My Sunny Balcony!!!

My apartment has a balcony that faces the East. At first, rays of the golden sun stream in through trees and buildings that stand in front of the balcony. Soon the entire balcony is enveloped in yellow.

Over the last 10 years, I have tried to make my balcony green. As we moved in to the apartment, I lugged flower pots that I had acquired from our days in Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad. I was apprehensive about having enough space to line up my collection but fortunately, they all fitted pretty well.

I have a couple of ferns in my balcony. They are pretty sturdy and grow well in the balcony. You can bring them inside the house once in a while and they provide an instant makeover for the room. I use cuttings from the ferns every now and then to add the zing to my flower arrangements.

The plant on the right here taught me a thing about maintaining plants. Being fed with "pure" reverse osmosis water for many years, it refused to flower. Then one fine day I requested my help to use normal tap water and as if to acknowledge my decision, the plant flowered soon after. Frangipani, it is in miniature, I think. They have a strong identity of their own and can stand on their own any time.

Anthuriums - very tough to grow on a balcony - and very pretty when in flower. I am yet to master the technique to make sure there are plenty of flowers through the year and for some reason, the flowers always appear limp in my balcony.

Of late, I have been adding to my collection of small potted plants. I find that they are easy to move around and they can easily be shifted to add to the decor of our apartment. Besides, these days, one can find very interesting containers and I have grown fond of making a collection of them too.

That is my green corner. It has a variety of plants - all indoor varieties. The corner is cosy and looks like an evergreen patch in my sunny balcony. I sometimes let the creepers trail on the balcony wall and they do make a beautiful picture. Recently when we painted our apartment, we were forced to pull down the creepers. I like the wrought iron furniture that I have in the balcony. And, I make sure that the furniture always have colourful upholstery to provide the contrast. Please do not miss the mask hanging on the wall. Gifted by dear friends, it has found its perfect place in my little forest.

Mother-in-law's tongue, this plant is called. I do not see any connection. It is hardy and pretty easy to grow. They easily outgrow the container and have to be repotted. They have a graceful look and I like the lines that these tough leaves make.

Here is another nice green plant which can allowed to creep on walls, on moss sticks or just along the ground. I like the freshness in the green of this plant. Again, a very hardy plant, it is easy to grow and you can use cuttings of this plant and multiply them easily. I have seen people grow this plant in a water medium and it looks very classy.

This plant adds some colour to my green balcony. The purplish-maroon leaves are pretty to look at. Again, this is a plant that can add to the atmosphere in any room. It looks majestic but does not overpower with its presence when kept in the living area.

Here's my attempt at making a terrarium! It ended up being anything but a terrarium. I have a habit to collect pebbles from places I go to. Once when I got back from a river rafting trip in the Ganges, I had a bagful of pebbles collected from the sacred river. The security staff at the airport were amused at what I was lugging several thousands of kilometers. My son always brings at least one pebble from the places he visits and my collection continues to grow..... The cement plant holder has cacti, aloe vera and a thorny plant. These plants flourish in Chennai's heat making sure that there is always some greenery in the balcony. I have kept two wooden ducks that I got from a speaking engagement in the container. It is a little sad but the ducks get very little water.

 I have a Tulsi in my balcony. I think it will add to the good vibes in our apartment. However, I have learnt that the Tulsi plant is quite temperamental. It grows well but wilts all of a sudden. So, this is my nth plant and I get a regular supply of tiny Tulsi plants from my mother's garden. I hope to have a traditional Tulsi container one day - one with Lakshmi on one side and a lamp holder on the other. I am still looking for the ideal one!!!

I have one hanging plant - the common money plant. It appears to be growing well. I hope it will one day, grow till it touches the ground. I have a smiling sunny face hung from a springy wire which was picked up from the footpath in Warsaw. And, you can see one of the two mirrors that I have placed on the balcony. This one was from presented to me by my assistant after a trip to Rameshwaram. It has a frame made of sea shells. The other mirror adorns the opposite wall and has a terracotta frame made by the famous potter from Kerala, Jinan.

