Y’all, I was witness to a weird crashing of the old guard and new guard of governance. I was in the process of passport renewal in my country, and this has two stages. Stage 1 is where you submit your proof of address and proof of birth documents physically, and stage 2 is when the police come to your residence to verify your address, as well as redo the document verification. Now, one might think that this process is a little redundant isn’t it? If you have to submit your documents physically, why are the cops verifying it again? And you would be right, but it gets even more stupid than this.

So, I go to the passport office for Stage 1, and I swear to god, I have never seen a government organization move so quickly. There are three sub-stages within stage 1, and each stage took not more than 5 minutes. Everything was digitized, and in case you missed your token number appearing on the numerous screens, people will call out your name specifically and direct you to the specific counter you need to go to. All the while, you wait in an air-conditioned room with a refreshment shop as well.

In contrast to the absolute dream that was stage 1, the police first refused to come to my home, made me go to the police station, and then proceeded to do the friendly interrogation thing for 15 minutes. Now, if you’re not familiar with this method, the idea is to ask pointed questions and delve into the most minor details, but never in an accusing fashion, the intent being to make you uncomfortable enough to pay for things to be smoothed over. Hell, I was even micro-aggressively fat shamed. Luckily for me, my father used to work high up in governance so the cop was a little placated, but in the end he would not let me go until I paid a “service charge”.

Wild stuff, folks. Take care out there.