An ode to Mr. M: Recipient of my first bribe

Mr. M is an administrative assistant at my alma- mater, anyone familiar with University of Delhi, understands it’s a position of tremendous and awesome power. Some choose to use this for good and others….well are like Mr. M. He has elevated bureaucracy and red-tapism to an art and a science. If it can be delayed or made more difficult….he will do it!! He made any paperwork during my graduation an ordeal of biblical proportions. His crafty machinations will ensure that you are always a document too short and a day too late. Its a game only he knows all the rules, armed with a stapler and a pen he is a force to be reckoned with. He makes a 10 feet trip to the Principal’s office for a signature seems like a pilgrimage and himself a martyr to your cause. He is never crass enough to ask money upfront…oh no that would be so unsophisticated, he humms and Haws and delays for as long as possible. He understands human psychology better than Freud, we become more primed to pay once we have experienced the inconvenience, annoyance and obstacles he can create. And then we pay with a smile on our faces. I paid Rs. 100 for loss of an ID card issued 6 years ago and which expired 4 years ago to receive my degree. I can only marvel at the crafty brain to have invented such a plausible sounding reason. Bullshit..but plausible.
I could not have picked a more worthy recipient for the first bribe I have ever paid. (Yes…I can come down from my high horse long enough to admit to that). Well, we can also say that government has subsidized over 5 years of my Higher education so in return I am supplementing the income of an important spoke in its slow and tedious bureaucratic wheel.