Now here's where living in India gets amusing.   After landing at the airport, and on getting ready to disembark, I discarded my boarding pass - remember we just landed - gettin' off the plane -- who needs a boarding pass anymore?   

Well, in India, I guess you should hang on to that!  I left the plan and at the top of the jet bridge and entering the terminal building, I'm asked by man in uniform #1 to show my boarding card.  I replied - "sorry, left it on the plane, I'm getting off here."  Man in uniform #1 says, "OK" and nods me on, asking, "You're sure, really this is your final destination?"  "Yup" is my reply to man in uniform #1.  

We then proceed to the same exit and have to go through the immigration checkpoint as passengers arriving from overseas destinations.   (There's another story for another day there).  However we are ushered into a special line (mind you there are no barricades to seperate us local passengers from international passengers) and as we are filing past MEN in uniform #s 2-10, I am stopped by Man in uniform #11, who politely requests that I produce my boarding pass.  I'm a bit concerned because they are stamping everyones boarding pass at Man # 11's station.  Well, I explained I was on a local flight (IC 895) from Jaipur and this is my final destination and that I left the pass on the plane.  (I decided against explaining that the boarding pass was an instrument to verify your status as a paying passenger and that such entitled me to BOARD the plane in Jaipur and had nothing to do with me DE-Boarding- if that's what it's called).  He didn't like that I told me I had to stop and would not let me go.   Then I tried to explain the above, to which he responded with "Wait here" and yelled to men # 2-10 in Hinglish that "something something and something else left his pass on the plane something something and something else".   

I then told him I was leaving, and at that point he came to me and said "No, you stay" and then he, I think, repeated the previous statements to men #2-10.   One of the guys I was traveling with then thought and asked me, "Hey, do you still have your e-ticket itinerary - show him that". 

Great idea, I thought, as I rummaged through my stuff.  

I did, in fact, have my itinerary.  so I showed that to him and asked, "Here, does this help?  It's my itinerary, but not my boarding pass"   He looked at it, walked over to his station, reached for his nifty stamp pad and promptly smacked a big blue stamp on my itinerary and said I could go.  he didn't keep it, didn't need it, didn't want to put it in a big stack of paper headed for a warehouse file somewhere.  He gave me the itinerary back and kept no copy of such event ever having transpired.

He just needed to stamp something!  So that's man # 11's job I guess.  Stamp stuff.  As in, "Hey Sanjay,  your job at this station -- Stamp people's papers with this nifty stamper.   ---  Here's your ink pad.   Do NOT let anyone past you without a stamp -- on something"  -- And don't keep anything as a record either.  

I checked with the other guys I was with.  They all got their boarding passes back, too.  Then they all threw them in the first garbage can we came across.   But we had a good laugh.  We decided that if we really had to, to get past man # 11, I could have shown him my driver's license and let him stamp my forehead.

Me? I kept my stamped itinerary.  It goes on my wall of fame in a nice picture frame.  Another memoir of India.