It was well past midnight on December 31 and the road was largely deserted with the New Year revelry dampened by the night curfew.
A patrolling team from Palarivattom station spotted a youngster standing outside a women's hostel in the city with a motorcycle by his side. He had come to meet her lover, an inmate of the hostel.
The girl, however, did a vanishing act as soon as she saw the police vehicle leaving him stranded. It emerged that he had come all the way from Palakkad just to deliver his lover New Year wishes.
Police were, of course, unimpressed by his gesture to impress the girl. He soon found himself at the station where he was slapped with a fine before being allowed to go. He then had to trudge back to fetch his motorcycle before taking the long journey back to Palakkad. Whether he had any more encounter with the police in the night remains unknown though.
Police engaged in the rather serious business of the enforcement of curfew came across many more such hilarious situations.
A middle-aged man was lying on the road. His two friends were desperately trying to get him back to his feet though he appeared way too drunk. But then the police jeep appeared and the man sprang back to his feet and simply fled leaving his friends dumbstruck. To make matters worse, they were slapped with a fine.
In another incident, a man in his 60s who was found walking along the Palarivattom Bypass was stopped by a patrolling team after the curfew kicked in. On being asked what he was up to, the man nonchalantly responded he was on his way to the cemetery for extending New Year wishes to departed souls leaving the cops stumped.
In Santhipuram colony in the city, residents had assembled despite the curfew. When police tried to send them back home, a youngster bemoaned how a New Year comes only once a year and that they be allowed to at least burst crackers at the stroke of midnight. The residents assured police that they will keep things under control and police left it at that.
In another part of the city, police waved down a cab. The passenger said that he was a journalist and was returning home after night shift. The cop then burst into a monologue over how wrong it was for the media personnel themselves to violate the curfew despite reporting about it. The journalist had to gently remind him that he has to be outside to report and now that he had done his job he has to return home.
Where small groups gathered for clandestine revelries, members took turn on 'guard' duty looking for police while others gulped down the drinks. Every beam of light from the headlight of a passing vehicle led to mad scrambles fearing the approach of a police patrolling vehicle. Some of the more emboldened ones, however, broke into dancing in the middle of the road to the beat of loud music belted out by car stereos only for cops to disburse them.
People, however, more or less complied with the curfew, said a cop at Kadavanthra station. And in the case of violators, police used a mix of coercion and persuasion with a fine thrown in to keep things under the check.