The Xerox-wallahs and instant photo studios are in high demand
Gouri Dange
Posted On Wednesday, February 06, 2013 at 08:23:45 AM
Just when you thought you had had your week’s fill of absurdities, weird rules and sundry non sequiturs that are part of the hard work that it is to be an Indian, along comes a new one.
Last week was full of the unsolvable Sudoku situations that came from trying to get the domestic help something, anything, that proves that she is, indeed, she; and she lives, indeed, where she says she lives (in short: p.o.i and p.o.r – and if you don’t know what those stand for, you will never be a real, bona fide, authentic, unimpeachable, unshakeable citizen of this country).
By the end of the week, I (and hapless she) had ended up backward-integrating the process of establishing her identity to such an alarming degree (the khoj for the Aadhaar card begat the khoj for a PAN for her, which went further backwards in getting a bank account for her (no, her gramin bank passbook was simply pooh-poohed at), which went further in a hunt for her election card, in which her name was spelt gloriously wrong, which went further back to trying to find her…well you get the point.
The studios offer custom-size photographs to meet your requirements
At the end of that week I felt it would be easier to start from scratch and simply conceive and give birth to her, so that we can start at the very beginning, a very good place to start, as the song goes.
To my grim satisfaction, I then saw a TV news channel programme on the vast force of Indian women who are in the same state as her, and in serious danger of remaining nirAadhaar forever.
While her saga was still unspooling, I was running around with all kinds of proofs of my own existence, in preparation to apply for a visa to a country that is comparatively less suspicious of us Indians, and does not make you stand outside its heavily fortified consulate in Mumbai in some contorted asana and on one leg, to prove you are worthy of entering their land.
The sheer Xeroxing that I have done in the last one week for self and others is mind-boggling. Anxiously clutching all my original bonafides in a plastic bag, I have learnt much. Some Xeroxes have to be attested by your esteemed self. Some have to be attested by an esteemed city father.
Some photos have to be stuck on, and some have to be clipped on. Some have to be signed on, and some have to be signed under. Some have to be signed ONLY with a black pen (I kid you not).
So I am now carrying with me a black, blue, red and, for good measure, green pen –gel, fibre-tip, micro-tip, rotoring…you name it, I got it. Not to mention the stapler and the gluestick, that you have to keep at hand, but both of which are not allowed inside any consulate, as you may hold people hostage by…let’s see…stapling them to the wall?
Or perhaps gluing them to their seats?). I now have in my wallet, every manner of photograph – visa size, passport size, bank size, red background, white background, extreme close-up, and also the ones in which your ears MUST show.
I have six of each kind with me now, so that no one can send me to the back of the line. The biggest revelation (and ignominy) was that my ears met with thorough tongue-clicking disapproval by the photo-man.
He came wordlessly to me and offered me two rolled-up old photos secured with a rubberband, to put behind my ears (I am not kidding), so that they stick out and become visible. I tucked these into place, like a waiter places his pencil, and got myself photographed.
I wondered idly whether this meant that I must always wear two rolled up photographs behind my ears whenever I travel, so that I look like my photograph. An impatient girl at the studio counter asked me, rapping at her counter where there was an array of bewildering samples, what size I wanted it.
There was one size for Singapore, another for France, quite another for US, and yet another for UK, one size for banks, one size for passports, another for visas, and so on and so forth.
But my destination country, in fact that entire continent, was not represented. Because I took a little while to reply, she snapped at me, asking me to decide which-which-which photo size I wanted, and I snapped back at her to shut it and let me think.
Then I grandly ordered 4 in each and every size and background available in her studio, and decided that I will now forever carry this lot with me, sugar-pot ears and-all, so that like a good girl guide, I will always BE PREPARED.
