The wedding, with more than 600 guests, went without a hitch. That was because there was no government bureaucrat involved. The marriage certificate, which we had to get from the municipal office of the Indian town where we got married, was a different story.
We went first to a fixer. "Iyengar," we said to him, "we need a marriage certificate." Iyengar (in rural India, you often refer to people by their caste) had a hut just outside the sub-registrar's office. It was generally understood that applications that did not go through him got stuck in red tape. Iyengar glanced up and told us that it would cost Rs. 430. "Two hundred for me to write the application," he told us, "another two hundred for the sub-registrar and thirty for the peons."
We agreed to pay the bribes and he took out the forms to fill. The government office is always out of forms; you have to go to Iyengar to get them. Afraid that he would mess up, we filled the form out for him. He copied what we wrote into an identical form.
We all then trooped to the sub-registrar's office. After we had waited for about 20 minutes, one of the peons asked us to sign an identical blank form. "Come back Wednesday evening," he told us. It was Monday. "We will come back Thursday morning to collect the certificate," we told him. We then paid the Rs. 7 that was the actual fees for the marriage certificate.
We went away and returned on Thursday morning. After making us wait nearly an hour, the peon told us the certificate wasn't ready. "We will have it ready tomorrow at 5pm," he told us. We were furious. We had paid Rs. 430 in bribes precisely so that they wouldn't make us run around like this.
"We need to leave town by the 7pm train," we told him. He didn't budge. We went to get Iyengar. The two of them talked it over for a while. "3 o'clock" said the clerk. Meanwhile, the folks inside the office were busy prattling away.
So, we went back to the office on Friday evening at 3pm. You guessed it. The certificates weren't ready. "Monday," one of the clerks said. "We need to catch the train today and I need the certificate when I leave," I said and sat down at the entrance to the office. None was going to go home for the weekend until I had my wedding certificate.
After about an hour, one of the clerks said, "We can have it ready for you this evening ...", leaving the statement in the air. "Get me the certificate and then ...," I said, leaving him the impression that I would pay additional bribes.
A few minutes later, I had my marriage certificate. The clerk had just copied the information we had filled out and the sub-registrar had signed it. No effort had been made to verify that the two of us weren't previously married, that our marriage wasn't incestual or that our blood groups were compatible. They had taken five days just to copy information from our form to theirs. No reason why we couldn't have been given the certificate immediately on Monday.
No reason that is, other than to employ eight persons who did no work and who extorted money out of the public.
