The Signature and the Stamp

by NINAD JOG

Of all the documents I must submit to renew my lifelong Indian visa, two of them make me the most anxious. One is an affidavit saying I have the originals of all the documents I am submitting and the other is a copy of the first page of my American passport. I have the originals and I have both the affidavit and the passport copy, but I must get them notarized before submitting them. It’s the logistics of getting them notarized that makes me a little uneasy.

At the back of my mind lurks an unsavory experience from last year, when it took me months to get a different document notarized. That document was quite straightforward even though it ran into several pages. But it needed two witnesses and it made too many demands on the witnesses. I was told Indian witnesses were preferred, as non-Indian names would raise eyebrows when the document was ultimately submitted in India, even though the Indian authorities knew I lived in America. The witnesses were also supposed to reveal their home addresses and passport numbers on the document—a requirement I was sure many of my non-Indian friends would see as a blatant violation of their privacy.

Most difficult of all, I had to gather the witnesses from near and far to the notary's office on the same day and at the same time to complete the process. In a land where most of my friends are now East Asian and Southeast Asian rather than Indian, that was no mean task. Months passed before I could achieve that feat. The two documents I must submit now do not need any witnesses, but ever since that incident the prospect of getting documents notarized fills me with a certain amount of dread.

I must set my fears aside and take the plunge if I want my lifelong Indian visa to be renewed. I decide to do what I did last time: visit a branch of a bank to get them notarized from a bank official, as the bank will do it for free if I am an account holder. It's one of the nice things about American banks that they practically swarm with notaries. Eagerly I log in to my account on the bank's website and make an appointment with a notary for the very next day, at the earliest available time, the bank's opening time.

***

I set an alarm to wake up the next morning and have a cup of hot coffee so I can start thinking clearly. I also shave and shower—something I do not do regularly in the mornings, now that I have been working from home for the past three years. I must do what it takes to resurrect the lost art of making myself look presentable.

I get into my car and take it out of the building's multi-level parking garage, joining the impatient ranks of early-morning office-goers. The morning is sunny, but a slight haze has robbed it of much of its cheer. In the best case I will get both documents notarized, after which I will drive to the nearby FedEx store to send them on their way. What’s the worst that could happen? The bank official might refuse to notarize them for whatever unfathomable reason, and I would return home empty-handed—with both my hands on my butt, as a Marathi idiom would have it.

I turn left to get out of the building complex, only to be confronted by a traffic jam on the main road. The reason looms a few hundred feet up the road—a yellow school bus engorging about two dozen little kids, dressed to their nines in warm clothing, standing in single file under a knot of cheerless, barren trees.

I curse my stars for having chosen to drive to the bank. I could have walked; it's just half a mile from where I live. In fact, that's what I had done when I went there last year to ask about getting the other document notarized. What a sissy I am for opting to drive! It would have been so much easier to bundle up and march left, right, left, right, along the sidewalk in the above-freezing temperatures. 

Will I be late for the appointment? Is the traffic jam a bad omen? It cannot be. I am not superstitious.

Mercifully the school bus starts moving and the traffic jam dissipates before I can dwell at length on my misfortune. I soon find myself outside the bank. I am not late. I can see shadows moving behind the glass doors, but has it opened yet?

"It's open; you can go inside."

I glance sideways and thank the security guard, a slightly built black man. He too is approaching the entrance; he opens the door for me. A bank official comes up to me; she is blonde. I tell her I have my appointment. She asks me to take a seat in the waiting area.

I settle down and look around. The bank is waking up. Officials are dashing around, exchanging quick words with each other. One opens a door to a secure room and disappears inside. Two other people, perhaps customers, enter the bank and take seats on the other side. A short man, brown of complexion, slight of build, well-dressed in a suit and tie, stands a few feet from me. He catches my eye and grins at me from ear to ear. He wishes me a good morning. The name tag on the lapel of his coat tells me he is a bank official. I return his greeting.

He approaches me a couple of minutes later. I tell him the purpose of my visit, upon which he whisks me into his office, grinning from ear to ear all the while. His office is an open area by the wall, a large cubicle straining mightily to be called a separate room, well within earshot of the people sitting in the waiting area and in the two adjacent cubicles.

I take the folder out and show him the two documents that need to be notarized. His face darkens.

"I cannot notarize the copy of the passport," he tells me matter-of-factly. "We don't notarize copies of original documents."

I knew it. My fears have come true, partially if not fully. "Is it your policy or is it the bank's?"

"Yes," he replies, grinning from ear to ear like a Cheshire cat.

“Yes, what?” I wonder. “Yes, it’s your policy or yes, it’s the bank policy?” I have half a mind of reaching out and tousling his wiry hair. Who knows, he might start purring with contentment if I were to do that.

