The Birth Of A Broker

“Which counter do I go to now?” It takes him forever to respond and he gives you this crafty look which would imply that his highness is not to be bothered again with the same query or with any query for that matter! The sweltering heat of the summer in a tropical climate belting out 30-35 degree Celsius toppled with humidity rates of 80-90% makes it very difficult to keep your calm when certain situations demand otherwise. Frequent power cuts is nothing new in India but lack of power back up (generators/inverters) in a Government office that too in an Urban city questions the “development” in a “developing” country. However I am not discussing this here, although it is in every way associated with I have to share.

In the last 2 weeks, this is my 4th trip to the District Transport Office (DTO) for a job that should have taken nothing more than 2 trips in all. My use of the word ”trip” is justified because I have to drive 20Kms (not to mention the hazardous, ill maintained, pothole infected stretch of the so called road)each way to get this job done and eventually waste my entire day hankering after documents, signatures, seals, payments & the ostentatious attitude etc. The bank had issued an “upto 3 months valid” No-due certificate thereby stating that my dad’s car was no longer under their hypothecation. Now the DTO had to issue a new Registration Certificate (RC) waiving off the Hypothecation factor. To save dad from this well-anticipated multiple episodes of persecution, I took up this responsibility and hence my tryst with a Government body.

Your efficiency and loyalty to your job is proven by your service; even a kid would understand & acknowledge that. The person who does the same mundane work day in & day out should by now out of his experience tell you at the first glance that what all paperwork/documents are missing from the submission dossier which besides saving valuable time, could have also saved me from the harassment of climbing the stairs 3 times just to get my dossier correct. My frustration & his ignorance blended with the rising heat wave, the perspiration & the wastage of time pushed my calmness to a chemical outbreak like what is often experienced with Archie in his Chemistry lab. “Could you please tell me once & for all which all documents are required in the submission dossier?” Full marks to the sharpness of the employee who immediately noticed the sarcasm & sudden pitch shift in my voice but failed to be duly complimented by me because of his retort. “Don’t talk to me like that; I don’t like the tone of your voice; even I can talk like that….”To stop him from extending his pompous speech, I had to beg his pardon and oblige to his ways! And as a reprimand for provoking him, I was called after 2 days for the next step in this unfathomable saga to procure the RC. By the way, if you have hung around in government offices before, you would know better than to question the procrastination!

Gloomy weather, drenched in rain & sweat, here I am once again, after 2 days and totally oblivious to today’s turn of events! I am handed over a document which I had filled in with the required details the other day. I noticed, the only things new in that paper were 2 authoritative signatures which perhaps in governmental protocol requires 2 days hence justifying the procrastination; very busy official or a very difficult signature! Anyways, in the midst of public’s disregard for the queue & official’s disregard for the public, I somehow got to the next point; a dusty room filled with thousands of records in paper folders where the person-in-charge would seek and hunt out our file with the aid of some numbers. “Come back after half an hour”. When you are already compelled to devote your entire day to the mercy of a government office, a half an hour delay to search the file is very much negligible. I was instigated to ask him about the kind of backup they had in case this section catches fire which wouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to wipe out all the records but I recalled my previous rendezvous 2 days before and kept mum. Once our folder was found, they pinned our old RC into it and sent the folder back to its hiding. I was given a receipt and asked to come after 2 days. It must have racked the brains of thousands of people before me about the gravity or the magnitude of significance of the reiterated “come after 2days”; did it involve some intensive mind boggling mathematics, some statistical analysis, some physics deductions or some chemical formulation, one would never know! 

My 3rd trip was marked by the brisk pace at which that day’s agenda was being met. With the receipt I had in hand, I had to pay a meager amount and apply for the Smart Cardtm RC (a hard plastic card replacing the conventional laminated ones). I was handed another receipt, and was asked to go another window. Compared to the previous visits, today it required me to approach more counters, more up & down the stairs but I marveled at the rate of which the work was getting done and was really looking forward to receiving the RC today. My hopes were crushed by my ignorance to notice the tiny subscript in the bottom of the receipt at hand which was pointed out with such exuberant volunteering by the counter operator which puts me to think that do they actually take some sadistic pleasure out of people’s miseries. The subscript read “The Smart Card will be issued after 4 days from the date of payment for the same”. I had to take another trip! 

4 days later, I am close to beaming with joy at the thought of the end to this misadventure and the hope of holding the new RC. I enter the office building, marched right up to the window (all the previous trips taught me better than to ask someone for directions) and gave them my receipt. The counter operator was wearing a cap and his colleague had his head phone on, another listening to songs from her mobile phone, and another yapping away to glory. I paused to mull, about the scenario if these people were to be working under a private firm, their date of joining and date of relieving will be separated by not more than a week. “Server problem” He says it with a momentous sympathetic face and almost immediately gets busy chatting with his colleague about some serious national issue concerning their next lunch break. I wait and I wait and I wait dotted with innumerable enquires to the counter every 10-15 minutes. “Is the Server up & running?” And every time I got a reply in the negative. I had to leave for Delhi next day early morning and I was so looking forward to getting this errand done for my dad but now I guess I will have to pass on the baton to him to pursue this task by himself. So, when the wait became longer, I had to leave. Although 1 person from behind the counter showed some empathy and told me that he doubts the Server problem will be fixed today and suggested I come tomorrow. “Technology giveth & Technology taketh”. In this case, it took away my voice to yell at them since the problem with the Server was not their responsibility. I decided to head back home.

