Archive for March 2009
Bitter sweet…
Usually, I am thick-skinned enough to weather such stuff without a whimper; but this one unsettled me a little – kind of sweet n sour though.
Incidence – Police verification for passport renewal. Yes, you read it right – renewal. Not a fresh application – just renewal; your ordinary run of the mill renewal – all in a day’s work; some cursory questions, a little flipping through the documents – or so I thought.
You know the question I got asked most? What do you do? Answer:- I write software (Well, I didn’t know how to make him understand what I do; I dont understand it myself sometime 
). You know the next question I got asked? What do you do? Same answer. You know the immediate next question I got asked? What do you..Oh, dang it. I could go on and on about this. Same bloody question – 5 times in a row! Got the picture?
Are these people for real? Hilarious? Yes, it was; at the start.
And then it happened with all the other seemingly trivial questions. Repeatedly asking me as to how long I had stayed in Pune, where was I born, where did I work, how come there only two guys in the company in India, how long the company had been in India (as if I am supposed to know that; me just being a engineer and all) etc etc.
Thank my stars – my dad has always been a stickler for documentation and I had the right ones to shove in; whenever they asked for one. And as is customary around here; preparing affidavits whenever something could not be backed up with documentation.
But it makes me wonder; whether my profile has anything to do with it. Last name (red flag), Techie (red flag), changing jobs too frequently (nah, thats just a red flag for future employers), changing locations too frequently (red flag), came back from US post 9/11 (red flag), in-laws in Phillippines (surely a red flag in these troubled times)…
Who knew?
A silver lining though – probably my first interaction with police of any kind where they didn’t ask for moolah; and I didn’t shell out any.
Miracles happen – even in India! 
Update: They took two months though! Something had to give.
