ahhh so much to write about. I had an amazing trip back to the motherland. So...what i'm gonna do is write lil stories about some of my experiences in no particular order. For some reason i feel compelled to write about a particular notary I had to go to....to get something notarized. To protect his privacy, we shall refer to him as Mr. S. Here goes.
It was a day before I was leaving Mumbai and returning to Atlanta. I was dreading the end of my vacation. When you've been looking forward to something for several months and its almost over...it feels like you have nothing to look forward to. I was supposed to get some legal letter notarized. It was a saturday and my dad and I luckily managed to find a notary nearby who was willing to do it for us at 9 pm saturday evening. After my last meeting with my friends, I got into a rickshaw and found my dad waiting for me under the notary's apartment building.
Climbing up the starcase of a typical Santacruz(w) apartment building in its desperate middleclassness (if that even is a word), I suddenly felt a rush of nostalgia. It felt like all those apartment buildings i'd visited all my life. My friends houses, my own. I felt curious about this Mr. S and wondered if he was a rich man or not. An apartment in Santacruz does not necessarily imply wealth, but the way the city has been growing, its not really cheap either. Middle class in Mumbai is wealthy in the rest of the country, thats for sure. We rang the doorbell, a decidely mundane doorbell and waited. Almost immediately the door opened to a portly short man with slightly oily long hair. A pleasant face, not happy nor sad, one of those quiet looking men who have no particular expression of joy or disdain on their face to see someone new. This wasn't a man who would smile at a stranger, rather this was the kind of man who wouldn't react to much at all, always maintaining his calm demeanor in most circumstances. For a second I wondered if this guy was upset at us arriving at such a late hour. His notice board DID say that he was open for notarizing documents from 7 pm to 9 pm, and we had arrived at 9 pm sharp. Perhaps he was pissed.
As he invited us in, I took a little whiff of the air in his apartment bracing myself for odd smells of food, particularly at dinner time. Strangely enough, there was no smell whatsoever. Living in America had made my nose particularly sensitive to smells (although America has its own set of foreign odors, especially to new immigrants who aren't familiar with them). The flat itself was the epitome of boredom. Old, decrepit furniture. Lots of stuff, crammed into every available nook and cranny, boring brown/beige colors on the wall, on the sheets, everywhere. We sat on a dining table right next to the door and I looked around, while Mister S brought out all his notarizing apparatus. A Godrej FrostFree refrigerator was the biggest eyecatcher in the living room. Right next to it was a high shelf with an LG tv perched atop it. I felt instantly depressed. How could someone live here? Someone sure did, and that someone didn't seem to unhappy with his circumstances. I found myself wondering if a lawyer and a notary barely made enough money to make ends meet. As Mr. S sat down with all his stuff and my dad started small chat with him, I took a look at the stuff he had put on the table. A bunch of rubber stamps, seals, wet pads, legal stamps. For a second a childish excitement washed over me. How fun to be a notary! Imagine being all important, signing and witnessing important legal documents come into recognition, putting an official seal and legal stamps. So cool!
Mr. S pulled out his ledger, looked at our passports and continued the small chat, asking me little questions about what I do. It almost felt like he was quizzing me to make sure no illegal kora kagaz type fraud was going on. I felt nervous. Wait, why was I feeling nervous? There was nothing to hide, I wasn't doing anything wrong. Typical me. My inner schoolboy lives on. As he started writing in his ledger with neat, precise handwriting, which I admired, I wondered if it meant that this was the mark of a meticulous man who takes pride in his work. Or maybe all that handwriting analysis stuff was BS. Who knows. His fingers had rings on them. And I mean every finger had a giant gold ring. Each ring had a different color stone set in them. Looks like Mr. S really believes in the power of stones.
Before I knew it, he had signed stamped, sealed and gotten the both of us to sign the document. Hundred rupees, he said which my dad quickly handed over. My dad continued the small chat and he willingly participated, making little jokes about the Telgi stamps which apparently had more adhesive power than the legal stamps he had just used. While he was chatting his hand quietly opened the door to his house. Theres our cue. I nodded silently to my dad and we made our way out. Quietly we walked down and got into our rickshaw home. "Well, thats it", said my dad. "We've gotten all our work down. I guess this means I can take off to Pune tomorrow morning". I realised that this was probably the last bit of alone time I would have with my dad for a long time. I reach my arms around him and hugged him tightly. I wasn't expecting anything, my dad wasn't a particularly affectionate man. I felt my dad hug me back, hard. As his head rested on my shoulder, I felt a wave of understanding and realization. My parents had gotten so old. I relished the feeling of hugging my father. It hadn't happened very often. We both blinked back tears.
