Excuse Me, SIR?  Memories Of A Special Intensive Kind

Jostling and shoving we reached a long corridor with an even longer line – a seemingly never ending line which I had no idea where to join.

“Didi,” the lawyer told me after a dismayed gasp at the crowds, “go ahead. You’ll find a room with benches. Sit and wait for me.”  

I was the only one who wasn’t carrying papers having left them to my lawyer’s devices. So I sat there and watched this strange snaking chaos of people.

SIR was the buzz – had been for weeks and months ever since the elections had been announced. Weill you be shunted to Bangladesh, will you not be shunted to Bangladesh, that was the question that was plaguing people in the parganas and outskirts with a few threatened suicides thrown in. It mattered little to me barring a slight curiosity as I prepared to confront the BLO who turned up at my house in pink trousers, a very unlikely woman BLO who was a teacher somewhere and didn’t fit my notions of the people who came touting election documents. 

I filled my forms and dutifully handed them over in person when the time came – she had missed me the first time around and I had to call her on the phone to coordinate her timing with mine. She came with an assistant in town, a silent man who leafed through the forms corrected the mistakes I had made and told me gravely, “So you won’t be going to Bangladesh/” It was their attempt at a joke which I countered by saying I was Allahabad born and hence an UP-ite which the powers that be at the Centre would surely be glad to hear. 

That was as far as it went – a cousin went to court for hearings and various maids went too. I didn’t know what they did at court or even which court – I presumed Alipore since that was the only court I knew of. In the middle of all that, my father who had been cleared of any need to vote at almost 99, passed away and I found myself in a head to head confrontation with court. 

“Court,” I said to my lawyer.  

“Yes,” he replied, “you will have to do an affidavit in front on the magistrate that you are your father’s heir. Sign here.” I signed various stamped papers dutifully. Court was apparently to be visited on Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays. I was offered a choice since I was a consultant at an office. I declined, letting him pick the day for me. “You will have to stand in line he told me, so come and pick me up at 10 am sharp.” He spoke of getting someone to fill space in the line for me but the person he spoke to seemed reluctant despite the fact that I was described as the senior citizen I was. Ultimately he told me, he would be there with me so there was nothing to worry about. 

The first day he picked, a Wednesday proved to be the one on which Didi was going to submit her nomination for the elections so all of Hazra would be blocked. The second choice, a Friday saw us winding our way down battered paths littered with stray dogs and puddles. 

There were I learnt two courts, the Judges Court which gave Judges Court Road its name – now why, I though, had I never wondered about that – and the second was the Police Court. Both were lined with clattering typewriters on which notaries did their stuff while lawyers both men and women, whisked in and out in black gowns looking very efficient. 

We were bound for the Police Court, the more untidy of the two. Jostling and shoving through people we reached a long corridor with an even longer line – a seemingly never ending line which I had no idea where to join. “Didi,” he told me after a dismayed gasp at the crowds, “go ahead. You’ll find a room with benches. Sit and wait for me.”  

I went in the direction indicated making my way through people and more people, fielding a few glares as I cut through. “Where do you think you’re going?” an irate young man demanded irked by the sight of a so called elite grey haired woman.  

“To look for a place to sit,” I told him coldly weaving my way through more and more people until I went into a huge dusty room with benches – one of them had space, so I sat down. Till then I had not noticed the rows of people, men with beards, skullcaps, women clutching plastic bags – everyone had a plastic bag of one kind or the other - presumably filled with papers. The line was punctuated by officious looking men and women – again some in coats - advising those who were probably clients, “When your son reaches the room, call me,” one said to a woman.  

Occasionally police moved the line on. I couldn’t say that it wasn’t moving – it was in parts with accompanying instructions of “Don’t break the line, go straight!”. I was the only one who wasn’t carrying papers having left them to my lawyer’s devices. So I sat there and watched this strange snaking chaos of people. There were a lot of Muslims but weren't they always so? Gradually it dawned on me that this was the famous SIR. Everyone in the line was heading for an unknown destination inside another room which I couldn’t see since it was beyond more people. In all this there were a few murmurs of affidavits so there were obviously people like myself not caught up in the SIR tangle. After two hours of my observations’ a woman who decided that I had obviously been there long enough to know everything asked me, “Does everything happen here?”  

I answered wisely, “Affidavits and SIR cases.” My lawyer reached me at the end of two and a half hours and handed over my papers. “Keep your Aadhaar in hand,” he said. “And they may not let me in, so remember what you have to say!” I was startled but realised that he meant the heirship thing. In two minutes I was in a narrow corridor with   a room to one side, I muttered my piece, they demanded twenty rupees which my lawyer handed over from somewhere outside. I stood expectantly but nothing further was said. “May I go?” I asked. The two men busy with their stamped papers nodded. Thirty seconds and it was done. 

Later I noticed all the posters outside directing people to various SIR points with phone numbers, I also spotted the famous nomination centre where those standing for election registered. Behind me presumably the line would continue to wind. 

“They are none of them voters,” a man announced officiously. “They have never voted so they are being discarded.” I wondered how he knew. The men and women with the plastic bags obviously did not know they were still hoping for something, a glimpse of a magistrate perhaps. I wishes them and their families luck in that thirty seconds of documents exchanging hands.