Interesting Folks in India

Today was a busy day. I registered at the Foreign Region Registration Office (FRRO), found another carpet showroom, arranged for cable and satellite, checked on the floor polishers, met the property manager at my compound and rented some furniture. By the time this has posted I will have attended a business dinner at a high end hotel here.  Registration is mandatory and is definitely the Indian Bureaucracy in one of its finest hours.  I have had a lot of interesting conversations waiting in lines at government offices.  Here in India is no exception.  On the first visit I found myself sitting next to an indian gentleman who spoke with a foreign accent.  He was a French citzen.  His story was fascinating.  He told me that he grew up in India and when he was about 18 he wrote an essay.  An essay in which he suggested that India was not ready for democracy.  The essay so enraged the school officals that they called his father.  His father sat him down and said to him, "if you think like this, India is no place for you,"  and sent him off to France where he joined the French Air Force and spent his adult life in the south of France.  He did not like India and after a lifetime in the south of France who can blame him.  But he said his wife was from Bangalore.  She had missed it all these years.  She had followed him to France and now it was her turn.  I wish him luck.

The first visit in the foreign registration process is preliminary.  It takes about an hour.  Part of my ex-pat package includes legal assistance with immigration in India.  The young legal clerk assigned to me for this was an anglo-indian named Collin.  I arrived at the FRRO about 10:30 AM.  Collin had arrived at 8:00 AM to get me a place in the queue; number tags similar to a trip to the license bureau.  It took about an hour.

The next day I returned to get the required document.  This registration document is required to get utility connections.  This time I met an Indian who was a doctor.  He had spent his career in the Carribean working as a general practioneer and staffing various emergency rooms.  He was an Indian citizen but his children were not so he was there registering his children.
The next post will report on the progress of the floor polishers.