An Interview with a Police Officer

During my visit to India this summer, I had a great opportunity to meet IPS Rahul Prakash, Head of Police in Bharathpur, Rajasthan.

Sir, as he is called mostly, is from Indian Civil Services batch of 2006. In India, if you want to lead a police department for a district (i.e. town) or run the administration for a district, you need to first succeed at the competitive entrance tests called UPSC Civil Services. Out of approximately 350,000 candidates that appear for the test each year, only 200 candidates get a ranking that allows them a chance to become IAS (Indian Administrative Service), or IPS (Indian Police Service), or get a few other elite roles in the government. This is an acceptance rate of only 0.057%. Compare this with business school acceptance rate of 7% at Stanford University, 11% at Harvard University, and 13% at MIT. This service is pretty impressive, and sought after by the brightest people in India. Once selected through the entrance exams, they are trained, and then they work for the government to run the country!

A different kind of get together!

This summer when I visited my grandparents in India, I learned about a special kind of get-together called ‘Satsang’. In this get together, a lot of people gather at someone’s house every day. They do yoga, sing songs, and listen to knowledge from the leaders. My grandma and grandpa are both leaders in Satsang. Earlier, I thought they make money by imparting knowledge, but later I learnt that they are volunteers.  I couldn’t understand the knowledge because it was in Hindi language. Though I understand and speak basic Hindi, the language they used was way too advance for me and I found Satsang really boring. I still accompanied my grandparents few times in the morning at 5 AM to make them happy.

My Indian Odyssey, continued!

This is my second week in India. I have a few more things to share. Most importantly, this week is really a lot more fun.

First of all, I heard dogs barking like crazy, and knew that my mom had arrived. It was 2 AM!! I ran and woke up my grandpa so he could unlock the door. Early that morning, my cousins arrived. Since I was the only girl with 4 cousins, I did what the boys were doing, wrestling on the bed. It was actually really fun. After 5 – 10 rounds of wrestling, I ate dessert. Then I played video games and watched my cousins play some too. After that the cousins left and I went to drop them off to the train station.

While we were waiting for the train, 2 beggars came asking for money. In my opinion, the train station was very trashed and smelly. Even though it is not safe to walk on the train track, people were walking across the train track to get to the other side! What if a train came and hit them; that would be dangerous. When my cousin’s train came we said good-bye and went home. In the car when we were going home, I got to sit in the front passenger seat on my dad’s lap; so cool! When we reached home I did some math sheets and now I’m writing this, my blog!!

Also in the second week we traveled to Taj Mahal. The palace took 22 years and 20,000 people to build it! The flowers on the tomb each had 64 petals of individual stones that were hand cut! They did not let us see the real tomb because they thought we will make it dirty. Instead they made a replica of the tomb. I think the Taj Mahal office should just clean the real tomb and let us see it too. I felt awesome after I saw the Taj Mahal; it was splendid!

At Taj Mahal with my aunt

We also went to Fatehpur Sikri; King Akbar’s palace. There was a section very high where the king sat and answered to people’s problems.  King Akbar had 2 bedrooms for himself and his queen. One was a winter bedroom and another was a summer one. The summer one was high, and to make it cool, there was a waterfall on the side. I wish I had a bedroom like that for the summer; too bad I don’t.

At the Tomb in Sikri Palace

Despite the rain, Fatehpur Sikri Palace looked beautiful!

I WISH I COULD LIVE IN THIS PALACE in FATEHPUR SIKRI!!

WRITING GIRL (WG)