The third eye
MELBA MERGULHAO-CARVALHO ANTAO
This is the age of the CCTV; it’s the third eye when human eyes are not present. In the West there isn't a single place without CCTVs--and every one of them work. Ever since the spate of bomb blasts in our country, CCTVs have been installed in sensitive market places, roads, hotels and buildings. But the revealing moment comes when invariably the police sheepishly admit that the CCTVs were 'dead' at a crucial moment during a crisis. Can we know why the instruments are not checked for functionality or were the authorities expecting them to work by the power of the heavens?
We were shocked to discover that a private enterprise, a 7-star hotel to boot, where Tarun Tejpal had his now infamous Thinkfest—or should we call it Stinkfest?—doesn't have CCTVs in their elevators! Don't corporates know that elevators are the hot-beds of misconduct? Of course they know, says a friend in the service industry but who wants to go down that road when their prime concern is to rake in the moolah? Besides, keeping elevators in working order is headache enough. The attitude is, don't get us embroiled in what goes on 'inside' the elevators--only give us a shout when the elevator gets stuck in between floors, if you must.
Ask anyone, especially young girls, the ignominies they experience every day in office elevators. Some males hum the latest Bollywood numbers like Ram Chahe Leela or Sheila ki Jawani, others talk obscenely on their mobiles, some jab their carrybags in your face while many try to nudge their elbows into your ribs. And oh, how they love to pack the elevator like a can of sardines---all the easier to ‘rub shoulders’ with girls or pickpocket an unsuspecting office-goer.
There's so much for the police to gather from an elevator CCTV. Yet the Goa plateau resort that conducts chic and pricey interstate and international events regularly, does not have CCTVs in their plush lifts. What can't happen in an elevator--there are so many movies depicting murder and mayhem and secret confabulations in there. Or did the management of the hotel imagine their jetset clientele only have business on their minds? Had there been a CCTV in the elevator, it would have caught the entire episode of uninvited indulgence between the occupants, leaving no room for TT to call his shenanigans 'lighthearted banter'. Does mere lighthearted banter give a career girl a panic attack?
Will all the classy resorts in Goa now install CCTVs in elevators immediately after that serious lapse in Bambolim? Because behind the external genial facade of Dr Jekyll lies the evil Mr Hyde waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting quarry. And neglecting to install CCTVs only aids and abets such breakers of the law.