When you first arrive in India from the United States, you are required to register at the local police commissioner’s office within 14 days. To save time at the office, our program leader Jacob John (a Bangalore resident), acquired all the paperwork in advance. As we filled them out, he told us, “Even if you’ve served in the military, indicate that you haven’t. They will think you are a spy and give you problems.” We had to have ID photos taken at a local photo shop, and affix one to every single page in the packet (a bit unnecessary, considering the packet is stapled together as one file).
We didn’t save time. Evidently, new forms had been adopted since Jacob received them, which (according to the police commissioner) rendered our forms invalid. The sweeping changes in the paperwork consisted of a move in the “attach photo here” box from the left side of the form to the right side.
As it turned out, we were forced to copy all of our information onto the new forms, find a store in the area to make 5 new photocopies, and buy glue to transfer our photos to the new forms. Furthermore, Jacob had to drive back to the college (45 minutes each direction) and print new documents.
Needless to say, it was a long day. What could have been finished in an hour ended up taking 7 hours. We experienced an extra 1.5 hour delay because the cops decided to close the office for their lunch break just as we were nearing the last few people to register. We’ll be going back tomorrow (again, 45 minutes each way) to fetch our “Temporary Residence” papers (which, for whatever reason, they couldn’t give us today).
Ironically, Jacob John told us yesterday that the cops would be giving us less trouble because he pays them well. These bribes (or “lubrication”, as he calls it), keep the police from “causing problems”.
The whole thing was pretty funny, so I guess you could say it was a great day.
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