Soviet bureaucracy has nothing on India!

While our adjustment to India had been going much too smoothly up until recently, we have now officially entered bureaucratic hell territory.

We are just about to register our new rented apartment with the police, which requires filling out a long lease complete with pictures of Misha and the broker attached and Misha's fingerprint (I was left out of the lease because this would not have required me to go to the police station today, which I could not do because of a scheduled meeting with a professor at the University of Mumbai.) Registering the apartment with the police is supposed to require previously registering with the Foreigner Registration Regional Office, which you're supposed to do within 14 days of arrival if you're on a long-term visa. Once you get your police registration, there is then something called a police license (don't ask) and that leads to approval by the house board, who then officially approve your possession of the apartment.

Now, to register with the FRRO, you need a letter from a hotel or an apartment saying that you're living there. We can't get this letter from our new apartment yet because we have not yet taken possession of it. So we were going to get a letter from our hotel. But last night the hotel messed up and told us that our reservation was up, we could not extend because they were completely booked, and we needed to pack up and leave the next day--pronto--somehow find a different corporate hotel, check in there and arrange to have them write a letter. Fortunately, they then came to their senses and apologized for the misunderstanding and simply made us pack up and move to another, less fetching, room.

So, Misha was going to go to the FRRO today by himself and then to the police (and I was going to go to the FRRO tomorrow, on my own), but my appointment with the professor was cancelled because of--woo hoo--a railway strike, the first since 1974, which has also affected all the motorists in the city. So I planned to go with Misha to the FRRO today but now we find out that the FRRO is also closed because of the strike. As a result, we're going to the police station without being officially registered foreigners which will either be fine or cause for a bribe--it remains to be seen which.

And tomorrow we have to race to the FRRO because it's our last day to do so until we overstay our 14 days and have to pay a hefty bribe to THEM. Just found out that, in addition to the ten or so forms they list on their website, they also want the Indian passport copy of Misha's employer, who's actually not Indian and has some other identification. His company also couldn't find a seal to stamp his contract, both of which could be problems. Stay tuned...