Getting my car registered - Part two

I got to the window at around 1:40pm bracing myself for a harried and rude official. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to find a person who had an air of brisk efficiency and was not unfriendly. He gave crisp responses to my questions and moved my papers along with scribblings on what seemed like random pages in the forms. He asked me to rush for inspection as it was getting to be closing time.

Inspection involves driving up your car on a 2nd line to a waiting police officer. This line was not that long and I reached the head of the queue within a few minutes. The police officer pointed out that I am supposed to get an imprint of the chassis number on the form using a pencil. The friendly instruction sheet surely didn't mention that. I hastily moved the car to unblock the line and my driver - who had joined me by then for moral and logistical support -  ran to the nearby டப்பாக்கடை for a pencil. As I learnt that day, the chassis number can be found somewhere below the driver seat and can be reached conveniently by twisting your upper body into a sciatic pain inducing position. The police officer signed me off and sent me for the next stop which was in an air-conditioned cabin where some higher official (the RTO himself?) needed to give final blessing for  my form.

In the air-conditioned room, there was a guy ahead of me waiting to see this officer. The officer gave a quick dismissal saying it was past closing time. The guy ahead of me mumbled something apologetically and the official grimaced and looked at the form and said something about him really not needing to see it. In any case, he quickly scribbled a signature on his and my forms and sent us to the last stop where our signatures were to be captured electronically to be printed on the registration card.

There was another line for this (of course) which was getting multiplexed with the original slow moving line processed by the same efficient official.  Mercifully, by this time, they were draining the pipeline for the day and this was a short and fast moving line. As I signed, I was told that my license plate number will be assigned in the next few hours and I could look it up at the RTA web site. And the registration itself will arrive by courier within 2 weeks.

Hooray! I was out around 2:15PM. It had taken 2 1/2 hours on the 3rd attempt in which 2 hours was spent waiting in the first queue. While there were enough plot twists and tense moments, I suppose it was not too bad considering it was the peak hour.

Morals of the story when it comes to dealing with License Raj:
- Be prepared to make multiple visits in case you missed something in the documentation - double check the documents in advance to reduce the chances of this happening.
- Avoid Saturdays if at all possible (don't bother coming if it is the 2nd Saturday); if you have to come on a Saturday, come early in the day.
- Be prepared to defend the queue - this is true anywhere in India. We desis have the line-cutting gene.
- I don't think an agent could have helped in the process. You have to be there anyway to sign electronically and I think you have be present for the inspection  also. There were people who looked like agents in the line; they had multiple stacks of forms and hogged time in the queue and were also more prone to line-cutting. If we avoided the middle-men, I think this process will be a lot saner.
 - And finally, don't forget those no. 2 pencils.

- Balaji

P.S. I am planning to drive this car until its last breath.