India: 'Babu' Bureaucracy In Bangalore (cont.)

“Where are you staying,” he asked. 

“At the St. Marks Hotel.” 

“Do you have proof?” 

Proof?  I rummaged in my bag for the little card the hotel gives you when you check in.  “It’s back at the hotel,” I admitted.

In that case, he informed me, the police will have to obtain written confirmation directly from the hotel.  A young policeman crowded into an autorickshaw with Melvin and me, and we puttered to the St. Marks.

Entering an elegant hotel lobby trailed by police elicited stares and speculative buzz from lounging patrons. The desk clerk called the duty manager, and the policeman waited while the duty manager typed out the required letter.  I gave him 20 rupees for the fare back to the police station.

Later that day, Melvin and I returned to the police station to pick up the finished police report.  A gesture from one of the officers directed me to wait in the office with the clock until the station chief was available. 

In the hallway a man dressed in rags lay prostrate on the concrete floor.  Most of him was stretched out under an empty desk, but his feet stuck out so that I had to step over them. While I waited, he sat up and rubbed his ankle, which was cuffed to a chain, which was in turn cuffed to the desk.  His lip was badly swollen, and his eyes were vacant.  He shoved the chain out of his way, groaned, and lay back down. 

After close to an hour, the officers led me to the chief’s office to continue waiting.  We watched the chief.  He was multitasking.  He talked on two telephones and a walkie-talkie, leafed through documents, and signed his name on papers his minions put in front of him. Every minute or two he dinged an old-fashioned hotel desk bell to call one of his flunkeys or hit an electronic beeper, which called a different flunkey. 

Eventually, the chief picked up my documents.  He asked me what I was doing in Bangalore and signed the paper.  We thanked him and went back to the sergeant, stepping once again over the unfortunate prisoner.

The sergeant stamped the document, folded it, and slipped it into an envelope, which he carefully sealed by brushing paste from a jar onto the flap.  On the cover he wrote, “To the Assistant Commissioner of Police.”  I turned the envelope over.  In the corner was the logo of the Bangalore Club, a venerable private sports club. The police station did not have its own envelopes.

Next:  photographs.  16 for 110 rupees ($2.50).  With that the package was complete, and our day was over.  Back at the office I checked off each document against the list of requirements and put the package in order.

Next morning Melvin and I hopped into an autorickshaw to be at the FRO early before crowds gathered.  We smiled at each other as we entered and signed in; we knew this routine.   We approached the kind-faced official’s desk, and I proudly handed him my completed package of 29 pieces of paper and 5 photographs. 

He looked over the package approvingly, and I beamed.  He put a signature and a stamp and handed it back to me.  Then he directed me to a counter where another man looked over the documents. This man frowned and pointed to a line I had neglected to sign. 

“If ‘yours faithfully’ is there you must put signature,” he reprimanded me. 

I signed, and again assumed I was finished, but found myself instead in the office of the Assistant Commissioner of Police. The Commissioner had not yet arrived at work. 

Melvin and I sat down to wait.  Two large calendars with Hindu devotional pictures fluttered in the breeze created by the ceiling fan.  I looked at Melvin.  He was shaking his head and muttering, “Time waste, time waste.” After some more time waste, the commissioner arrived, tossed his briefcase on the desk, and signed my paper with no more than a glance at us.

Back at the original counter, the official took my papers and passport and issued me with a receipt, laboriously printed out on an ancient computer printer, the only computer in evidence at the FRO.  I was to return at 4:00 the next afternoon when my exit permit would be ready.  As I had to leave for the Bangalore airport at 7:00 that evening, I would have three hours to spare.

At 3:50 the next day Melvin and I walked into the FRO for the last time.  We were greeted warmly by the officials who almost felt like old friends at this point.  I signed my name two more times and was finally handed what I had been waiting for.  It was a typewritten (not computer-printed) letter headed “Karnataka State Police, Residential Permit (Under Para 7 of the Foreigners’ Order, 1948).”  After hours of work, eleven pollution-sucking autorickshaw rides and $40 in fees, I had been granted a two-day visa extension.

And then I noticed this sentence: “In the event of Miss. Elisabeth Holmes Rhyne not departing from India before 28/03/2006, she will be liable to prosecution for contravention of the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946, punishable with imprisonment for a period of five years and with fine and will also be liable for expulsion from India.” 

It stated that I had to be out of India by the 28th – yesterday.  I pointed out the error.  The letter would have to be redone. 

We waited in the main hall with mothers and babies, Pakistani and Afghan workers, and other people who had somehow gone astray in India.  After a relatively short time the corrected exit permit and my passport appeared.  We had finally done it.  Melvin and I shook hands triumphantly

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