When it Rains, it Pours

Yesterday was another epic FRRO visit. The guy who slipped me his number with a smile during my last visit was much less accommodating this time around. He basically told me there was nothing he could do and sent me to the Ministry of Home Affairs, where I spent eight hours – no, it’s not a typo – hoping someone would listen to my case. When it was finally my turn to grovel for help, the unsympathetic officer assigned to me told me to go back to Varanasi for a new police report and waved me away.

Seems each time I speak to a new bureaucrat, they seize on some new detail and create an insurmountable problem around it. This time the issue was that my police report from Varanasi referred to a lost “money bag” and not a lost “passport.” This would have been no problem had I known about it at any time during the last six weeks, but Saturday I have a train ticket to Bangalore.

I'm finally starting to understand that the FRRO office cannot be navigated alone. I have learned that it is necessary to hire a local attorney or agency to offer money to these bureaucrats to “encourage” them to handle your case. It is my first experience of the sort and I think in the future I will be much smarter about working my way through the labyrinth of corrupt officials that, doubtless, run the entire world. I cringe when I think of the torture – figurative AND literal - our own bureaucrats in the US inflict on the helpless foreign masses…

So, it looks like I’ll be back in Delhi much sooner than I’d planned just to settle this affair before March 13th, my deadline for leaving the country again. And thanks to my Indian friend in California, a.k.a. “The Miracle Worker,” I now have a local attorney who has agreed to help me out. I’m just hoping the help won’t have any unseen strings attached because, after all, there is no such thing as a free lunch…

Am I getting wiser in my old age, or more cynical? Or both? This may be a question for swamiji.

In other news, it’s getting cold here in Delhi and to commemorate the change in weather, I’m developing a cold of my own…

Tomorrow is my last day at Pravah. They are encouraging me to come back in January to take on a salaried position. I have my reservations, but I also have a history of not being able to say no. I’m a little ashamed to admit that, in the past, I’ve had other people quit jobs for me. Like in 1995 when I had a friend (Lavangela) quit my job at the supermarket. She was a good friend, even going to pick up my last check because I was too embarrassed to face my supervisors. More recently, my mama called my supervisor at the resort where I worked as a lifeguard to tell them I wouldn’t be back. Now I find myself unable to tell the folks here that I don’t think I can come back and work.

Instead I’m just holding all the accumulating tension and fear and uncertainty inside. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, my nose has infected and my shoulders have turned to rock. Where is my yoga teacher when I need him most? Not in Bangalore! So it looks like I’ll just have to find a way to work this one out on my own, which, being the eternal optimist I am, should be no problem whatsoever…

Still smiling in spite of it all...
LMA