In this memorable encounter with a government office cost me close to 1500 rupees including fuel, petty payments, refreshments etc. But primarily, nothing resulted from all the trips and efforts to compensate the valuable time I had wasted here. When I take back 2 steps and try to view the large canvas of this experience, my thoughts and eyes juxtapose upon a batch of people sitting on the stairs in the main entrance to the office. I have seen these people in my previous visits too. They are, as I correctly understood Brokers/Agents of the DTO office. Not official employees but agents who could get your work done in less than half the time it would devour from you. All this can be obtained for a nominal fee. So it is up to you to uphold your integrity, endure the annoyance, expenditure, repeated visits and its futility or simply pay 1000-1500 to the agent and get the work done in no time minus your harassment. It takes no Einstein’s mind to understand that the agents and the employees work in a nexus to extract maximum remuneration from a person for a work which requires no money at all. Raising a voice or to keep tolerating has been a debatable topic ever since and perhaps will be so forever.

Apurba Das

(07.06.2010)

Unfamiliar Emotions

On her father’s birthday when everyone gathered to cut the cake, she slid away to her room oblivious to everyone else. But I noticed this and was in fact apprehending this for some time now. I followed her to the room, sat beside her and saw her sniffling. I held her hand and then I paused. It was a long pause. I have brought myself to a state where I can either repeat rhetoric condolences and sympathy or instigate her to breakdown. 

I wonder at the inexhaustive & infinite stock of feelings and the subsequent expressions experienced in life. Your growth is directly proportional to the level and variety of outlook you garner. Just when you think you have experienced it all, there springs a time which demands a completely unknown yet appropriate reciprocation of your feelings to a particular predicament.

It has been 6 months since her father had passed away. He was in his mid-sixties and his unexpected demise caught everyone in shock & trepidation. During his lifetime, I had the opportunity to interact with him 2-3 times only. From my limited rendezvous with him and the collected episodes of his interaction with his family & friends, I could easily draw that he was deeply soaked in a life-sized personality, the principal perpetrator of the infectious laughter, a voracious reader, an avid adventurer and carried with him a jovial weather wherever he went. To illustrate him any further is beyond me and will not be justifiable since I had exchanged very few dialogues with him from our scanty brush ups.

She has inherited almost all of her father’s traits and carries an equally cheerful attitude. Full of life and fervor she often regrets not pursuing a career in planning parties/celebrations. I personally think she would have excelled beyond par. When a person living in joie de vivre, is subjected to such a tragedy, the consequence cannot be predicted. She drank her emotions and absorbed the sympathies of the people who asked her to be strong and to hide her tears. But now all this was tearing her apart inside and she wanted to let it out.

Today on her father’s birthday, close friends have been invited for lunch. The hostesses & the guests did their best to surrender themselves to the occasion and to keep the inevitable inkling of reminiscence at the minimum.

What I learnt here is that you cannot generalize grief because no consolation is common. I didn’t know how or what to say at that time. It seemed like I erased all my thoughts, forgot all my adjectives, lost my voice and emotions drew a blank! I did not feel the remorse as it demanded in this case. It’s not that I am a robot but how could I bring myself to the bereavement of the person whom I had so few interactions with. Moreover, I have not lost a father and therefore I think I would be insulting the situation if I am to say “I can understand how you must be feeling”. I was struggling to say something but in vain. My hands got embarrassed from my obtuseness and it withdrew from hers. I just hope she ignored my stupidity. Once she got up and refreshed herself I realized that instant how I just experienced a totally different emotional scenario and couldn’t reciprocate accordingly.

“Life is a mystery” gave birth to a new dimension for me. There are things, emotions per say which is beyond our understanding until the time comes when you experience them on your own. 

I pray his family finds it in their heart to overcome the misery and accept life as it is.

And I pray he RIP.

Being Independent

If we are to go by the non-scientific explanation of evolution, I, like many others often pause to marvel at the addition of an integral part to the human body conceptualized, designed and manufactured by GOD. This part in question might not be physically visible to the eye but is predominant over everything else in the body and to a large extent upon the things surrounding us. I was merely trying to introduce the “Mind” aspect of the human body that has a reputation of either setting us free or tying us in a self-suffocating knot. The mind has, is and will always maintain the stronghold of any decision which also accentuates its versatility. Of the many ways our mind manipulates us, I make an attempt to highlight one such influence.

Certain words from the lap of the dictionary were familiarized and catapulted to regular use by political juxtapositions. The revolutions of the past and the agitation of the present more than often propagate two common expressions viz. Freedom & Independence. Of them two, I pick Independence and request a more generalized outlook towards it.

When a more domestic approach is taken towards Independence, I would have to argue that its expression is in fact about its non-existence. Perhaps the person who coined this word would agree with me too. No matter how much we debate about its practice, an honest introspection would end up enlightening us about its vagueness. The race for a secured and comfortable future has rendered ourselves such that with every mechanical step forward we squish Independence beyond any resurfacing opportunity. There would also be the social obligations which further pillage the very essence out of the word. If we can ever instigate the audacity to corner our mind and interrogate its primal instinct, I am sure we would get an answer much to our awe which would either put our mind to frenzy or sprout a resistance to such frivolous, unexpected & unwanted reflections of the true self.

My revelation & reasons may also be branded profane but that would not change anything. If you take a break from the mundane & artificial entertainment of action, thriller, drama or horror, it would give you some food for thought if you were to catch the masterpiece of a movie “Into the Wild” portraying the life and eventual death of Christopher McCandless. Keeping apart his reasons for the abandonment of synthetic life & his unfortunate incident with a poisonous wild berry causing his death, one has to agree that his guts did manage to trigger off or at least produce a faint explosion in our minds about a tiny possibility of repeating his brave feat.

We did shy away from it or have successfully fought it back just like myself who took shelter in writing about it rather than venturing Into the Wild and experiencing Independence like its meant to be.