The renewal of an expired passport is not as straightforward a business as it seems, if you belong to the breed of Indians who file their important papers in shoeboxes.
I emerged from under a vast mountain of papers last week with a renewed sense of my relative unimportance in the general scheme of things. It was clear, after a time of wrestling with birth certificates, IT returns, graduate degrees and letters by Important Officials testifying that I was of good moral character and had never joined Lashkar-e-Toiba, that without pieces of paper, I would cease to exist in any meaningful sense. It was a humbling and soul-searching moment, and I found myself wondering whether the end product