid of people in police dress, if I can avoid, I never speak to them. In my mind they are representing cruel and brute force, which I suspect is because of my growing up in India, where the police is often cruel and corrupt. It is for this reason perhaps, that I like taking pictures of them with small children, so that the antagonism between this mental image and their actual gentleness creates a contrast in the picture.

In 1960 my father, belonging to the Socialist party, was jailed because of some anti-government protest. From his notes, I know that I and my younger sister, together with my mother, we had gone to see him. I was six years old at that time, yet I can't remember any thing about that visit, nothing absolutely, except for a faint memory of standing at the bus stop near the jail. I think that normally, a visit to a jail would be a very strong memory for a child. 

 

I remember the bus-stop near the Tihar jail in West Delhi but of the actual visit inside the jail, I have a big hole in my memory. It must have been very traumatic for me. Perhaps, that visit is also behind my fear-fascination of uniforms?

 

I have known some policemen and even a police commissioner, and they are perfectly fine persons. This is not about them as persons but perhaps it is about what they represent?

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