3) Bureaucracy
This feels very distant now, as its finally been resolved. But despite my matutinal optimism two Fridays ago -the 28th of August - registration as foreigner did not go well. I waited in three lines, for a total of 8 hours, only to be rejected late in the afternoon, just before the office closed for the weekend. I returned Monday - a briefer but still maddening visit - and had success. I am officially a foreigner in India (as though it was proving difficult to suss out), and also a font of knowledge about the labyrinthine intricacies of the FRRO (though I must admit I can't now recall what that stands for. One of the "R"s eludes me).
I'll outline the steps involved, should anyone ever want to spend more than 180 days in India, and for the Kafka-lovers in the audience (hey, literary reference!)
1) Arrive earlier to mark your name on a sheet of paper. The office "opens" at 9AM. Recommended arrival time for foreigners: 8AM. Actual starting time for salaried employees of the federal government: between 9:30 and 10AM. You arrive early, because in a refugee camp, you are never the first one there. The first day, we were beaten to the paper by 10 or 15 Burmese refugees, several Laotian nuns, and not a small number of depraved looking Europeans whose post-Enlightenment since of reason had clearly been bruised by several days at this ordeal with little success. Wading through this crowd - packed as though on a life raft - you make your way to the front door. A yellowed piece of paper, torn out of a notebook, is pinned to a small, dingy table by a rock. You write your name in numbered order - I was 46 that first morning - and then wait. Most people wait on benches near the door, hoping that true chaos will break out - not just purposeful disorder - and that in that surge of inhumanity they might fight their way to official status. We were not permitted to stand so close: our facilitator was convinced that the stone benches themselves held swine flu, which has instilled in Indians the same existential panic that their bureaucracy engenders in foreigners.
2) Wait. Its 9 now - when the office should open. 9:30: it has. But first, the line must be assembled. An armed guard, calls out your name and number and assembles you into a single-file line. Most can't speak English; the process takes longer than might be expected.
3) Wait more. The passports of each person in line must be verified, and the information recorded in a yellowed government ledger in handwritten type that is most certainly illegible and useless to whoever receives it next in this circuitous Fordian assembly line. While you wait, a second line forms. Pakistani and Afghan nationals - only men, no women to be found - are separated out, as they only have 24 hours to register. Many have come directly from the airport, and before that Herat, as best as I could make out on their papers. They are pushy - not aggressively - but the American sense of personal space is a unique cultural phenomenon, it seems.
4) At last, we're inside. Passports have been checked. Now we wait, on that first Friday for 3 hours. To move less than one hundred feet, to a desk where we will receive the form that we then need to fill out and bring back to a separate desk. The first desk hardly even checks for proper documentation; you are only waiting to pick up a single sheet of paper. All the while, you are being jostled, many people are trying to cut the line. On my more successful Monday visit, I nearly got in a fistfight with a man who was trying to cut. Instead, I elbowed him in the stomach, pushed him out of the way, and told him to get in the back of the line. The look in my eyes said that I'd kill him, and in that moment I would have. He didn't seem particularly afraid (would you be?), but eventually relented and left. On Friday, there were also children. Horrible children. Never calm, always yelling, or crying. Most of them playing some sort of running game that seemed to involve terrorizing random adult foreigners at high speeds. I can't tell if there was a guiding principle to the game, but it certainly seemed calculated to generate anger.
5) Finally, at the desk. A crowd of 10 or 15 people is also there though, and you have to do a lot of screaming and shoving to be heard. After a cursory review of your documents, you are given the registration form, and a second number, which reflects how long you will have to wait to have the filled-out form reviewed.
6) With no copying facilities in the building, we leave, fill out the forms rapidly, make sufficient copies and return to the FRRO office to paste our pictures onto the documents. Only, in the time we've been gone, someone has stolen the brush for the paste. We are forced to use our fingers, and then a pen. I spend several minutes wondering where the brush could've gone, and come to the conclusion - with little evidence - that its been eaten.
7) Your second number has already been called. The man at the first desk refused to listen to you, until you push the document he signed earlier into his face and scream as loudly as possible. He relents, and the official behind the second desk will see you. After a quick review, all is lost. The lease hasn't been notarized, and a certificate indicating your affiliation with a university hasn't been signed. Nowhere have these requirements been outlined or stated. But they seem to be critical. Angry, tired, and feeling somewhat vindictive, you leave.
8) Repeat, on a new day. If lucky, find success. If not, repeat again. Eventually, you'll be broken, and once you are, you'll realize that registration is as much about assimilation as it is documentation.
UNEXPECTED (AND UNCOMFORTABLE DISPARITIES IN WEALTH)
A quick story: I have an apartment now. In a nice neighborhood in South Delhi. When signing my lease, and turning over my rent/security deposit, my landlord throws back and laughs: "Money is not important to me, I am worth more than $140 million US dollars". As I said, unexpected. Also, would've been more funny if he hadn't accepted the money. The uncomfortable comes in the form of his servants. More on that later, but suffice it to say its a dynamic I'm still adjusting to. I'm also still adjusting to the idea of adjusting to it.
