Sunday 19 May 2013

The Girl With No Fingerprints



Beginning a long due blog-post with an apology is so clichéd now, I might as well tell you why it is easier to excuse oneself from one's writer-ly obligations and read sappy romance novels occasionally stopping to make more lassi because IT IS TOO HOT for anything else…and because learning Spanish from Spanish for Dummies, as I found out, is only for those dummies who have also read Memorizing for Dummies.


That's me during the vacations. Minus the ice.

And learning to play Happy Birthday with a studio-grade piano with options enough to take one to Mars ain't so much fun either. And now, according to the government I have no fingerprints.

Based on a true story.

The Aadhar Card. Supposedly the One card to rule them all. Which doesn't exactly translate well for us citizens.

Anyway, being the law-abiding,government-respecting(cough cough) citizen I am, I did go. Ration card and smudged college-ID in hand along with Dad and sister-dearest.

Step 1.Fill in form with personal details.
Step 2.Scan fingerprints.
Step 3.Retina scanning(and boy, do eyes look ugly when all blown up on a computer screen.)
Step 4. Check whether the clerk got all your details right and that you haven’t gone from being Lalit to Lolita and other assorted mistakes only Indian clerks make.
Step 5. Get a receipt and WAIT. Till the day the Great Indian Bureaucracy decides you deserve your Aadhar card.

See? Easy as pie…only, not for me. Nope.
Because yours truly fails the one step no normal human being would ever fail. The fingerprints.
No matter how hard I’d push down on that fingerprint scanner, all I’d see was ‘Data not enough’.You’d think a 95-kilo dad holding your hand down would be enough to pop the fingerprints out of a rock but no sirree.
And then the clerk girl asks us to come back after 25 days when my fingerprints grow back and to Vaseline-ise myself till then.


Methinks not.

Really woman?? You think what hasn't grown in 18 years is going to pop up in 25 days for fear of not getting an Aadhar card?? And yeah, Vaseline is my middle name(dry skin issues...don’t ask).Pooh Pooh to you.

But in all fairness blaming everything on the machine and the girl isn't very…fair. Not their fault…maybe the I'm-an-alien-princess theory does have something to it after all.

Bow all ye scum to Princess Zelda of Planet Xanadu in the 13th Galaxy!

Heck yeah.
But come on government, you could at least TRY to help us poor aliens attempting to adapt ourselves to your world...take some lessons from those Men in Black movies…a little alien embassy so we get more of our kind and a coupla hot agents to chase us. Watcha gonna lose??

Yours truly,
Disappointed alien princess…Still waiting for her Aadhar card.

And as you can see the summer hasn't been doing much for my sanity but it is good to be back and blogging and stalking all you good people of the Internet, barring the wicked pervies who spam my blog… I'm watching you.