When I joined the Indian Police Service, the saintly journalist V.N. Narayanan dashed off a note that still makes me chuckle: “Congratulations and sympathies.”Back then, I laughed it off as classic newsroom sarcasm. Now, decades later, I see it as the most brutally honest job description ever penned for a cop. In the police, success and suffering are joined at the hip—like praise and bewilderment, medals and migraines.My troubles probably started before the khaki even touched my shoulders. As a young man, I’d been spoiled by fearless journalism. I interviewed Prime Minister Charan Singh, swapped stories with Khushwant Singh and Kuldeep Nayar, and soaked up the electric atmosphere of People’s Union for Civil Liberties press meets at Delhi’s Coffee House. Blunt questions, bolder answers, independent thinking wasn’t tolerated—it was demanded.That habit, alas, tagged along into the force like an uninvited guest who refuses to leave.Early on, emboldened by my press past, I lit a cigarette in front of seniors. Trivial? Sure. But in police culture, where conformity is oxygen and individuality is an allergy, it branded me “difficult” for life.My training ustad at Phillaur dispensed gold-plated wisdom: “Never lead the pack—you’ll get noticed and targeted. Never trail behind—you’ll be forgotten. Stay smack in the middle; that’s the safest anonymity.” He also quipped about academic stars: “Score too high, and they’ll maroon you in the academy forever as a permanent exhibit.”The fort-turned-academy had its own dark proverb: “Qile ki baat jile mein nahin chalti, aur jile ki baat qile mein.” What flies inside the fort crashes in the district; what thrives in the district is heresy in the fort.Reality proved it right.In a freshly carved Haryana district, I rallied about eighty socially aware citizens to bridge police and public. The Home Minister clapped. The DGP nodded approval. Even the Human Rights Commission gave a thumbs-up.Some bird had chirped that I was plotting a political jump. In police land, rumour outruns truth and usually arrives with VIP escort.Another time, a senior politician in my office took a call, then muttered he’d ring back later because he was “sitting at the wrong place.” I sat there wondering when my chair had turned politically toxic.A Central Minister once bristled when I politely reminded him I answered to the state DGP, not Delhi. Protocol, it turns out, has the ego of a diva.Abroad, surprises kept coming. On a private UK trip, my visa came with a cheeky note: no security for me because I belonged to an anti-extremist wing and might harbour “strong views” on terrorism. In Mauritius, my driver gaped when I mentioned supervising nearly five hundred murder cases. In his island paradise, murder was headline news; in my files, it was just another Tuesday.Yet policing’s real pulse was always human.When a young man died from an accidental police bullet and the crowd simmered, I slipped into the funeral procession as a pall-bearer. No speeches—just silent shoulders. Sometimes presence douses fire better than platitudes.As SP Sonipat, I helped launch Haryana’s first Women Police Station. Today they’re everywhere; back then it felt like sneaking a revolution past the rulebook.With Smile Train’s help, we arranged cleft-lip surgeries for forty-seven kids at CMC Ludhiana. Those smiles remain my quietest medals.Patience got tested too. A seventy-year-old mother complained her sons starved her. When the youngest sneered she was “corrupt,” I slapped him—my first and only office wallop. Not by the book, certainly. But sometimes the heart overtakes the head.Lighter moments saved sanity.Arriving late to a Shah Rukh Khan blockbuster, the projectionist rolled the film back for me. The audience cheered the surprise rewind like I’d gifted them free popcorn.In Connaught Place, I bought a flute and tootled away happily—only to be hauled up later for “unofficerlike behaviour.” Officers may blow whistles, apparently, but melodies are off-limits.Looking back, surviving the police isn’t about being perpetually right or blindly obedient. It’s about staying human—even when it’s inconveniently so.That’s what Narayanan nailed in his terse note.Congratulations, for the rare highs.Sympathies, for the endless grind.In uniform, they never travel alone.(The writer is a former police officer who served in Haryana)