India has solved one of humanity’s oldest problems. We still have no idea who we are, but we have documents.
Aadhaar. PAN. Passport. Driving licence. Voter ID. Bank KYC. Ration card. Property deed. At some point you stop living and start managing a portfolio of existence. You begin to wonder how many laminated endorsements an ape needs before the state agrees it is human.
Every department keeps its own version of me. The tax office knows my PAN and suspects my morals. The RTO knows I can theoretically park. My employer knows my output. My wife knows the rest.
Then the state itself looks over its glasses and asks, “Are you truly you?”
I produce the cards. Aadhaar. PAN. Passport. Triumph. I am officially, verifiably real.
Election morning I walked into Polling Station 42 carrying my voter ID like a medal. Heart beating, face attached, body present. The officer looked at the printed sheet, then at my face, then back at the sheet.
“Your name is not here.”
I showed the voter card. I showed Aadhaar. I pointed at myself.
“I see you,” he said. “You do not exist in booth forty-two.”
That was the morning I learned the difference between identity and recognition. I was physically undeniable and digitally evicted. A server had dropped my row during a 3 a.m. migration. I was not a citizen. I was a cached record waiting to be refreshed.
I sat down later with the same cards in my hands.
This one is my taxable value.
This one is my right to cross borders.
This one is my address.
Useful indices. None of them is me.
Advaita asks a more irritating question than any clerk: not “Can you prove who you are?” but “Who is holding the proof?”
I can recite the entire dossier — blood group, degrees, designation, credit score, tax slab. None of it touches the core.
Because the final audit has no rescheduling option.
Yama does not ask for biometrics or an OTP. He simply looks at the empty hands and asks, “Who are you?”
Name — a label chosen by parents.
Job — a temporary economic function.
Father, husband — biological and social contracts.
Successful — for how long?
He does not even glance at the papers on the floor.
“They substantiate an inventory,” he says. “Not the witness.”
The designations dissolve. The balances vanish. The body turns to ash. All the identities I spent decades laminating were only descriptions of a temporary character.
I had spent my life verifying the credentials of the runner and never stopped to see who was running.
The real catastrophe is not being omitted from an electoral roll.
The real tragedy is dying with an impeccably documented identity and never discovering who was breathing underneath it.
Leave a Reply