I applied for a tatkal passport around mid May 2013 at the Bhopal PSK. I found a lot of help through blog posts and forum posts, so thought I should share my experience and pay it forward.
Step 1.
I collected as much information as I could from the website, blog posts and forum posts. I realized that all the required information is available on the govt passport website. But going through other sources is advisable.
I created an id, downloaded the PDF, filled the form and submitted it. Before doing this I went through the entire FAQ section, instruction manuals and the annexures on the website. There should be absolutely no error in filling the form.
When I applied, tatkal had no appointments. I think now an appointment needs to be booked for tatkal.
Step 2.
I took my:
a. passport form printout
b. passport receipt printout
c. ration card (address proof)
d. license, PAN card
e. affidavit
I did not have a verification certificate at this point because the website states that one can either provide the V.C. or 3 identity proofs.
I reported at the PSK around 10am and was in the queue till 1pm at which point the queue was closed and my documents collected for preliminary examination. Turns out, bhopal passport office required a V.C....it's mandatory. Plus, for tatkal passport, they do not accept ration card as the only address proof. It has to be accompanied by at least one other address proof. I did not have one.
Step 3.
I got a V.C. from someone my father knew. I also took my passbook in SBI (has to be a public sector bank. ICICI, HDFC etc. won't work for tatkal. They will work for normal passport).
I reported back at the PSK at 9am with the documents plus the V.C. This time my documents were approved and I was issued a token at 12pm. All my documents were collected and I was asked to sit in the seating area until my token number was announced.
Step 4.
Once my token number was on the screen I proceeded to the corresponding counter where my photograph was snapped, my signature captured, fees collected and issued another token.
Step 5.
This was the verification step where a government official examined my documents for correctness and missing information. There were instances where others were sent back because their date of birth on a marksheet and birth certificate did not match. My documents were in order so did not face any issues. He asked me what I am currently doing and I answered. He signed my form and gave another token.
Step 6.
This was the granting step. Here, my documents were checked again and there was some kind of background check. I say this because they found that I had a passport when I was a minor that was not cancelled (13 years ago). This was classified as suppression of information and was asked to pay a fine of 2000 rupees after which the processing would resume. I was given a letter with the time at which I must report the next day with the fine. I exited the passport office at 5pm that day!
Step 7.
I reported the next day with the fine money. I paid it at the forward counter. I was issued a token and asked to wait in the waiting area again. I had to undergo the granting step again. So I was called at one of the granting counters again. The person there went through my documents once again and it was in order. My file was submitted and my passport processing had begun!
Step 8.
I kept checking the website but the status did not update for 20 days. Finally, upon further enquiry at the passport office (not PSK), it turned out that the person who issued the V.C. to me had not sent the acknowledgement for the V.C. to the passport office correctly. So we paid the person a visit, got the correct acknowledgement and sent it to the passport office again. My status changed to something like PV police verification has started.
Step 9.
In the next 4 days, the status changed to "passport is being printed" and then to "passport has been dispatched." I received it on the 5th day. It was sent through speed post and the post man delivered it. He expected something which he received.
That was the entire process. I am still waiting for police verification as it happens after the passport is issued in case of tatkal. The process was simple but had some surprises. Got my passport within a month of applying. I think I'd have received it in a week had it not been for the V.C. discrepancy.
Be prepared to dedicate at least one entire day at the passport office.
Random Ramblings
RANDOM RAMBLINGS [ran-duhm ram-blings] n. 1 straying from one subject to another in a random, haphazard and aimless manner. 2 the most random blog on the internet.
Tatkal passport experience at Bhopal PSK
Tywin's Rage
I care for them...I always have, even for that abomination I have to call my son. He is my son, after all. They are Lannisters just like me and my father before me.
They are lucky to be born Lannisters; but us Lannisters have not always been the lions that we are today of this kingdom. There were sacrifices. Sacrifices made by me and my father and his father before him. My children never seem to understand this. They certainly had no problem using the family's name, stature and gold for whatever selfish needs they had. But when it comes to upholding that family name and the accompanying sacrifices they are suddenly oblivious.