"Can you please notarize the other document then?"

He looks suspiciously at the affidavit. He asks me what it is for. I tell him it merely says I have the originals of all the copies I am submitting. All he has to do is verify my signature.

He agrees to notarize it and gives me a big grin.

His computer is switched on, but the screen shows a spinning wheel. "I have to wait until it starts working," he explains apologetically. "I have to enter the details of every document I notarize. Until last year we did not have to make an entry, but they have changed the rules."

I am in no rush. I am disappointed that I cannot get both documents notarized, but oddly enough, I am also relieved. I will not have to go to the FedEx store immediately afterwards; I can head straight home. I can save some time; the time spent going to the FedEx store would have eaten into my work time.

He asks me if I live in the neighborhood. I tell him I live in one of the nearby towers; that I moved into a two-bedroom unit from Reston last year. He says he has never seen me. I tell him I have not seen him either. I feel like telling him that I have had no reason to set foot in the bank, but I hold my tongue.

The wheel is still spinning on his screen, but it has not obscured my home address. "You live right up the street," he says cheerfully. I tell him I moved there so I could live on a high floor, above the twentieth, with a good view. He sticks his tongue out in shock. "I can never live on a high floor," he confides. "I went to my friend's home on the fifth floor. The moment I went into the balcony I felt quite dizzy."

He asks me if I have bought my home or whether I rent it. I tell him I bought it. He asks me if I paid cash. I tell him, no, I have a mortgage. He asks me where I got the mortgage. I try to remember the name of the lender, but my memory fails me. I tell him it was not this bank. He asks me if I have equity. I have heard the word being bandied around, but I keep forgetting its meaning. I ask him what it means.

"Equity is when the price of your home exceeds the amount you paid for it."

I nod. He asks me how much I paid for my home. I tell him it was above three hundred thousand dollars. He gasps.

"You paid a lot for a two-bedroom unit," he says. "Properties in this area are in the two hundreds."

"It's a well-lit corner unit, with two sides open, and it has a view of the Washington Monument," I protest feebly.

But he does not look convinced. He tells me I should refinance it once I have equity. He says there are dedicated refinancing experts at the bank who will be eager to assist me. I nod.

He looks at my account and says he has noticed that I do not have the bank’s credit card. He sings its praises and offers me one. I tell him I used to have it but canceled it. He asks me why. I tell him I wasn't using it; I was using another one. I don't tell him I stopped using it because I was not happy at being charged a twenty-dollar late payment fee for missing a payment, years—maybe two decades—ago.

There is a long silence, an awkward one. He stares intently at the spinning wheel on his computer screen. I continue to gaze at him. I do not stare at people, as that would be rude. But I do permit myself to gaze at them. His appearance and his accent tell me he is Hispanic. I think of asking him if he's from Peru, as Peru is the only Latin American country I have been to. If by chance he is, I can regale him with stories of my visits to Lima, to Puno, to Puerto Maldonado and of course to Cusco and Machu Pichu. I can establish a closer connection, a tighter bond. But I do no such thing.

The application on his computer has started working. It has been fifteen to twenty minutes since I entered his cubicle. He enters the details of my affidavit and notarizes it—signing it once and stamping it twice.

"Do you know any notary who can notarize the other document?" I ask him.

"We cannot notarize it," he says, grinning from ear to ear.

I get up to leave. He tells me I will soon get a survey email asking me to rate his performance. He asks me to rate him ten out of ten.

It is my turn to grin at him from ear to ear. "Of course, I will rate you ten out of ten," I assure him, unabashedly sincere in my insincerity.

With one hand on my butt, so to speak, I drive home. I hide my car in the deepest recesses of the parking garage; I can sense it is feeling ashamed. I take the elevator; I do not take the stairs. In defeat I take the elevator; in victory I always climb up the stairs.

II

I wrack my brains to see where else I can get a notary. I have an account at another bank, but they don't have any branches in my neighborhood. In fact, they don’t have any branches in the state where I live. I would have to drive far to visit a branch. I could always go to a different bank, one where I don’t have an account, but they will probably charge ten to fifteen dollars. Besides, what's the guarantee that they will notarize the copy of my passport? If the notary at one bank is finicky about which documents they can notarize, there’s no telling whether other banks will have similar restrictions.

By late morning I have a brainwave. Since I will be sending all the documents by FedEx, I can easily get it notarized from a FedEx store. Why, oh why, did it not strike me earlier? I do an online search, only to learn that FedEx stores do not have notaries. They used, to but discontinued after being sued. What about their rival, UPS? I search online, and lo and behold, UPS does provide notary services. My mood lifts.

