Loss of a US Passport in Bangalore.

Image source: Wikipedia.

It happened to one of my relatives in a recent visit to Bangalore. This relative — call her Ms. X — had come to Bangalore from the United States to attend her cousin's wedding. Not only did she miss the central wedding ceremony, a primary purpose of her visit, the Kanyadaan (ಕನ್ಯಾದಾನ), but ended up having to deal with officials from the Karnataka State Police and visiting the US Consulate in Chennai, before she could continue with her return journey as scheduled.

Once she realized she had 'lost' her purse, most likely due to someone's lifting it away from where she had set it down in the wedding hall as a temporary measure, it became important to let the local police know about it. And, we had to reach out to the police that had the proper jurisdiction over the wedding venue. We prepared  the report, all of it hand-written. (For a state government that boasts of trillions of rupees in IT exports by 2020, and as the IT Hub of India, it is somewhat ironical that the Karnataka police stations are not well equipped with adequate computer machinery: we had to file a hand-written report).