I owe this green balcony to two people - Shekhar, who drops in once a month to tend to the plants. He changes the soil, adds manure, loosens the mud around the plants, repots them as required and makes sure that they are all in good nick. Prem Singh waters the plants regularly although he does err every now and then when he overwaters them. I love the greenery and hope the plants will stay green forever!!!

Passport pains.....

Summer holidays were approaching and we were considering holiday options. A holiday abroad did seem like a good idea. Which meant research had to be done, tickets and hotels booked and passports readied..... It dawned on us that our son's passport would expire in the last week of March and our own passports would run short of pages for the forthcoming holiday abroad. So, off we started the work on renewing our passports..... Renewal of our son's passport was the priority. Additional pages could wait for our return from our vacation - we could just about manage with what we had.

We had heard that the Passport Offices across the country had been computerized so we felt a high degree of optimism about getting our passports renewed rather easily and quickly. Our enthusiasm and positiveness was short lived as we found out otherwise over the following days and weeks. Here is our own story......

It all started with three faces peering into our respective computer screens to read the instructions for renewal of our passports. Don't know if it was an Indian quirk but all three of us ended up with different interpretations of what was required of us for the process of renewal. For one, our son had turned 15 in end February which meant that he would be eligible for a passport with a 10 year validity. However, the website did offer the possibility of having it renewed for just 5 years with lesser documentation. So, we opted for the latter. As for additional pages, the website does not differentiate the procedure for this from that required for a renewal on expiry of the term so we had to go all the way as if it were a regular renewal.

Armed with knowledge that we gathered independently from the website, we completed the form available online and arrived at the Passport office at around 11am on the appointed (by ourselves) day. We were shocked to be received by a sea of people in different queues lined up all over the office - in corridors, on stairways, beyond the entrance - snaking rows of Indian citizens, in their quest for that powerful document. The document that would give them an identity as a citizen, the document that would enable them to fly across the seven seas, the document that would make them stand out as an Indian in far away lands. There were toddlers and senior citizens, mothers with babes in arms, husbands with wives, families, students seeking higher qualifications, sole breadwinners seeking brighter opportunities, professionals looking for better careers, devout in preparation of a religious journey and so on..... We had not anticipated this. After all, we had imagined that the systems had been computerised and hopefully, streamlined to reduce such crowds and bring in appropriate efficiency into the administering the process. Surveying the office premises and the crowds that had gathered there, we made a few enquiries and decided to head back home. On the way, we argued about what could have been done better or differently and ended up having one of those inconclusive and pointless discussions that families often have. We also spoke about taking assistance for getting the passports renewed, from an agent with the requisite experience to traverse Indian officialdom.

Having made some crucial decisions, we approached a local travel agent operating from a dingy office close to our home. Family members had on previous occasions taken help from the agent for booking airline tickets (at a time when online portals were absent from our lives) and had spoken about their efficiency and responsiveness. Armed with whatever documents we had prepared, we sat down to hear the lady at the desk issue a set of instructions. She spoke with an air of authority, with no emotion, as if the process had been etched in her brain so deeply that she could rattle it off even when in deep slumber. She did not pause to take questions, she fished out papers from here and there to show us examples of formats and wrote down simultaneously on a sheet of paper the list of documents and items required for the renewal process. Through her explanation we realised that the online process was actually restricted to 1) getting an appointment for a particular day for submitting your papers and 2) for taking a print out of the passport application form. Phew! That was a big revelation......

Considering we had attempted to complete the renewal application form ourselves, we were armed with several documents that were to be submitted along with the application form. For the additional documents, we all had to scramble for the next couple of days. My son had to get a bonafide certificate from his school along with an identity card. My husband had to call his friend who was a well placed officer in the Revenue Department asking for a Verification certificate and I was left to handle inputs like birth certificate, bank passbook, old passports, referrals, demand drafts, etc. We worked as a team and the documents required for the applications were lined up for scrutiny in front of little Miss Efficient at the travel agency. She compiled the documents in proper order, double checked for completeness and made a bundle of each.

Tatkal facility which involved a higher fee but a quicker turnaround of the process for reissue of the new passports.

