‘The Registrar of Assurances, Government of West Bengal, Kolkata, Office of the Additional Registrar of Assurances III’. As I stand outside the office thus labelled, surveying the milling crowds and waiting for my turn, I have a sinking feeling that I am in a Kafka novel and will never be able to emerge from it.

I had sold a small property some time ago and the buyer asked me to accompany him and his lawyer to the Additional Registrar's Office to have the sale registered. I agreed, partly to be helpful and partly out of curiosity about how the bureaucracy works. That explains my predicament, though the thought of being here all day is beginning to make me regret the decision.

The building complex in Kolkata's office district, where the Additional Registrars' offices are situated, is interesting. There is an L-shaped building, twelve storeys high. On the open face of the L is another building, five-storeyed and crescent-shaped. These two buildings enclose a yard that looks like a truncated D. In that small yard someone has had the sense to plant leafy green trees—palm, and what to my botanically untrained eyes look like giant money-plants.

There are rows and rows of women sitting in the corridors of the crescent-shaped building, signing in people like me who are waiting to have a property transaction registered with the Offices of the Additional Registrar III, and filling in ledgers while taking care not to have their elbows jogged by home buyers and registrars.