I get up from my desk and make my way to the living room. I look out the French window at the bright blue sky. My gaze flits from the Masonic Temple to the National Harbor and ultimately comes to rest on the slight wisp of the Potomac river in the distance. A plane is approaching from the south, its landing lights switched on, dipping lower and lower, getting ready to land at National Airport. The haze has lifted; much of the day's cheer has been restored.

The nearest UPS store is just a mile or so from my home, but I am a stranger to that locality, a stranger to the strip mall in which it resides. I decide to go to the one that’s two miles north, a ten to fifteen-minute drive from my home. I know the area quite well; there’s a grocery store in that strip mall that I often go to. In fact, I can kill two birds with one stone. After getting the copy of the passport notarized, I will pick up a few groceries, including two dozen small bottles of purified drinking water.

But what if the notary at UPS also refuses to notarize it? I think of calling the UPS store but decide against it. I have a feeling they will tell me No if I call them, but I might have a fighting chance of convincing them to notarize if I meet them in person. Just to be on the safe side, I search online for notaries near my home. There are two or three leads, but I must treat them as options of last resort. I can also ask my friend who lives nearby, Duy, if he knows any notaries. I’m sure he probably does, as he has extensive connections within the Vietnamese community.

I can hardly wait for the arrival of late afternoon, the time of day that usually heralds the end of my workday. Below the copy of my passport, I write, "I certify that this is a true copy of my passport." I leave a blank space beneath it and print my name. I retrace my steps to the parking garage, get into my car, drive up Leesburg Pike, and reach the UPS store. It must be busy with a long line of customers at the end of their workday.

Much to my pleasant surprise, I’m the only customer in the store. A single person, slim as me, but to all appearances one and half times my height, stands laconically behind the counter, his black beard providing comic relief in an atmosphere of utter emptiness. I greet him and waste no time in laying my cards on the table.

He stares intently at the document for a few seconds and grimaces.

"I have my passport with me," I tell him, pointing to the original passport lying next to its copy.

At last he speaks. "Do you want the document to be notarized or do you want your signature to be notarized?"

"My signature," I tell him promptly.

He relaxes visibly. He says he can notarize my signature but not the copy of the passport. He stamps the document in two places and signs it. He even smiles at me.

"Five dollars even," he says.

I pay him cash and leave the store in a jiffy. No one can tell from looking at the sheet of paper whether he intended to notarize my signature or the copy of my passport. For all intents and purposes, he has notarized the latter. My heart is as light as a feather on a spring afternoon.

I drive a few hundred feet to the grocery store in the same strip mall. But before I rush inside to buy some purified drinking water, I step into my favorite restaurant next door, a Laotian one named Padaek, for an early dinner. I'm not too hungry yet, but a celebration is called for. I can't help noticing that the restaurant's name means Fart Once in Marathi, pada being fart and ek being one. Odd, isn’t it, that I had never noticed the Marathi meaning before?

I still have to go to the FedEx store and ship all the documents to the outsourcing company. But that's a mere matter of detail; a mundane task devoid of uncertainty. As I savor the catfish noodle soup with sticky rice, it dawns on me that I could have gotten both documents notarized at UPS. It would have cost me another five dollars, but it would have saved me a trip to the bank. It would have also saved a good thirty to forty minutes of my time and kept me from having an encounter with the Cheshire cat that begged me to give it a full ten points out of ten for its exemplary customer service.

I could have done even better. If only I had chosen UPS instead of FedEx when I applied for the reissue of the lifelong visa, I would not have needed to make a separate trip to the FedEx store. The notarizations and the shipping could all have happened at one location, in a matter of maybe ten minutes.

The year might be 2019, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

If only I worked from an office, like I did until three years ago, I could probably have gotten everything done right there without having to make special separate trips. Ah, the mixed joys of working from home!

After dinner I start walking to the grocery store, but I remember something and go to my car. Before the daylight fades, I take pictures of the two notarized documents with my phone. It's good to keep a copy for reference.

I enter the grocery store, but my mind is not at ease. What if someone were to break into my car and steal my passport? Not only would I have to get it replaced, I would also have to submit the visa renewal documents all over again. But I dismiss those thoughts, as the neighborhood is not known to be unsafe, at least not in broad daylight.

After buying the purified drinking water, some black bean hummus, and sundry groceries, I head back towards my home. I drive straight to the FedEx store, and present the cashier with the documents and the shipping label. Within a minute he places them in an envelope and sends them on their way.

Waves of relief wash over me. I have done in a day what, in ordinary circumstances, would have taken no more than ten or fifteen minutes. I head home, pleased as Punch. The older I get, the greater the sense of accomplishment I feel from completing perfectly mundane tasks. One can only hope that such feelings are not harbingers of things to come.