As we stood in the queue, we made friends with people who were ahead of and behind us. They spoke of their experiences with the passport application process. We exchanged notes on what we heard of the process that awaited us. We spoke of the need to privatise the Passport Office. We discussed the inefficiencies of the government in providing basic citizens' services. It was the story that most Indians could relate to or had heard for years now. We spoke about our families, our work, our homes, our children and our backgrounds.....

We were waiting in this queue for a token to be affixed on our application form which would serve to put us in sequential order for a brief appointment with a staff at the office to whom we had to submit the application. No government office opens before 9.30am in India. And, given the punctuality record of government staff, it would be 10 by the time they appeared at their seats for carrying out their duties. There was a commotion around 10am followed by an expansion (people resting on ledges nearby joined the queue) and then contraction of the queue (early arrivers were released with stickers on the forms) which indicated that the token issuer had arrived and was at work. It was a rather quick process and we were allotted token numbers C 26 and 27. Please note that all along one had to contend with people who crossed the queue or interrupted the progress of the queue by posing sundry questions to anyone willing to provide an answer besides security staff who performed duties that went beyond providing for the safety and security of the visitors to the office premises.

During our 3 hour long wait, we had been told that the sequence number would roughly indicate the likely time of day when we could be called for the interaction with the passport official. Making a quick estimate of the wait time, we decided to step out of the office, get some fresh air and treat ourselves to breakfast at a nearby cafeteria. In no hurry to get back to the office and with time on our hands, we ordered well and enjoyed the meal.

We got back to the office for another wait which lasted close to an hour before we saw our token number flash on an electronic board. We submitted our papers and eagerly answered questions posed by the lady at the counter. To us she seemed intent on finding fault with the application and the information furnished. She had a pen with red ink which she used to scribble on the application. Every scribble felt like a wound. She found a couple of items overlooked in our application which she wanted us to redo. She directed us to some other office for confirmation of certain details. But importantly, she returned both applications confirming that they were not ready to be accepted for processing. The heart sank...... Through all of the cursory scan of our application, the lady was interrupted several times by other applicants who shouted out their queries and doubts from the side, her cellphone which she answered time and again and lastly by her colleagues who had very important information to convey from time to time. She was impatient to answer our queries, snapped when we tried to get more clarity on what was expected and raised her voice when we were persistent. It was close to 12.30pm by now and the crowds, the heat and the dust, the unhelpful attitude of the staff besides the process itself were beginning to hurt.

Gathering my self, I decided on the next course of action. Handing over my son's application form to my husband, I instructed him on what needed to be done to make sure we submitted it on the same day itself. He proceeded to act on it while I moved to another queue to make the payment for the renewal fees on my application. Now that queue was longish too but it gave me time to collect my thoughts on the next course of action. After a relatively short wait, I was able to deposit the fee and get an acknowledgment for my application form. At least one task was completed on that day.

I waited for my husband to return after what he had been assigned to do. He called me to inform me that he would be done in a few minutes and I took a place in the queue again to resubmit the application. I once again handed the documents over to the lady at the desk. I pointed out that all she had asked for was addressed, repeated that this was a routine renewal application with no change in details from the earlier passport, trying hard to make her see that it was a straightforward case for renewal. She seemed willing to listen this time round, made some marks in red ink again on the application before transferring it to the office file for processing. Having gone through the process before, I asked my son to hurry across to the queue for the payment of the renewal fees. As it happened, the counter closed for lunch just as my son stretched his arm to submit the fee against this application. We had to wait another half hour for the staff to return from lunch before the fee was accepted and a receipt returned to us. It was 2.30pm by then.

8 hours for mere submission of the two applications. And, then the wait for the passports began. It has been Tatkal applications so we have been told that the renewed passports would be dispatched in a fortnight's time.

We returned tired and broken at the end of the exercise. Every time I mentioned our experience to a friend, he or she would tell me that they spent only about half an hour in all at the Passport office. Or, that I should have mentioned of the renewal to them and they would have put me in touch with so and so.....

I wonder if and what we had done wrong.... Could it have been avoided? If so, what would we had to do? And, at what cost?

As I think through these questions, I wait for the postman who will bring our new passports......