Making of Passport

After getting married there is a lot of paper work involved. With paper wok I mean changing name and address in all the things that really matter.

We ( by we i mean hubby and me) decided to start by re-issuing my passport. We felt that that would not be difficult. First, we found out the overall process from the travel agent in the area. We also went to the official website for passports of our Indian government. (Roshan also needed to get a new passport issued as all the pages in his passport were exhuasted because he travels a lot).There was something which is called verification certificate, that is given to you by a government official. So we dug into our address books and searched through all our connections. My brother then remembered that one of his friend's dad is an IAS officer. So we went to him and got the verification certificates. Oh my God what a waste of time these government offices are. They take half an hour to type a letter then they take another half hour to get the the letters stamped. So there were 2 letters one hour wasted and again both these letters have to be stamped so one hour there got wasted.

The IAS officer is a very sweet man he kept talking to me about his work and his wife and kids. All the while he kept cribbing about the way the government peons and other staff operate. He was telling me that he was totally helpless with the way it is done. He said that if in a government office does this kind of delay they are termed as inefficient and corrupt. At the same time if a delay of the same kind occurs in a corporate setup it will be termed as internal politics and a way of functioning. Crazy that was.

Anyway I finally got the letters, but it was a good 2 and half hours later. Now 1 whole day was lost so couldn't do the passport submission that day. Then we had a affidavit from a lawyer to state that we are Indians and have nothing wrong with our identification. That didn't take that much time. It was done in say half hour.

We had filled the form online. So there was very little hand writing to do. Oh yes when I was at the IAS officer's office, my hubby was at the passport office submitting our forms and other documents. The next day I went with hubby to the old passport office to submit the other documents. We wanted what is called the Tatkal service. So we submit the papers and were called a week later for just a stupid signature in front of an official. That was a lot of craziness as I had my chappals torn by a very rude woman.

Then we went back home and after some days I had a rude shock, a police officer came home and made a big ruckus asking me all kind of questions , "Who lives here? Where is Roshan D'silva? Does he ever live here? or does he not live here? where is he right now? who are you of him? etc. etc."
All these questions were asked in a very rude way and because of the loud volume my neighbor came out and she was also asked all kind of questions whether Roshan lives here or not. Apparently he had come earlier and we were not at home so he figured that we don't live here. Then I called Roshan and we went to the police station and gave them the required documents etc. so that was ok. The officer in the police station was very helpful, told us what the next steps were, made us sit down and spoke with us very nicely.

Anyways Roshan's passport hasn't yet come but we did find out why. Oh by-the-way my passport came without any delay. It is Roshan's which is taking all the time. Now apparently all his previous passports have been issued overseas so the procedure is different and they have to do some verification as he has never had his police verification done in India. Now we understand all the delay. So we were all the while blaming the system but it's actually the bureaucracy which is the culprit. Thanks to the passport website we know the status of the most important piece of identification one needs to prove he/she is Indian. Lets hope his passport also come as soon as possible. The only sad part is that the Jumbo passport which we have applied for is only 60 pages so according to Roshan he has to repeat this process every 3-4 years as that how long it takes him to exhaust all the pages.

I can fairly say that we need a lot of patience when it comes to dealing with the government offices in this country. PHEW!!!!