Margaret Mascarenhas Mental health-a Goan myth
As I write, a Voyager van has pulled up in front of the outdoor coffee shop where I'm seated. On the side, it says, "Coconut Creek, Goa's best kept secret." The advertisers have got it all wrong. Coconut Creek isn't Goa's best kept secret. I'll tell you what Goa's best kept secret is: how to obtain a copy of a birth certificate in Goa without committing yourself and some other people to the Mental Hospital in the process. My dad called a couple of weeks ago from America. "Listen, sweetie," he said, "the paper of my birth certificate is disintegrating. Get me another one." "Sure, Dad," I said, "no problem." I retrospect, I laugh sardonically at my incredible naivete. Someone pointed me towards the Municipality. But no, that's only for those born after 1970. Try the Archives, said one of the municipality guys. So then I went to the Archives. No, they said, we only have those born prior to 1921, try the Sub-registrar. By then I needed some tea. I went over to my aunt's house, where my cousin told me that once he'd applied for a birth certificate at the sub-registrar and no one could find the requisite registry. This turned out to be because some of the registry books were being utilized as bricks to make one of the staff tables higher. So, I was not especially looking forward to the next stop in my journey towards Birth Certificate Acquisition. When I arrived at the Civil Registrar, a man told me I should return the following morning, because they only accept birth certificate applications between 9 am and 1 pm. He was very pleasant about it, though, and my spirits were lifted. "By the way," I said, chattily, as I was leaving, "Do you have any idea how long it will take to obtain the birth certificate?" The pleasant man sighed, "If you don't have the registration number, it could take up to one month. We sometimes can't find the books." And, looking around, I could see why. "The CM came here and said we should be computerized, but." his voice faded off and he shrugged his shoulders to indicate his helplessness (or was it hopelessness?) in the matter. "What do you mean by Registration number?" my father, who has been living in the Land of Convenience and Instant Gratification for many years, asked. I explained it was a number that would be somewhere on the birth certificate in his possession. I was clued in by then. Then he explained. He said maybe he'd have been able to accommodate my request, had it not been for the incontrovertible fact that the document in his possession was in bits and pieces. "That's why I want another one," he said. His tone was that of a benevolent and tolerant adult speaking to a beloved, but retarded, child. A few days later, while I was fighting off all the line cutters at the Civil Registrar in the queue for applying for birth certificates (which is, thankfully, shorter than the queue for reconnecting your telephone), I met a mechanic friend of mine who told me he was migrating to Portugal. He was very excited about his plans. I asked him how long it had taken for him to process his papers for a Portuguese passport. A few months, he said, and I was so distracted by his reply, that one of the cutters managed to slip in ahead of me. The mechanic confided that the entire process had been expedited because he paid an agent in Lisbon 500 USD to follow up on that end. That's interesting, I thought, because one of my friends paid a lawyer around that amount almost four years ago to do the same thing, and she still hasn't managed to get her documentation in order. She told me her lawyer is a former High Court judge from Margao, now residing in Lisbon. Now, why a High Court judge would leave his job in Goa to fiddle around with passport papers in Portugal (especially when he clearly isn't very good at it), is beyond me. If you ask me, that surely qualifies for contempt more than Arundhatti Roy's dabblings in polemics. Personally, I wish Roy would give up this Noam Chomsky impersonation and stick to fiction which is her forte, but that's another story. Meanwhile, I have another date with the Civil Registrar in two weeks. If you don't hear from me before then, look me up at the Mental Hospital. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-W-E-B---S-I-T-E-=-=-= To Subscribe/Unsubscribe from GoaNet | http://www.goacom.com/goanet =================================================================== For (un)subscribing or for help, Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dont want so many e=mails? Join GoaNet-Digest instead ! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Help support non-commercial projects in Goa by advertizing!! * * * * Your ad here !!
