This story begins in the fall of 2019.
I am an Indian citizen with an Indian passport living in China in a quiet city called Zhongshan
near the metropolis Guangzhou.
My passport was about to expire. So I went to the Indian embassy in Guangzhou,
a whole day endavour from where I live.
The first time I went there, it was closed for some religious holiday.
So I went back to work, took a day off the following week, called and emailed to confirm
that they are indeed open, and even made a document checklist for the application.
At the passport office I was told that I needed to get my rental agreement and police registration
certification, which I wasn’t informed during my previous conversations.
I went back.
Collected those documents.
Took a day off the following week.
Travelled to Guangzhou, and this time they said they would only accept cash, which was
not written anywhere.
But ok, I ran to the nearest ATM, withdrew cash, as they stopped accepting applications
after lunch at 12.30.
At 12.25pm, I paid cash and succesfully applied for my passport.
The official said that I can travel with my current passport anywhere until I get a new one
Only then it’ll get cancelled.
He said that the new one would take approximately a month.
Ok I applied for a new passport.
I was supposed to go on a trip to Vietnam and Thailand, and return within a month.
So I asked if I could pick my new passport up once I come back.
They said A-Ok.
I went travelling.
That was nice, peaceful, quiet.
Then this happened.
I couldn’t get back into China, so I went to India.
I thought I could check up on my family, maybe spend some time with them, and return to China
in a couple of weeks.
What could go wrong?
I was in a country wide lockdown.
I could’t go anywhere.
What about my passport?
After about 12 to 15 unsuccesful calls and 5 unanswered emails, I eventually got through
to the embassy in China.
I thought well ok, at least the DHL is functioning.
Maybe they can just mail it to my address.
NOPE.
It’s illegal to mail an Indian passport out of any border.
What’s to be done now?
They said, I can cancel the passport I applied for in China, and apply for a new one in India.
Simple yeah?
I understood, it’s an extraordinary situation.
After some more unanswered calls, the embassy in China cancelled my passport.
Sent a direct email to the passport office in India, stating that the passport I applied
in China is now cancelled.
Wide eyed and bushy tailed, I made an application at the local passport office in India.
I was granted an appointment on a bright Monday morning.
Took a day off.
Went to the passport office, well dressed and early.
My finger prints and photo were taken at Counter A, documents were checked at Counter B and
I was interviewed at Counter C.
“Wait” the middle aged, raspy voiced Government official paused.
“We have on file that you have another passport issued in Guangzhou, China.
Where is that?”
I then explained my situation to the officer.
And then she exploded.
“It’s illegal to travel with an old passport once another passport is issued?!
How did you travel?” she was furious.
“But I specifically checked with the Indian embassy in China.
They said I can travel with this document until I get the new one.
Only then it becomes invalid.
Plus I went through the immigration checkpoints in 5 different countries.
If it’s illegal they should’ve raised a red flag.”
Annoyed, she said that it is my fault that I didn’t collect my passport back in China.
I meekly replied, “But COVID?!"
She asked me to go to the Regional Passport Office or RPO and see if they would fix the
situation.
So I took another day off, wore a mask and socially distanced my way to the RPO.
I was made to wait for 4 hours.
A woman in her 50’s was crying that it’s been 4 years since she applied for a passport
reissue and she still doesn’t know what the actual problem is.
My stomach began to churn.
What if this is me?
Where would I be in 4 years?
My name was called.
I was promptly led into an air conditioned room where another officer was carefully studying
me.
I explained my situation.
Then I was asked to come another day.
I took a day off, went back to the RPO.
I was made to wait for 6 hours.
The agent said they might need a certificate of genuinity.
Only at this point I exploded.
“I gave you every document I possibly could, the Indian embassy in China mailed you directly,
what more can I do?”
It was 10 months of frustration.
At this point he calmly replied, “You applied for a passport in China.
It was issued.
Then it was cancelled.
Now THAT becomes the old passport to the new passport you are currently applying.
The passport you are holding in your hand, the current passport, becomes the OLD passport
to the passport you applied for in China, which was cancelled.
Does that make sense?
Now our officers are in disagreement on how to proceed with this issue.”
