This place never ceases to amaze me... driving backwards on a main artery, tunnels underwater, the 'Vitz' craze, the blackouts... it throws one surprise after the other... and just when i thought i'd seen and heard of all the craziness i was in store for some more courtesy the Sindh Department of Education and Literacy...
Me n my buddies murtaza aka mmm and leandro rodrigro 'saad' cruz, headed off on rickshaw to the Sindh secretariat for what was to be a simple attestation procedure - look at degree, stamp, sign and we r off. Right? WRONG!
Firstly we had to make sure we made it before 1:00 - the stipulated time for work to end at the Secretariat [the notice outside said the folks indoors worked between 11:00 and 1:00 a whopping 2 hours of knuckle breaking document signing...]
khair as we walked upto the second floor of building 6 to reach the offices we noticed a paper stating that the timings in Ramzan are 11:00 - 1:00 while regular timings are 11:00 - 3:00...!! Someone forgot to tell the blokes inside and outside that Ramzan was over timings of 1:00 no longer applied. [Incidently we were stopped a day earlier at the same gate at around 1:10 by a policeman saying we were too late]...
anywayz... we shrugged aside this minor incompetence assuming it to be part of the general stupidity prevailing in the government offices. in fact after what was to happen later this really did become an insignificant detail of our trip...
our next stop was the offices itself where we requested someone to attest our degree. A stubby man took my degree copy and took some notes down. Of course as part of their drill they looked at the degree and told me that they would not work with the plastic coating.... so i had to have it removed.. fair enough i thought :)...
..a man next to him as if on cue offered his assistance for 20 Rupees... [a price i was later to find was a bargain considering another man was charged 50 bucks for the same services]... anywyaz... atleast this bloke was not taking money for nothing.... he ripped off the plastic coating and handed my degree back in exchange for the 20 bucks... then back to our stubby friend who requested 20 rupees for the work he had done i.e. taking my degree copy, handing me an application letter copy and noting down my name in a register :-/... i paid the requisite 20 bucks which my two mates later clarified was my contribution to the the billions in bribes we as a nation pay yearly.... [i was NOT flattered]....
annoyed, i walked into another room... where the main event was to take place... seated here were a clerk and his boss... the clerk doing the ritual of sorting and resorting and placing the documents on the desk of his boss, while the boss in between the various calls on his fancy cell, took some time out to examine the document and sign it...
i tried to look closely at what he was looking at... so that i cud check whether my one was complete or not... but my observation recovered nothing.. all it seemed he was interested in was the paper texture, the name of the person, the fact that if there was plastic coating on it or not etc etc... no lists to check in.. no verification calls whatsoever.... easy sailing i thought to myself....
as i handed my degree to the clerk he asked "kidhar ja rahay hain" [where are u going?]
i replied "dubai"
as if on cue he quickly went down, picked a pink file opened a list of private universities, searched for the institute of business administration, karachi shook his head and said "yeh to nahi hogi" [this can't be attested]
and then to add credibility to his incisive observation he went to a second opinion to his boss who searched through that same list of private uiniversities "institute of business and technology, institute of business management... er... nahi nahi... yeh nahi kartay hum"[...we don't do this..."]
my jaws dropped. what on earth were these people saying? what? how? WHY?
the next few minutes saw me confront the guy asking him to search a list of government universities where he WOULD find my university... while he refused outright to provide any such list... as tempers flared he gave me his now famous dialog... "aap nay kiya mujh ko jahil samjha hai... MA economics aur MA journalism kiya hai mein nay..." [u think i am illiterate.. ive done MA economics and MA journalism]
i was fuming as he threw my degree to me asking me to go out search a list of universities and if i find mine there he'll attest it... my mates did their best to explain how annoying this man would be of no good... how if i annoy him he would not do my attestation and there would be no alternative....
the only thing going through my mind was "I AM NOT PAYING THIS %&&**!#$% ANY MONEY"
i checked outside in the list... there were only lists of recognized private universities... i went back in, telling the moron that my university was a government run institution... of course Mr. MA ECO/Journalism would have none of it... i kept telling myself "if i have to pay someone money, ill pay someone else outside and get my job done but no way in hell will this moron get anything from me..."
i tried to calm down and reason with the dude all the while the others in the room had a bemused look on their face over how this idiot was denying ever knowing about institute of business administration.
i asked him whether he had ever heard of iba karachi and he responded that not only does he know about it but he has also been in there many times. and he said it with such a sense of achievement that it actually gave me a reason to smile while telling myself "just really how stupid can a man be".... coz there were only 2 reasons he was doing this... either he was playing me for money or he was just too plain stupid and i don't mean stupid the way we call our siblings stupid over petty issues, i mean STUPID as in low IQ, retarded person.
turns out all my haggling and my mates polite words with the clerk convinced the clerk to take my degree out for the other clerks and minions to give their opinion on.... mmm followed them... and turns out both the idiots inside did not know that IBA KARACHI and INSTITUTE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION KARACHI were the same thing..... YES THAT is why they refused to sign it...
i swear i wanted to kill those men right there when the two were talking in Sindhi over how they were mistaken.... but the relief of knowing my work would be done finally meant i held back..
with a sense of accomplishment we left after an hour of arriving there after getting work done that should have taken no more than 10 minutes....
i wonder y Mr. MA was employed in the Sindh Education and Literacy department.. maybe because he was a literate man by our definition i.e. he can READ and WRITE his own name.... i chulked to myself and walked out wondering what lay store in our next step of attestion at another government office - the ministry of forrran [foreign] affairs....
...more later...
