Life Updates

नमस्ते,

I am attaching some pictures from my hike last weekend. I went with some of the other residents of Woodside. Those in the first picture are all students at Woodstock school and their parents came along as well. It was a really nice time. After driving about 20 kms and asking for directions at least three or four times, we climbed up to Top Tibba, which has beautiful views of the surrounding villages and Himalayas (when it is not foggy). We enjoyed a picnic lunch when we reached the top!

This week I had another cooking class where I learned to make rajma (kidney beans) and bund gobhi (cabbage). It turned out delicious! My favorite was definitely the rajma, which my friend Nilima and I replicated it on Saturday night with some phul gobhi (cauliflower) and bindi (okra) along with some Himalayan red rice. Despite the presence of all these beautiful varieties of rice growing in India, brown rice is pretty difficult to find. Luckily for us, there is an organic store here which sells the rice we ate. It’s grown in Kumaon, which is one of the two regions of Uttarakhand. (The two regions are Garhwal and Kumaon. My research will be in Garhwal.)

On Wednesday, I had took a day trip to Dehradun to finish up my foreigner’s registration. This has been a really long process, which I was planning to explain after it was successfully completed. After more than a month in India, I am finally finished with the FRO (foreigner’s registration office) until I have to renew my visa in June/July. For a little background, all foreigners who will be staying in India more than six months are required to register with the local government, so they can keep tabs on us. Additionally, any hotel or guesthouse where you stay must register your arrival with the local FRO. I’m told it’s for safety reasons, but I still don’t really understand the purpose.

Here is the rundown of what happened. Following my orientation in Delhi, I was given a week to complete my FRO registration. I was originally planning to register in Delhi because both of my affiliations are based there. However, this was not so easy because I had no permanent address in Delhi, and the majority of my research would be carried out in Uttarakhand, another state in India. Nonetheless, I visited the FRRO (they add an extra “R” for big cities) in Delhi to complete my registration. This process is basically a bureaucratic formality with all of these foreigners lined up to register. In Delhi, they have a huge number of foreigners who show up with four copies of their passport, visa, joining report with their host institution, proof of residence, and passport photos. You proceed to the first line and write your name in a book. Then, you are directed inside to another person who takes a first glance at your papers to make sure that everything is there. In my case, the man removed the extra copies I had brought as back-up. He gave me a number, and once it appeared on the screen, I proceeded to counter number three to register. The woman who was working there carefully scruntized all of my papers and called into question my residence proof. I had provided information from the Taj Mahal hotel showing that I was staying there. Apparently, I must not have looked rich enough to be spending about a year staying at a five-star hotel. Therefore, she rejected my proof of residence and added a stipulation on my registration that I had to return within 30 days to provide evidence of permanent residence in Delhi (something I had no intention of ever obtaining).

Because of this qualification which was hand-written on my registration and some advice I received from my Fulbright program manager, I decided to register in Mussorie to be safe. This way I would at least be registered in the correct state. After flying to Dehradun and driving to Mussoorie for the first time last month, I went straight to the FRO in Mussoorie. After paying a “toll” to drive down a pedestrian path, I reached the FRO. Unfortunately for me, they told me to go back to Dehradun in order to complete my registration. Apparently, the Mussoorie office is too small to accomodate this type of request. Instead, it must be fulfilled in the state’s capital, Dehradun. The lucky part about this was that I was given the cell phone number of Dehradun office’s supervisor.

After chasing down the Language School principal at his house, I obtained the reports I needed to complete my foreign registration. The following morning I took a taxi to and from the Dehradun FRO. The process in retrospect was pretty painless, but at the time, I was in no mood to get back in a taxi for four more hours. I arrived at the FRO before they opened and was probably the only foreigner who went that day. I handed over all of my papers to the superviser, and he advised me that I would have to request my registration to be sent from the Delhi office to the Dehradun office. He told me to fax the request, and he would let me know when it had been received.

Monday morning, I sent the fax, and the Fulbright office sent someone to follow up in person in Delhi that week. However, the Fulbright representative was advised that my file had to be requested by the Dehradun FRO supervisor. When I received this message, I called my friend (the supervisor – he became my friend because I called him at least five times to sort out the mess). Despite what the Delhi office said, they did actually forward my file to Dehradun. The supervisor told me that all I had to do was come back to the Dehradun office to pick up my new registration form and number. Anyway, this is what I did on Wednesday. I successfully picked up this form with the new number, handed over my new address, and walked away happy.

Somehow in the mess of papers covering the desk of the FRO supervisor, he pulled my file out immediately and processed my registration within twenty minutes (which included me walking across the street to make two copies). I think part of the ease here was because this supervisor is friends with the principal of the Language School. I made sure to make this reference for each of my visits, and think I could have sweet-talked them into giving my registration even if I had not brought all the right papers. Still, one of the things that struck me about this experience was that three men were sitting in this office from 10:00am to 5:00pm daily doing what looked like a bunch of nothing to me. They were very relaxed and basically hang out daily, take some chai breaks, etc. When I asked my teacher at school how they got this cushy job, he replied simply – they had enough money to bribe their way into this government job. 

This brings me to my next story about corruption in the pharmaceutical industry in India (based on the lecture I attended this week). However, it needs some editing. I will plan to post it later this week! Also, I went to see the Dalai Lama today at Woodstock school! It was amazing. I will provide more details after I get some good pictures from my friend.

Love,

Margaret

 

Here I am on our hike to Top Tibba asking a boy we met on the path about his water tank. He told us he was twenty years old. Either he is extremely malnourished or doesn't actually know his age.

 

A view from our hike. It was foggy but still beautiful! You can see the terrace fields in this photo.