Encounters with Officialdom (2) - International Driving Permit

It started with another of my peculiar obsessions – I wanted to obtain an international driving permit. Why, I still haven’t figured out - given that I have successfully driven without one on four continents. Perhaps I can blame it on the scare I had in Lille when the French nearly denied me the car I had booked for my driving vacation!

So when I went home to Delhi in March, I enlisted the help of Mrs B, the trusted lieutenant who has helped everyone in my family navigate the complex and murky Transport Office world in our bid to acquire the precious DRIVING LICENCE. For her unique brand of assertive charm well disguised under the “Sir”’s and “Please”’s is just what one needs to deal with the officers at the RTO.

The fun began when we got the application form. The documentation required a medical certificate from a doctor and a signed affidavit from a legal practitioner. I was mentally agonizing over how to locate a doctor and a lawyer at such short notice, forgetting that the motto of Indian bureaucracy is: rules are made so someone pays to break them. Sitting right outside the crowded and dirty office building were two women with typewriters, calling out the rates for a medical certificate and a legal affidavit the way hawkers sell onions & tomatoes in a bazaar. Yes, the first was a registered doctor, the second a practicing lawyer – and each had hit upon the golden goose of her profession. For a princely sum of 250 rupees, I would get an official stamp of being in sound mental health and of being a bona-fide citizen with no existing criminal record against me - no questions asked.

And did I mention that the women took shade under a large banner that proudly proclaimed the celebration of National Traffic Transparency (Anti–Corruption & No– Bribery) Week? But in India – sab chalta hai.

Documentation ready, Mrs. B employed her charm to snake to the front of the long queue for the submission of the documents (Bhai Sahib, please make way for ladies!). The next step was a personal interview with a ‘senior officer’. We were ushered into a miniscule room that was just about the size of a regular office cubicle. An extremely fat man dominated the room – his back rested against the wall, and his stomach supported the small table in such a way that it was impossible to distinguish the boundaries between flesh and wood. I briefly wondered how many people were needed to pull him out, for I certainly could not imagine him being able to pull his weight to a standing position on his own. Maybe he went around with the desk attached to him….my reverie was interrupted by a loud blob as the ‘officer’ spat some beetle juice into the waste paper basket conveniently placed at his feet. My interview was about to begin:

So you want to apply for a driving license?
Yes, Sir (this was Mrs B)

Do you know how to drive?
I quietly showed him my driving license issued 10 years ago, restraining myself from stating that this very office had issued the same to me.

Why do you want an international driving license, Have you ever been jailed before? He was clearly not impressed with my credentials.
I looked at him in surprise, wondering if he really expected an answer, when Mrs B discreetly stepped in – Sir, her mother is ..., her father is …., very respectable and educated family Sir…”, thus cutting off my sharp response of “ If I have been to jail, you have surely served life imprisonment ten times over!”

Did you write this application yourself, he continued belligerently?
I did, I reply quietly (I really did, even though the ‘lawyer’ had offered to fill it for me for free).

Write on the legal affidavit that you have filled the application yourself, and that all the information declared herewith is correct.
I looked at Mrs B in surprise – isn’t a legal affidavit meant to affirm the truthfulness of my details? She nodded imperceptibly, and I began to write, when our man cut in – Write it in Hindi. I shrugged and defaced the legal affidavit with a handwritten statement reaffirming what the affidavit already stated

By now, the officer had run out of other insults to throw at me - or maybe he was saving them for the long queue waiting outside. He affixed his stamp & signature on the application, and dismissed us with another spat of beetle juice.

Why have you written on the affidavit in hand, it is illegal! - shouted the clerk on the ground floor when we returned to him. Ask your officer, he made me do it – I snapped at him, ready to slug it out if he dared to refuse my application. But the clerk was evidently used to the ways of our man – he quietly accepted the documents and ordered me to return in the evening to collect the license.

I made my pilgrimage in the evening, only to join a queue of ten others ahead of me. The clerk at the counter reluctantly drew out a big file and started filling in the driving application for the first candidate in the line – in a laborious and illegible hand. I will spare the details – suffice to say that it was another hour of shuffling between floors, pasting slips in a notebook and trying to decipher the clerk’s calligraphy before I was handed my license.

So where are you moving to in the US? asked the guy behind me as we were leaving (we had become friends by now). Nowhere, I muttered. So why did you apply for an international permit, anyway you can drive on your existing license in any country if your period of stay is less than 6 months, he asked me in surprise? I am probably a crazy sadist, I mumbled.

The fat officer would have spat another round of bettle juice in agreement.