Mundaneness of existence

Watching a sub-10 year old girl dump the load on her head in a loud thud and staring at it in disgust with her hands on her hips - caught my attention. On the footpath were pieces of broken wood - parts of mismatched, discolored chairs, tables and such. She had tried to tie them together using a pink ribbon, which had given away. The girl wore a bright embroidered red-gold dress that seemed to be an integral part of her - perhaps first worn for some festive occassion but now ragged, wrinkled and even torn here and there. In the din of Mumbai's traffic and piercing afternoon sun, her bony frame kept gazing incoherently at the dead pieces of wood. She wiped her face- perhaps angry, sweaty tears, tied the pieces again with the pink ribbon, took help from a passerby to put the load back on her head and walked on with determination to the other end of the street - may be, where she was supposed to deliver the wood. I looked on at her feeble, dark figure and confused eyes as she walked past me completely unaware of my existence. My fleeting thoughts on the mundaneness of existence (including my own in trying to procure a bank document) were abruptly interrupted when I saw my accountant Bhavesh step out of the Maharashtra Mercantile Co-operative Bank (am surprised I even remember the full name). He went in to complete a process called franking on two sets of forms - one a bank guarantee for the Customs department and the other a "counter guarantee" from us to the bank that was providing us with their own guarantee (confusing? yes, me too). A few many-minutes before, we were at another bank that was providing us with the document we needed.

I'm of course flabbergasted by the incomprehensible processes of the governments - in India or elsewhere. After pushing it away long enough, I had finally decided to complete STPI and customs-bonding registration for our company - this would allow us to go tax-free for awhile. For the first part of the process, there were 26 forms that we submitted - some in triplicate(!). When it came to the second part, I had had enough paperwork for a whole year and called on some consultants to help us out. However, I still had to complete the task of procuring a bank guarantee. So I called our bank ICICI (a successful private bank) and one of their people insanely suggested a 50%-of-the-guaranteed amount as fees (I'm sure incorrectly), a fixed-deposit for the amount and 10 days to process a single paper! Tsk...tsk...I searched for nationalized banks that I learnt would complete the process over-the-counter. When I went to the State Bank of India, the # 1 government bank, the official talked to me (describing various reasons for saying "No")without once taking his eyes off the file he was stamping. After 3 more false starts, I ended up at the government-operated United Bank of India.

As I entered the bank, my nostrils tingled with the smell of dust and long-accumulated paper. Unable to find a helpdesk, I walked into a room that announced itself as "Manager" on its glass wall. The man behind the desk in that room adjusted his grey hair that seemed about 50 years old - looked on at me from the top part of his black rimmed glasses. I quickly explained...we need a bank guarantee from you and I'm willing to deposit money for the same amount. As I spoke I wasn't sure if he was listening as he was busy pulling out one draw after another. Then he dusted off a large file and pulled out a printed form - that I saw was photocopied with disinterest (you know the type where the printed matter navigates from one corner of the page to the other in an awkward slant). "This is counter guarantee", he said. "If you give this counter guarantee, we'll give you bank guarantee. Go outside - fill application form to open the account. Put money for fixed deposit. If you give a check, it'll take many days to clear." And then he gave me another long list of things that were required.

I returned the next day with all the completed forms, stamps ("round stamp", "director stamp") and a blue-ink stamp pad. He examined my forms, made corrections using a red pen and wanted me to stamp-out all pages and all areas where there were blanks. "But why? It doesn't make sense!", I wanted to ask. But swallowed my unsaid words and began the task of stamping the papers with the "round stamp" and "director stamp" and signing them and initialing them. The moments passed quickly when I imagined myself to be the principle character in Kurosawa's Ikiru who works at a public office for 40 years and stamps files all day. I finally did get the document we needed - stamped and signed by the bank manager - which I'm sure no one will ever read. It'll accumulate in the mounds of files in the Custom's office in Mumbai. May be it'll get washed out in one of the monsoon rains and no one will notice it anyways. Either way - the hours I spent, my accountant spent, the consultants spent, the manager spent, the government spent - it will all really not matter. I'm unable to clearly draw a link between this time spent and its utility.

I'm still trying to think what is it that I wanted to write when I began writing this story. Why did I think of the girl in the red-gold dress? Do I see parallels in what she did to that of the bank manager or to that of the bank itself or to what I did in the hours leading up to the point when I noticed her drop her load in frustration. Am I thinking of the mundaneness of the girl's existence - she was taking broken pieces of chair from one block to the other. I was shuttling between my office and the banks to deliver a meaningless piece of paper. I couldn't stand the few minutes of stamping, signing, accumulating paperwork and to think that the manager and his staff did that for an entire life-time! It's not clear what I'm thinking. Perhaps I don't want it to be too clear and I don't want to give myself unconvincing answers to unclear questions. However, only one phrase irritatingly plays a ping-pong in my head: the mundaneness of existence.