Tyrion. I lost my wife birthing him...an imp. But I always considered him my son. Whatever he ever needed for drunken whoring around was always at his disposal. And yet, when the time has come to give the Lannisters an heir he seems to find a petty girl's happiness more important. A Stark girl's happiness matters more to him than the honor of the Lannister name. A girl he hardly knew a few years ago seems more unhappy to him than a father who lost his wife and a mother who died bringing him into this world. How can anyone be so selfish. My hands shiver with rage. I neither expected nor asked Tyrion to make any sacrifices for the family's sake before. It was always gold and whores and wine and what not but never a sacrifice, never an act of selflessness for the family. And today, when he has a chance he is making me ask him to give the family an heir.
But I would be wrong to call only Tyrion selfish. If only Jamie had not joined the Kingsguard, I would not have been at the mercy of an ungrateful and selfish son. Jamie was the son that the Lannisters needed. He was everything I could ever want in my son. But it turns out that ungratefulness, selfishness and lack of regard for the family runs in all my children. He knew. Jamie knew well enough that he was the only heir after me to the Lannister name. The Rock, the place in the royal council, the commander of army, the gold, the power...everything. And yet, disregard for the family found Jamie after all. He gave it all up for protecting that king whom he owes nothing. A king who was half mad, whom he ended up killing. Why? Why can't Jamie see that there is no "king", there is no "honor", there is no "love". There is only family. A family which is why he is what he is today. A family to which he owes everything. A family that he has forgotten and abandoned.
If only he were a little more like Cersei. At least she understands that family comes first. But she is a fool. She is blinded by power, ambition and pride. Women never were the face of power and never will be. If she were half as smart as she thinks she is then she'd understand this, especially after how she pulled Robert's strings and finally got him killed. She was not the king, but she certainly was the closest thing to a king when it came to power. She had no problem marrying Robert for power then why resist marrying Loras? She should know that neither of her brothers cares about the Lannister name.
I am old. How much longer do I have to hold the strings of this kingdom? How long must I wait for my own blood, my own family, my own children to help me in carrying this very heavy Lannister name? Why is the Lannister pride, once made up of fierce lions standing up for the family by each other's side, made of a lone, old and tired lion now?
Upvote/Reddit/HN style restaurant menus
I was recently in Goa which meant lots of eating at different restaurants. One particular feature that I constantly found myself looking for was the presence of "Karma" beside every item on the menu. This is, of course, due to numerous hours spent browsing reddit and Hacker News.
So I started wondering, if restaurants started giving menus with an interface similar to that of reddit then customers can upvote or downvote particular items on the menu based on their experience. This could be a kind of feedback form that could be linked to every item's karma on the menu. Hell, we could even have a comments section for every item where people could see what others had to say.
This would really help in ordering the right items at restaurants and should be really simple to implement provided the menus are provided on a tablet or a smartphone.
Cure and prevention of anal fissure caused by repeated constipation
Many people frequently suffer from constipation which in turn results in anal fissures and hemorrhoids. I myself had an experience like this when I was 16 and it was horrible. Most horrible because the constipated stool struck without warning. And when it did, it was rock hard and its diameter very well exceeded that of my...well...anus. All the advice I received from everyone was regarding prevention of constipation. But none of them really helped me in actually dealing with it at such a mature stage. As a result I had to bear a lot of pain. But I started drinking water profusely and never really experienced it for almost a decade until last week. It struck again without warning and I could again do nothing. Moreover, this time it caused a severe anal fissure which meant that any kind of stool...even the normal soft stool would result in immense amount of pain. I did some research, tried some remedies and found some that helped me a lot over a period of 4 days.
Day 1:
Constipation struck without warning and caused a severe anal fissure. I realized that motions the next day will cause excessive pain. So I consumed 10ml liquid paraffin and 5ml castor oil in the evening. This was after I had already had lunch. I drank lots of water the entire day.
Day 2:
Constipation struck again, resulting in immense pain and a lot of bleeding. The only relief was that there was only the stool at the end that was hard. In any case, the pain was unbearable. So I only consumed fibrous food this entire day. Consumed 15-20 ml of castor oil in the afternoon around 11pm and I had loose motions after 2 hours. Very effective. Liquid stool meant the pain could not be any lesser, although it was still considerable.