There.
At that moment, in that old crumbling Government office building, I thought of the Bohemian
novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka.
I couldn’t help but laugh at that situation.
Kafka is one of my favorite authors because of how I always identified with his protagonists,
and by an extension, Kafka himself.
Kafka’s stories are usually set in a realistic world with surrealistic elements thrown in.
His protagonists are often isolated, facing bizzare, oppresive and incomprehensible bureaucratic
powers.
Societal isolation, existential anxiety, guilt, absurdity and pointlessness are recurring
themes in his stories.
In his novel The Trial, the protagonist Josef.
K, a chief cashier at a bank is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an
unspecified agency for an unspecified crime.
Josef is summoned to appear at the court, without being told the exact time or room.
Throughout the story Josef goes through an absurd bureacratic loop, and finally he is
executed without ever knowing what crime he comitted or what the trail was actually for.
Bureaucracy is ever present in Kafka’s work, so much so that, any situation or a system
that’s needlessly, pointlessly, illogically and soul crushingly oppresive, that goes beyond
tragedy and becomes absurdly comical, is called Kafkaesque.
Kafka’s biographer Frederick Karl actually took issue with how we use the term ‘Kafkaesque’.
He argues that Kafkaesque goes even further than mere bureacratic frustration.
He writes
“What’s Kafkaesque... is when you enter a surreal world in which all your control
patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which you have configured your own behavior,
begins to fall to pieces."
Kafka’s literature usually comes across as illogical, but his stories are set in a
universe, where the logic is governed by some kind of an insane loop, a malevolent cricle.
Arresting someone solely on charges of resisting arrest would be ‘Kafkaesque’.
Karl further writes "You don't give up, you don't lie down and die.
What you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment, with whatever you have.
But of course you don’t stand a chance.
That’s Kafkaesque."
Kafka’s own life story resembles one of his surrealist books.
Kafka had this lifelong suspicion that people found him mentally and physically repulsive,
even when people who knew him found him charming and intelligent.
Kafka, throughout his life was filled with this fear of sexual failure.
He only published a handful of short stories in his lifetime.
Plagued by self doubt Kafka burned a huge amount of his short stories, novels and manuscripts.
Since he was diaganosed with tuberculosis, he knew he didn’t have much time left.
He left all of his work, both published and unpublished to his friend Max Brod with instructions
that they should be destroyed upon his death.
Brod thankfully ignored this request, and published the novels and the collected works.
Brod found it really hard to piece Kafka’s work together and arrange them in order, as
Kafka often would write his stories without any seeming order.
He sometimes even worked backwards from the end.
Franz Kafka was the perfect outsider.
His protagonists are always dejected outsiders, looking into a dysfunctional system.
An entry from his diary reads:
“Enclosed in my own four walls, I found myself as an immigrant imprisoned in a foreign
country ... I saw my family as strange aliens whose foreign customs, rites, and very language
defied comprehension ... though I did not want it, they forced me to participate in
their bizarre rituals ... I could not resist.”
Maybe this is why I identify with Kafka so much.
More often than not, I feel like an outsider peeking into a surreal, dysfunctional reality.
The spirit of Kafka visited me at the passport office the other day.
Suddenly I felt unburdened by the bureacratic proceedings.
It stopped being oppressive.
I finally watched it for the surreal comedy that it is.
I laughed.
I know Kafka would have too.
If you want to get into Kafka’s work, I would suggest starting from The Trial, which
I had mentioned in this episode.
You could also start reading The Metamorphosis, a surreal story of a salesman who transforms
into a giant insect.
You can get this book or any audiobook of your choice for free by going to audibletrial.com/northerndiaries.
You also get a free 30 day trial membership which you can cancel anytime, no obligations.
Check out my channel for more videos like this and here is a link to one of my recent
videos about how social media and news gives affect your daily life.
As always if you like what you saw, share and subscribe to my channel, and don’t forget
to press the bell icon, so that you get notified anytime I post a new video.
I also have a patreon page, where you can support this channel by donating anywhere
from just a dollar.
I sincerely thank all of my awesome patreon supporters.
Thank you so much and see you in the next video.