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Archive for December, 2006

India, Part One: The Visa.

Posted in Whatever on December 13th, 2006

So, I’m in India. I left for India on Friday for work. Well… it wasn’t quite that simple.

We’d been talking about a trip like this for quite a while, so I’d been looking forward to it a lot. I’d gone through and done all the paperwork to renew my passport since it was about to expire, and so on. So when I got the last-minute call — and, I assure you, the call is always last-minute — I knew that I was all prepared. I’d taken all the necessary paperwork and put it in my lockbox. You know, one of those little fireproof lockboxes you can buy at the office store.

Yes, you guessed it — the lockbox was missing.

So nevermind the reason why. At some point you skip past all the stuff about how impossible and stupid it is that the lockbox could be missing and are forced to recognize that you’ve looked in all the possible places and no matter how ridiculous it is, the lockbox is for all practical purposes gone.

Therefore I had to:

  • Get a new passport. Okay, no problem, there’s a thing where you can get an expedited passport if you’re traveling in the next two weeks (which I was). And all you need to do is…

  • Bring your birth certificate. Which was in the lockbox. Crap. CRAP!

    So I:

  • Call my folks, who fortunately have the extra copy of my birth certificate which I had gotten many years ago for some reason I can’t remember anymore, except that it was awfully damned convenient at this very moment that I had done so — so much so, in fact, that I bet it would lower my grade if this were a writing assignment and not real life.

    And:

  • Ask them to FedEx the birth certificate to me, which they graciously do.

    Then:

  • Take the birth certificate and some forms I downloaded and filled out to the Big Federal Building, where I pay money and they tell me I can pick up my shiny new passport the next morning at 9 AM. But:

  • India requires you to obtain a visa in order to visit (you can’t do what I’m mostly used to doing, which is showing up and saying “Hi, I’m an American. Love me, envy me, let me into your country.” Surprisingly, this more or less works in many countries.) So:

  • I have to take the passport I’m picking up at 9 AM to the Indian consulate. Oh, but wait:

  • The closest Indian consulate is in San Francisco. So, after some discussion with the folks at work, they conclude that the best choice is for me to:

  • Fly to San Francisco myself. But, wait, it gets better:

  • I have to be at the Indian consulate by noon or they won’t take my application. So I have to book a 10 AM flight.

    So, to recap:

  • I will be in line waiting to pick up my passport at 9 AM. I need to be at the front of that line so that I can make it to the airport in time for a 10 AM flight. So, let’s see, airport is 15 minutes away — in no traffic. But I’m driving at 9 AM, which is rush hour. Plus, I need to be there 20 minutes before the flight leaves to board. Plus, I have to park. Plus, I have to get through airport security.

  • If by some miracle I make the flight, I land at 11:15 AM. I need to get a car to take me across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco — in morning traffic — to the Consulate by 12 noon.

  • Then and only then will I presumably have some time to kill until the Consulate gives me back my passport with the visa in it at 4 PM. Then I can fly home at my leisure.

    I can now state for the record that this itinerary above is empirically possible, but I can under no circumstances recommend it to anyone.

    Well, at least no one I liked.

    Made the flight with 10 minutes to spare. Made it inside the Consulate with 5 minutes to spare. Nevermind niceties like gee, I wonder whether I’ve had anything to eat or drink today.

    And just as I reached the Consulate I asked a girl standing next to me in line whether I was following the procedure correctly (which appeared to be Step one: take a number and Step two: stand at some random place in the room so as to completely confuse anyone who’s trying to figure out what line you’re supposed to stand in, if any.)

    The girl tells me I am. Then she tells me she’s been there for an hour but she forgot the passport photographs you’re supposed to bring, so she can’t get her visa today and she’ll have to start all over again tomorrow. Then she bursts into tears.

    Oh, God. I’m speechless. I feel awful. I’d have given her one of my passport photos if it would have helped. (She looked nothing like me, unfortunately.)

    I say some words of consolation. She dries her eyes. Then she says something like “Well, I guess I’m going to do you a favor then” and hands me her number — her ticket number, which is about 50 places higher than the number I had retrieved myself. She disappears out the door as I try to stammer out some thanks and as the security guard locks the door at twelve sharp.

    So suddenly I’m called and I’ve turned in more downloaded paperwork and paid more money and I’m out the door with a receipt that I can return with at 4 PM. And I’m in San Francisco, with hours to kill, getting my full day’s pay at work while I eat dim sum and sushi and drink coffee and shop at the excellent Green Apple Bookstore.

    Dude, I’m not even in India at this point and that is some major freaking karma right there.

    To be continued…


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