Not one but two!

Finally I have not one but two forms of address proof which also double up as a photo ID :D A voter-ID card and a passport!

The voter-id was relatively easy. They accepted the Airtel bill as address proof, no apps were mysteriously lost, they even took the same Airtel bill as address proof for Subhash along with our marriage certificate, relatively smooth. We couldn't make it to the voter ID drive but we still managed to vote! They recently setup a VFC (Voter Facilitation Center) in July (as promised ;) ) and we got the voter IDs too :D

The passport was a lot of running around the different counters and endless waits at the long lines @ the passport office. But over all considering government office paces this was not that bad (of course in retrospection everything looks much better than it actually was). Police verfication happened promptly, luckily my neighbor's son was also applying for a passport and so the lady herself wrote the two letters, one in which I had to refer her son and one in which she had to refer me saying we knew each other well, and that we were actually neighbors etc. I must say, this made it much easier, her son applying for a passport as well, since she was nice enough and drafted both the letters in Kannada! We then have haaziri at our police station and then was just waiting for the passport to arrive. They said on the website that it was due to be dispatched on 21st but it came on the 16th itself. My Dad happened to be home and he convinced the post-man to give it to him since he was my Dad, showed him pictures, showed him his own photo ID and the guy matched it with the Father's name on the passport and finally gave in. All in all exactly 30 days from app to receipt. Not bad at all!!

So there! I have two legal, government issued, photo IDs with address proof! Now to get that ration card and then on to applying for HP/Indane gas connection. Let's see.

We need to get the Khata for the house transferred in our name. The government clerk attitude and the tendency to make a big deal out of a small work, the finding-something-or-another-wrong-with-your-app-so-you-can-be-asked-for-bribe attitude, the tendency to keep asking us to come back etc have driven me crazy enough to want to drive a nail through the guy's head. After n number of visits, it is still nowhere close to being done, the DD that we gave with the app is now beyond its validity so we have to make that extra round to the bank to renew it, phew! And the biggest problem is that we don't even know how many more times we have to keep going back to get it done. Well, I hope its sooner than later.