Termite Attack and The Curious Case of the Lost Policy
‘It has to be destroyed by termite attack only,’ said the man sternly over phone.
‘But Sir, it was not termite attack. I lost it while shifting homes,’ I replied.
‘They will not take that reason. Will you file a police complaint?’
‘Sir, why police complaint?’
‘Don’t you want a duplicate policy?’
‘I do Sir, that is why I am speaking to you.’
‘Then say: irretrievably destroyed in termite attack.’
‘Not floods? Or fire?’
‘No. They will want to know where floods happened. For fire they would want to know if it was real fire. What damages you have claimed? A police report.’
‘But, Sir, termite attack is a lie. Why can’t they just issue a duplicate? It is my policy. I can lose it.’
‘Then don’t ask for a duplicate.’
That shut me up. The man put the phone down. These policies we buy just because some relative of ours gets into the business of insurance and targets us from a remote small town in the home state. No matter that I have not met the relative in years, I have to buy the policy. As if it is a gift. I have to pay for it! I haven’t paid the policy in two years. Now I want to close it or renew it but I do not have the original document. Now I have to lie just to get a copy. Termite attack. What a reason!
Thus starts my two pronged journey: I need to send a signed application to the insurance agent, my cousin’s friend, who is guiding me. Along with that I need to send an affidavit, address proof, photo, and I need to pay the back fee for the policy. I am lucky that I can pay the fee in Bangalore itself but I can’t do so online because the policy number does not show up on the website. The official position is: the policy has lapsed.
So be it. Let the policy die, I tell myself. Anyway, what is the use of the policy? The locked in money grows slower than the rate of inflation. The only chance of getting a lot of money is a remote chance that I die. Between me dying and the policy dying, I would prefer the policy to die. It is already dead.
As if the insurance agent, my cousin’s friend had heard my thoughts, I get a phone call from him. ‘Madam the amount you have paid in the last many years, with interest, is Rs 4, 22, 053. If you pay Rs 31, 247, the policy will be live again. That is a lot of money, Madam. All you need to claim it is the original document or an official duplicate of the original. Just say termite attack. Please do not say anything else. Yes, give correct address please. ‘
Oh! So, now I can’t even let the policy die and be at peace. Who does not like to get back her money? So, I need to do something. I need to make that affidavit. Yet, out of all the five address changes I do not remember correctly what was my Delhi address when I took the policy. It has been a while and I stayed there a short period. What was the street name? Was it Birbal Road or Hospital Road? It was one of the two though the address was better known as the other. What should I do now? Call up the land lady in Delhi? I do not even have her number and she will be suspicious.
Let me try to pay the amount. The office is on the second floor of a building close to home. I reach promptly at 9.15 AM. There is nobody there. I come down and ask the security guard. He points me to the board which shows the official timings. Cash counter opening hours: 10.30 AM to 1.30 PM, 2.45 Pm to 3.45 PM. That is it? Only four hours working in a day. Gee, aren’t these permanent jobs so much better than the ones we work in? We slog all day from 9 AM to 6 PM. No wonder these officials are so finicky about details. As long as we the public have to collect them, the office staff can relax.
My long wait starts. Luckily there is a bench outside the locked door to the cash counters. I sit down. By 10 AM an old man in a white dhoti and kurta with what seems like an ink pen in his pocket comes and sits next to me. It is so silent that as he unfolds his newspaper to read, I ask him: renewal? He nods and says, ‘For my son.’ There must be many such old parents in this youthful software city, I muse. More people come. An old lady, almost bent at her back, stands near me. I get up and offer her the seat. She refuses to sit down. ‘Akka, no Akka,’ she says and steps away. I wonder what culture is this where a woman thrice my age calls me elder sister and her economic class prevents her from sitting down. Shame-faced I re-occupy the seat.
Now there are more than thirty people. It is still 10.25 AM. Finally the door opens and we all rush in. The ones seated on the bench are definitely at a disadvantage. We are last in the new queues that form at the counter. As luck would have it, my queue is moving the slowest. No, it is not moving at all. After about ten minutes of waiting I break queue to go and investigate. From the counter glass pane I see the computer. It is blank. The computer itself has not booted-up. Everybody is the queue is standing — paragons of patience. I ask the lady at the counter if we should wait or change queue. She raises her palm asking me to shut up.
I walk to the end of another queue. When my time finally comes, after another half an hour, I notice the other line has also moved. Either way, I would have been at the counter at this minute. I present my case. It is just a cheque with my account number on the back. Looking at my face, the clerk holds the cheque. He looks at it and his face settles into that impenetrable mask which is so familiar to us: the mask on the faces of doctors and nurses, police officers and passport officials, customs and immigration officials in airports. The mask belies nothing except the movement of the eye ball. Even as the eye ball moves one can’t see what it has noticed and what it has not. The cheque could well have been an X-ray report of accumulated damages to the body or a wrongly stamped Visa on the passport. It could have been a case file in a small seedy police station. The clerk transforms into the visible face of the state which shall pierce into my very being to cut through all the layers of propriety and social mores. Pierce at the nakedness of my very being. This look is different from a male gaze that seeks to strip one of clothes, denude. This gaze peels off my skin, down to the bare skeleton, the bone. It wants to unravel the one truth I can offer about myself as a citizen of a state — that I am genuine.
When the look shifts to the computer screen I am even more disconcerted. Who knows what will show up in the database? The clerk even moves the screen away from me being able to see it. Now I know nothing. I am nothing. I am just a number in the records the system has on me. That forces me to reconsider my motives for applying for the renewal of the policy. All I then seek is to learn what he, who is peering into the system, has divined. What if he asks me for the original document? Would my not having paid the installments be held against me? Will he ask me for a medical test? Would I lose the money? Would I be left with the dignity of one whose claim is just or will an anonymous system throw me out unacknowledged? It makes me feel locked in a cage whose walls are made of the one-way mirrors. At the core of the searching look are a few binaries that mean the same: allow or deny, accept or expel, vulnerable and at the complete mercy of the system.
After a wait, that no one knows how long, the dot matrix printer spurts to life. The clerk hands you a receipt. He is not looking at you. You mumble, ‘thanks’. Suddenly, as if the power has been switched on, the clerk’s eyes light up. They shine at you and you bask in the beneficence of the state. Just then, the clerk says, ‘System slow.’
Renewal done, now acquiring the duplicate copy of the insurance policy lost in the ‘termite attack’ seems a much smaller hill to climb.