Day 3:
Woke up early in the morning and took a dose of castor oil again and went to sleep. Woke up after 3 hours with loose/liquid motions again. There was still pain but no bleeding which meant the wound was not disturbed in any significant manner. This would hasten the healing. This was my top priority. I continued fiber diet and lots of warm water throughout the day.
Day 4:
Woke up again and repeated castor oil. Same as Day 3. i expected that the pain will be gone but the pain persisted throughout the day. This meant that the straining from loose motions was now causing more harm than good to the wound that had almost healed. So I consumed 15-20ml of liquid paraffin 2 hours after my dinner. This also happened to be 2 hours before I fell asleep. Continued fiber diet. I also drank a glass of warm milk with lemon in one quick gulp because this helps the healing.
Day 5:
Woke up. This was the first stool in 3 days that would be solid. I expected a lot of pain. But thankfully the semi-solid stool was almost painless, thanks to liquid paraffin. There was a mild pain throughout the day. Fiber and milk-lemon mixture was repeated. Post-dinner paraffin also repeated.
Day 6:
Woke up. The last night was spent travelling in bus. This was a pain in the ass (not literally) because I couldn't fall asleep. Moreover, I was forced to drink less water because I couldn't stop the bus again and again for peeing. As a result, I expected some pain. However, liquid paraffin worked its magic again and there was no pain. There was mild itching sensation which meant that the wound was almost completely healed. This marked the end of the constipation and anal fissure. I still continued a diet full of water and fibre over the next 3 days. This was accompanied by consumption of alcohol too. But this had no deteriorating effect. Water and fiber are important. I did not have to take any more paraffin or castor oil.
Conclusion:
Immediately after the first painful stool, switching to castor oil will help the wound heal. Overusing castor oil will result in damage. So switch to paraffin after that and then finally nothing. Fiber, water and sometimes painkillers (to prevent swelling) are important. Milk-lemon also helps. There are many stool softening tablets and purgatory tablets out there but I did not have to resort to them. That can be the last resort.
Needless to say, once constipation results in anal fissure, there is not much you can do right then and there except maybe try to push the stool bit by bit and chip it off with something. As debilitating and morale draining as the pain can prove to be, taking the necessary medication will finally cure it in a few days. However, there is no escape from the pain for those 2-3 days.
Please note that I am not a medical practitioner and hence these observations are based on my personal experiences. Please check allergies etc. before consuming anything mentioned above.
Let's break the Hibernate-PC continuum!
Somewhere around 1999, Windows introduced the Hibernate feature in Windows Millennium edition if I remember correctly. I was unaware of Linux back then so not sure if it was something copied from Linux like so many other features. But that's not the point here.
The point is that the feature rocked my world. We all know what Hibernate does and how awesome it is. How much time it saves due to fast booting and how much effort it saves and so on.
But it's been more than a decade now and I am surprised no one has come up with something beyond the hibernate. I mean we are all stuck with Shut Down, Stand By, Log Off, Restart and Hibernate since a decade now! We need a new feature! I was thinking about this today morning and I did come up with one such feature.
We should take hibernate to its next level. How? Well, currently, to put in a crude manner, hibernate saves the state in a file called hiberfile.sys which is basically the contents of the RAM. And when the system is turned back ON the contents are loaded back to the RAM.
Now here is the upgrade I suggest: I hibernate my system, copy the hiberfile.sys to a pendrive. Travel across the globe to some corner of the earth, turn ON a system there and load the hiberfile from my earlier system to this PC! How awesome would that be? Of course, it's not as simple as it sounds, we all know that. Something similar has already been achieved through clouds. But bringing the feature to PC would rock my world once more.
I don't honestly know if its feasible or not. Or if it's already been implemented. But I think it's worth a try anyways!
I wanted to contribute to humanity. I ended up with an air conditioner instead.
I changed my apartment a week ago. The new one is markedly better than the previous one. One such improvement is an Air Conditioner. And this is a problem. Why? It is such a long story; it is the story of humanity.
