During my preliminary fieldwork in the summer of 2024, I re-learned that securing permissions is a journey through endless corridors of waiting. Armed with a file filled with photocopies of identification cards, stamped forms, and letters of affiliation, I gathered the bureaucratic evidence of my intent.

In a sarkaari daftar (government office), a file is not just a collection of papers. It is a living entity which travels, moving from one table to another, navigating a labyrinth of bureaucracy.

In these daftars mornings often bleed into afternoons. Papers disappear into cabinets, only to resurface when least expected. Pushing through in this system demands constant adaptation. It’s not just about getting permission to do research, far from it, it is about learning the rhythm of the space; knowing when to push forward, when to wait, and when to vanish into the background, hoping that the paper trail you leave behind will carry you forward.

10:50 a.m.: I sit on a plastic chair in a long hallway, surrounded by the dull hum of fluorescent lights and the shuffle of restless feet. After waiting for an hour, I am finally ushered into an office. The official barely looks up from the paper in front of him. "Write an application to the head of the department," he says, directing me to a different sarkaari daftar. I leave, carrying the instruction forward like the file waiting to be stamped.

2:00 p.m.: At the new daftar, after what feels like hours of wandering, I finally locate the room where I am to submit my file, only to be asked to leave it at a desk and return in a few days. I hesitate, knowing how quickly files can disappear here, I insist on continuing to wait. I am asked to sit on a chair by the wall. The room smells of dust and warm paper. A ceiling fan pushes the heat from one corner of the room to another. A few more hours pass before someone returns with the signatures I need to get to the next level of approval.

One step closer, but still not done, there are a few more stops at different officials’ tables, before the file and I have fully circulated through the system.

A few days later, 11:00 a.m.: Just when the finish line seems in sight, a new obstacle appears. Another senior official now holds my file. He scans my papers, then pauses. “Foreign student?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. I try to explain, "I’m from here, this is my home, I just study in the US" but my words dissolve into the web of assumptions built into the system.

I sit in front of him, caught off guard. The weight of the process is sinking in, as I begin to question the feasibility of my research. “Should I rethink my plans?” As he flips through the file, I observe him, the room, the rhythm of this exchange. Outside his window, someone calls out for chai (tea). Inside, the clock ticks loudly enough to notice. The official closes the file, then opens it again, as if reconsidering its weight.

Nothing dramatic happens. No refusal given, no approval granted. The file remains on his desk. I am asked to return in a few days.
In these daftars, power unfolds through a pause. Through circulation. Through the small decision to hold a file a moment longer than necessary.

By the time I leave, the sun outside is blinding. The corridor feels narrower than it did in the morning, more people have descended with their files and permission slips. I realize I have begun to measure progress not in approvals, but in survival. Has the file moved? Has it returned? Has it disappeared?

So, I give in to a time paradigm that does not operate in line with that of the academic world. Lesson one is on waiting and waiting here is not linear. It loops. It folds back on itself. It redraws the lines between insider and outsider, citizen and foreigner, permission and possibility.

Somewhere inside, my file continues its slow migration from one desk to another.

I walk away knowing that if it keeps moving, I do too.