Thinkin' on your stomach.

If you dont have the Indian Voter's ID card in your list of "most difficult things to get", I could well safely guess that you've led an easy life. After a struggle of behemothian proportions that spanned 4 hours, I managed to get my hands on the coveted piece of laminated paper.
To the average Indian , the Voter's ID card (hereafter referred to as VoID) is as important as his life. It may give him the powerful right to vote; more primarily however, it gives him an Identity. Since the VoID also serves the purpose of identification under various schemes of the Govt. and other enterprises , one basically can't live without it. Be it to obtain driving licences, passports and other such preposterous paraphernilia or to memberships at libraries, clubs et al. This automatically makes the same, incredibly difficult to get.

My turn to collect the VoID had come yesterday. Mom had also tagged along to the Taluk Office, since she had to rectify certain errors in her existing card. She had been urging me to start early and get there quickly, so that we complete the procedure and return "within an hour" (That the gamut of events ended only as the sun was about to retire is another story). Nothing, therefore, had prepared us to meet the huge multitude of applicants present at the Office. It took me an hour peppered with consistent pushing and shoving to procure the application forms we had already filled up and submitted. They say Bureaucracy is a necessary evil, but this was ridiculous! First you fill up an application form and reserve your dates for collecting the VoID, then you arrive on the specified date only to retrieve the forms and submit it elsewhere!
The queue for the "final" submission of app. forms covered the length of the taluk office block. There were 2 lines; the female species, with their handy dandy umbrellas having formed a straight line to the app. room. The male species do not usually have anything to do with umbrellas; the most you can expect from them is a handkerchief. Consequently, this queue was pretty winding with concentrated spots near trees, Tata Sumos and other shade giving Creations of God. There were 82 men in front of me (counting courtesy a jobless character affected by the Sun). I stood rooted to a spot for 2 hours. The occasional movement in the beeline would create much flutter at the end of the queue; however, that would turn out to be someone stretching their arms. Divine Intereference came when Mom found a fellow female friend up front. The latter made some arrangements to promote me up the male order. Suddenly, we found ourselves inside the office.

Divine Interference ceased to assist. We found out that a 'proof of TC' was one among the infinite requisites to obtain a VoID. And we had none with us. The Village officer refused to include the TC no: in our Nativity Certificate without any proof. So, we had to return home...after frantic searching we found that the gas agency bill had our TC number...back to the office..everything was a blur...

Inside the office, meanwhile, there was hectic activity. The three officers posted to authorize our forms were, quite understandably, strict. As I was about to present my form, I saw one of them rejecting the same of a girl on the ground that the signatures on two places in the same form were different. The apparent "difference" (Frankly, I saw none) had occurred because the girl (now on the verge of tears), amidst the rush, had to sign one part placing the paper on the wall. Therefore, it was with considerable trepidation, I handed over mine to the Officer. Divine Interference made a timely guest re-appearance. Whatever faults present, went unnoticed. I am now an official citizen of India. With great power comes great responsibility. And all that blah. My legs ache.