[Reader-list] Notes on plumbing individual identities- 208

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Rajendra,

Many Thanks for sharing this incident. Could you please upload the
story with the link for us to read on the list. PIO reminds me of a
similar story which I read in Outllook. On how Sam Miller got his PIO
card?

Clearly his experience had all the hallmarks of a textbook Kafkaesque
situation. Opacity of bureaucracy-you don't know what you are being
asked-why you are being asked-yet you have to answer these ridiculous
questions-pretense of an inquiry-pretense of verification of personal
identity- and of course the Indian slant -lazy corruption-

All three words in PIO seems to be deeply ambiguous?Person- What do
they mean by person? In legal terms, even corporates are also regarded
as persons, then could Bata India also claim  a PIO card? Indian- What
does this term mean specifically, in legal terms, we don't know? We
have all these impressions, these notions about India but what does it
mean? I still do not understand what is 'origin'? How can a person
'originate' on a piece of land?

Or maybe Sam is wrong after all because perhaps unlike the west with
their bizzare notion of a nation being an entity with one language,
one religion, one people, with some peripheral mixing, the presumption
in calling even an outright Gora like Sam, an Indian, lies in
Mahabharata and the exhortation of Krishna- vasudhaiva kutumbakam. So
no matter where ever you claim to be from, you are still Indian. Is
this presumption correct? I don't know, maybe I am wrong. I am just
thinking aloud!  But if it is right then can we actually claim to run
nation states by reinterpreting myths?

Warm regards

Taha

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?261306

Being Indian
The Papers Are In Order
Or how I determinedly sized up the careworn Indian system, ran into a
brick wall, yet still managed to secure a PIO card for myself
Sam Miller

I am a Person of Indian Origin. I have a slate-grey passport-like
document issued by the Indian government that says so. But I’m not
really. I was not born or brought up here, and I do not have a single
direct ancestor who, as far as I know, ever lived in India. I have
become the proud possessor of a Persons of Indian Origin card because
I am married to an Indian citizen.

I had lived in India, on and off, for ten years—and had been married
to an Indian citizen for even longer.

Previously, my visas were renewed every six months. We now wanted to
stay in India indefinitely and make our home in Delhi. I would have
preferred dual citizenship—but that wasn’t, and still isn’t,
available. PIO would be second best. But the actual card was not easy
to come by. It involved a total of 17 visits to three separate
ministries and five different offices. It took up at least four full
days of my life. I was interviewed twice, the second time at home with
my wife, Shireen. The first time was at the offices of the Foreigners
Division, Ministry of Home Affairs, in an unventilated, very public
room brimming with non-Indians from every continent. I reached the
head of the queue after two hours of eavesdropping on other people’s
immigration problems. I was asked, among other more prosaic questions,
to explain why I had married an Indian woman (“Love,” I said,
monosyllabically), and then, with a leer and a twinkle, whether I had
had many Indian girlfriends. “N-no”, I stuttered. My hesitant response
did not reflect either uncertainty or mendacity on my part, but my
surprise and my growing irritation with the questioner. The interview
ended abruptly. He wrote “Refer for further enquiry” on my residence
permit and said I would receive a home visit. “We need to be sure that
marriages to Indian citizens are genuine.”

Several weeks later, one Friday afternoon around 5 pm, I received a
phone call as I was pottering around the streets of central Delhi.

The investigators from the Home Ministry would be at my home at 5.30.
As I rushed home, images of Mr and Mrs, a television programme of my
UK childhood, flashed through my mind. A gormless husband would be
placed in a soundproof booth, while his bright-as-a-button wife would
stand on the stage. She would be asked semi-intimate questions about
their life together: what was the first present she gave him when they
were dating? What colour nightclothes was she wearing yesterday? And
so on. The husband was then released from the booth, and would
invariably get the answers wrong, to his embarrassment and everyone
else’s amusement. It was gentle viewing—a mild celebration of female
omniscience and male autism. But now I was going to take part in a
real-life version of Mr and Mrs, and my precious PIO card, and perhaps
my right to stay in India, would depend on it. And, suddenly I could
not, for the life of me, remember the colour of Shireen’s toothbrush,
or the name of her favourite Hindi movie, or her shoe size. Fifteen
years of marriage had been erased from my memory. I was sweating with
nerves by the time I reached home.

Two men were seated on the edge of the sofa, looking even more nervous
than me, untouched glasses of water in front of them. Shireen was
questioning them about their professional qualifications—which were
not very extensive. I gave her a self-conscious kiss on the cheek and
sat down. At that point, our children burst in, a dancing duet of
carefree excitement.

“What are these children?” asked the chief investigator.

“They’re ours.” Shireen responded with a slight chill in her voice.

“Children of both of you? They are very old.”

“Yes, both of us. They’re twelve and eleven.”

“How do you have children if you are just married?” I had not prepared
for this baffling line of questioning—and was later reprimanded for
just sitting there with my mouth open. Shireen, meanwhile, delivered a
crushing blow.

“Ridiculous (sotto voce).... This is all totally ridiculous (out
loud).... We’ve been married for fifteen years.”

I nodded eagerly.

The two men looked at each other, aghast, and then started scrabbling
through the cardboard file they had brought with them. It became clear
that they normally interviewed newly-married couples.

“Can we see your marriage certificate?” I showed it to them and was
asked for a copy. I printed out a copy of the certificate, which was
downloaded on my computer. They then got up and left—abruptly ending
my brief cameo on Mr and Mrs—having promised a decision within two
weeks.

The following evening, a Saturday, our cook, Pan Singh, said one of
the men who had come yesterday was at the gate, asking for a lifafa,
the Hindi word for envelope. I asked him to invite the man in. Pan
Singh returned, a little sheepish, saying the man refused to come in,
but just wanted a lifafa—with our marriage certificate. And so,
slightly puzzled, I printed out another copy.

Later, I told a friend this story. “He wanted a bribe, you idiot. A
lifafa is what you put the bribe in. You’ll never get your PIO card
now, and he’d have been perfectly happy with 100 rupees.”

Three weeks later I went to the Foreigners’ Regional Registration
Office to hear the good news, and the bad. “Your application for a PIO
has successfully passed the enquiry stage,” the official informed me
without looking up. “But unfortunately, Mr Miller, all your
documentation has gone astray and you will need to resubmit.” I looked
heavenwards and brought my hand down rather heavily on the table. “I’m
sorry. We’re not computerised yet, and some of our agents are a little
careless.” It may have been my imagination, but I’m sure I detected
the trace of a wink in her left eye. “Probably best to apply next time
you’re in London,” she told me cheerfully. I walked away presuming,
but unable to prove, that my papers had been deliberately lost.
I took her advice. Three weeks after putting in my application to the
Indian High Commission in London (no interview necessary), I had my
precious PIO card—together with a 15-year visa, the right to buy
property in India, and, to my amusement, the ability to join the
diplomats’ queue at immigration at Delhi airport. This is of no
practical use, because I still have to wait just as long for my
luggage, but I do get childishly gleeful as I saunter past the
first-class passengers.

(The author, a former BBC correspondent in India, is the author of
Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity [Penguin India 2009], from which this
article has been adapted.)