Being Previleged

A dhobi washes and irons.

A mali tends a garden.

A fruitwalli sells fruit.

And a glasswallah sells glass.

In a country where jobs are stratified and specialized, why, for heaven's sake, have they not invented someone who stands in for you at the bureau*?

A day before my departure for our holiday in Manila, I was informed that my visa was expiring and thus needed extension. I knew this would be no pleasure trip to the bureau having gone through the relatively laborious process nine months before. Laborious though the process is, we are part of the privileged few who have someone prepare the paperwork for us; someone who has the connections in the bureau so that the exercise which sometimes takes days takes a few hours at most! The special someone is Magic Mahesh.

I met Mahesh at the lobby of the VV Club. We waited for courier Shiva to deliver a document needed for our application. David and I were seeking an extension yet it was only I present at the bureau. We were going to wing it, Mahesh said, lead the bureau to believe that David was actually present. Just go along with whatever I tell you, he instructed. This is quickly turning out to be a James Bond kind of day!

The bureau breaks at 1:00 pm. It was 12:54 and I was concerned we would not make it to the office before break time. Mahesh looked at his watch and confidently declared we would be fine, we had six minutes to make it. Six minutes to have my passport photo taken, printed, cut and made ready before we rushed into the office! Not surprisingly the photowallah (who by the way had a butterfly bandage on his forehead and traces of a bad bruise on his cheek--maybe he took a bad passport photo?) had no change for my 500IR bill. Mahesh instructed him with a mere look to bring the photos and change to the bureau office. He has obviously done this more than twice before! He has a whole network!

Magic Mahesh merits description, oh so bloggable is he! Quite tall and almost burly he is a handsome clean cut fellow permanently attached to a handkerchief he uses to wipe his sweaty face and palms. His watch sits over the cuff of his perfectly ironed beige shirt. His black shoes are dust free, immaculately clean, suspiciously military. On both occasions I was with him at the bureau, his files, collated in clear folders were impeccably neat, in consequential order, all pages ticked off where signatures were needed. Nothing askew, nothing missing, nothing out of place! That is Mahesh!

If Indian bureaucracy does not intimidate you, the sheer number of people in this office will. People fell in queues behind counters. Other counters disappeared behind people surrounding it in no apparent order. On rows of cold metal chairs sat people of all races and ages. Grandfathers sat with their grandchildren happily playing their video games. A pair of backpacking hippie looking boys sat lazily and read their books and sipped their 1.5 L bottled water obviously prepared for the wait. A few young European faces were accompanied by older local looking faces. Older men and women sat patiently knowing that exasperation, impatience and any kind of emotion was futile. This was the process and nothing any of them could do or say would speed things up.

Mahesh had the only smile in the room. He instructed me to sit down and be visible to the examiner. He quickly walked up to a counter and without fuss jumped the invisible queue of a hundred. No one noticed. Everyone was consumed with trying to forget the interminable wait in front of them. Everyone with seething exasperation was concerned with his own troubles. In the meantime, as luck would have it, I sat sandwiched between two men shaking their legs furiously giving my chair a rather jarring sway! I sat quietly not having to pretend annoyance. Mahesh glanced at me once in a while, keeping the smile on his face. He handed our applications to the examiner and confidently waited for the stamp of approval. After a decent wait of about 20 minutes, Mahesh walked over to me, files and approval in hand. He asked me for 6500IR in cash.

We walked to the cashier where surprisingly, there was no queue. Could they be doing this all wrong? Mahesh handed in our papers and cash. He whispered that if they ask where David is, I should go along with his story, that he stepped out momentarily to the rest room. But the cashier could care less. Once handed the cash, he never bothered to look up. How efficient this part of the exercise is. We walked out, everything in order. The cost of extension is 6000IR. But since as I said we are part of the privileged few, we handed him 6500IR and did not request change. This is a tiny fraction of the cost of privilege.

Having experienced efficient bureaucracy in both Hong Kong and Singapore, my brushes with Indian government have been painful. Even my experience and tolerance honed in by dealing with the Philippine government did not prepare me for my bureaucratic expeditions in India. I say, if there is a dhobi and a mali, a fruitwalli and a glasswallah why can't there be a bureaustandinwallah? I remain ever hopeful.

*the bureau will remain unnamed.

I have taken no photos of the bureau for fear of recrimination but will post irrelevant photos in the near future. Many thanks for your patience.