I do not even know where to begin. So I will begin at some point in mankind's history where material possessions started becoming more important than all other aspects of existence. I am not sure when this transition from "following the wisest" to "following the one who is wealthiest happened". But it happened. And here we are. Our entire race spends its existence in amassing material possessions. This dawned on me one day when I thought to myself - what if I did not give a damn about which brand of shoes I wear or if I owned a car which had cruise control or if the house I lived in had an air conditioner or not. I mean a state where all these things DID NOT MATTER TO ME. I realized I will be liberated. Liberated to achieve and put my energy into doing stuff that truly matters. Put my energy into new ideas or intellectual discussions or eradicating hunger from a village right next to the city where I live in. But no, I, like most other humans, have chosen a path to value things I do not need over things that humanity needs.
Let's examine what happens when one is engulfed by the insatiable lust for material possessions. Any amount of money is consumed, thus creating a need for more. To be able to sustain the current level of lifestyle and take it to the next level, one presses on to means that would result in earning more money. Some refer to this as career advancement. Some also refer to this as bribes. Many other names include embezzlement, crime etc. Before we know it, corruption is rife, the people are afraid of the state rather than it being the other way round, warlords capture and kill children, drug trade kills millions and forms a billion dollar industry that doesn't even exist on paper. The list is endless. Not only this, the very few who do want to put in effort where it really matters are blown away by this gale of money because the entire world is now governed by who owns more expensive stuff and who has more money. So, these very few people are also forced to output only those tools or ideas that will result in the creation of more wealth. I mean every problem we are facing today can be attributed to someone somewhere wanting material comforts and more money. Like I said, it forms the basis of our existence.
This has also led to the wrong people forming the role models. We quite simply look up to the people with more money or with private jets. We aspire to be like them. If not private jets it's a huge apartment with a heated swimming pool or meeting friends in a restaurant that charges 20 times for a pint of beer and so on. And then, when we realize that these people are corrupt or know nothing about life we think something is wrong with the world or people cannot be trusted etc. Well, the truth is, you cannot have so much money without engaging in some activity which is amoral or unethical. And yes, there is something totally wrong with the world and that is us.
So getting back to my problem. I moved into this new apartment because my friends were clearly smitten by the ACs installed in each one of the three bedrooms. However, the fourth bedroom did not have an AC. I had decided that I would take that room and I would not install an AC because I did not need it. I had survived 2 summers at 40 degrees Celsius already and I found it was not that big a problem. If I had some awesome algorithm to work upon or an interesting conversation with someone or a challenging game of Dota with my friends, the heat was forgotten...totally. BUT, my girlfriend usually keeps coming over and she said it was absolutely unacceptable living in that much heat without an AC. She hails from a cooler city so she cannot bear heat. As a result, I ended up with an AC. But more importantly, I ended up one more useless possession toward money-ravagotron. The descent has already begun. I do not know if I can halt it for I am surrounded by a society that will accelerate my descent. No one can resist the force of the society. Unless, I decided to turn to the way of a hermit...it has always held so much appeal.
No password rules...please.
So I just read this post through Hacker News about password rules:
http://portal.cs.oag.state.tx.us/OAGStaticContent/portal/login/help/ChangePassword.htm
I was aghast with how majority of the organizations.websites are still clueless about password strengths. The article is not wrong. It gives pointers to passwords with very high entropy. That's good. But what is not good is that these passwords are almost impossible to memorize! Imagine having passwords like fd2lp$53z for a dozen websites! How will one remember password of the said kind for 12 different websites (NO! Using same password for different sites is a BAD PRACTICE!).
So let me start with this graphic art:
http://xkcd.com/936/
It is pretty self-explanatory. One may make it more secure by simple substituting a letter resembling a number by the number literal. e.g. let's say your password is "correct". Then correct becomes c0rr3ct and then it becomes czerorrthreect or czerorr3ct etc. Could it get any simpler? Of course this is not the only trick. There are loads more. One can simply hash some chosen word and use parts of it as password etc.
So please, let us all stop making organizations/websites dictate your passwords and use a little bit of creativity lest we will have a password-zombie-apocalypse at our hands!
