It was one of the worst decisions I have ever taken in my entire life! I never realized I would have had to do something as exhilarating and painful as this.
Getting a passport for me was of utmost importance in life. I was an “IT-guy” and as soon as I finished my Masters in Computer Application my dad applied for my passport. I had assumed that it was the best way to go to “Ammericka”, the land of opportunity! My dad entrusted this job to an ‘agent’ who undertook the task of doing all the ‘dirty work’ for us. I always thought this work was bribing the officials and getting to meet people like Charles Shobhraj or Jack the ‘Ripper’. I had no idea how wrong I was!!
Seven years passed and I never used my passport! The only time my poor passport got used was when the shameless Ms Spellman put the corny “Application Received” in the last page to refuse my visa to the US. She did this another two times. My poor passport has been cursed by these three stampings at the US Consulate in Chennai. I have lost hope of ever getting any visa to any country thanks to Ms Spellman! She probably thinks I am a terrorist! Or maybe she thinks I will become a future president of the United States. Both are one and the same!
A year later, I had to apply for my daughter’s passport. This was decided because my employer told me it is best I apply for an H4 along with my H1B. The last time I applied for an H1B, Ms Spellman did ask me if I ‘ever intended to take my wife to the United States’. I had told her that I would ‘if I got my H1B’. Maybe, my H1B got refused because of this, concluded my wife! ‘Why did you not apply for an H4 for me and our daughter?!’ seemed to be the question. She was very sure my H1B got refused because of this! Nevertheless, to avoid further refusals and total invisibility of the last page in my passport, I decided to go for it.
My first visit to Chennai’s passport office was very discouraging. The line that I saw up to the parking lot was that for ‘enquiries’ they said!!! “O’ goodness!’ thought I. If the line to the enquiry is so big, how big is the actual line going to be?!
It was about 39 degrees centigrade and everybody looked unkind and spent! Only, when I actually spoke to these poor people did I realize they were alive. The final remnants of humanity still relevant in their words of help or pity, one more day and they become total zombies. Most of them seemed to say ‘Get out!’ or ‘Save yourself!’, but they seemed to understand how important it is for everyone to get a passport.
It took about half an hour to reach the staircase where the line was for ‘Tatkal’. You had to dish in extra money here to get your passport in a day or two instead of the usual 45 days! Neat way to make money!
For example, if you want your passport in a day, pay INR 2500; if in 3-7 days pay 2000 INR and so on. The ‘normal’ passport is supposed to be exactly the same, but takes 45 days or even more to reach you!
My wife, after seeing the pace of the line decided it was high time we gave up. The pace behind the line was exponential, while that in front was static. It almost looked like cobwebs where showing up on the people in front! We decided to go to Kochi to get our passport. ‘Definitely, its going to be a lot better there’ thought the two of us.
We reached Kochi the following week. I took a vacation from work and here I was waking up at 4 in the morning to catch a bus at 5 am to reach Kochi by 7! We reached the passport office by about 8.15 am. There were already people, the kind that can fit into a small stadium. Tens of auto-rickshaws poured in farms of people. There were a bunch of make-shift tables with ‘officers’ or helpers who would fill up forms for you or get you to know the ‘process’ which waits inside the premises. My wife suggested that we ask one of these people for help while I ‘catch’ my place in the line. I thought that was a good idea and went inside. As I was about to enter, the policeman on duty asked me if I was the applicant and I said ‘Yes’! He let me in. I lied!!!
The moment I stepped in I was inside a flood of people. It was like I entered a beehive full of bees. The noise and tension was unbearable. It was maddening! It took a while to realize which queue was which. Fortunately, I happened to ask a lady who looked like she came for her daughter’s passport just like me. She said this is the line alright, but I would have to stand facing the other way!! The queue was really like a ‘Q’!
I looked outside the window as I was facing away from the counter. I could see my wife and the gentleman who had agreed to write the application for us. After a while she paid him for his ‘service’ and hurried inside. I was wondering how she would find me in this sea of people. As she came into the hall she looked more perplexed than Saddam Hussain did when he was caught by the U.S military! She looked here and she looked there. I was waving my hand but she still could not see me because I was facing away! Luckily the line I was standing was closest to the door and she finally found me after some speculation and pondering. Am I glad I was there; she would have to send the army or navy to look for me if I was ‘deeper’ and they would have declared me ‘lost at sea’!!!
The passport office had 6 Air conditioners and none of them were turned on. The logic was simple. Office time was from 08.30 to 17.30 and this was just 08.15!!! The government guys sure did save a lot of money!!! I wonder if these guys knew that it was the same people who were now sweating and melting that actually pay for these Air Conditioners and the electricity bill!!!
“The A/Cs were fitted only last week!” said a ‘veteran’.
“How do you know that?!” asked one gentleman with a rather gremlinish grin.
“I have been coming to the passport office for the last two weeks for my daughter’s passport on Tatkal!” said the poor man.
“My God!” thought I. “Looks like I am going to be reduced to the poor house! In spite of paying a ‘princely’ sum as income tax to the Government, I still have to dish out more?! Why does n’t the Government make passports free? Is n’t that where we really need our tax money to go, for services like this?!”
08:30 and finally the ‘saars’ or babus came to their respective seats. After a brief flood of sweat from the poor unfortunate souls, the waters began to recede. The watchman finally switched on the A/Cs! What punctuality!! I believe the passport office is the only Government office besides the Railway Ticketing Counters that opens on time! This is because a sweating and obnoxiously fuming crowd is already there to get these people going!!! In India, people start to queue up at these counters from the wee hours of the morning. And the Government is most punctual in collecting income tax from these poor souls and leaving them at the mercy of the mosquitoes and other blood-friendly elements. Amazing democracy and concern for the common man!
The first applications are received. The most difficult part now is to stop sweating. Though the A/Cs are running, the sheer number of people have made the A/Cs gasping for air! People continue to pour in large numbers. The crowd reminds me of videos of the Salt Satyagraha and the trains during the Partition!!! I often wondered how so many fit in to this building?! The wonders of science and tolerance!
After hours and hours of standing in line and going the ‘Q’ way, we realize we have moved not even a foot! We were facing the other way but now we were facing the counter at the same place!!! I do not know how, but my wife found a seat! The poor souls who were all standing took pity on my wife and daughter and offered them a seat. My daughter went to sleep amongst all this noise. The noise is very much like that of a bee hive and the constant buzz does induce fantastic sleep!
There was another lady along with her family who was sitting beside my daughter and who my wife befriended. This lady was Muslim and was planning to go to Dubai where her husband was working. I noticed that most people were planning to head for the Middle East though there were a lot of potential USAs and UKs. She graciously assured my wife that she will look after our bag and our daughter. She did.
My wife and I played musical chairs amidst all this chaos. Sometimes, I would stand in the queue and sometimes she would. All this while, my daughter was fast asleep!
At about 13.30 or so we agreed to go for lunch. But we could not leave our place! So I woke up my daughter and the two of us went for lunch. My wife gallantly stood in the queue. She was very determined to get the passport. I left her there and promised to bring her an ice-cream. My daughter and I went outside.
The sun was burning the air so bad, you could see it crying. I hired an auto and the auto-driver drove the two of us to the junction were I could find a place to eat. We first chose a Chinese restaurant called ‘Chou-Chou’ or something totally unforgettable like that. We waited for about ten minutes and though there were waiters standing at the counter doing nothing, they never bothered to wait on us. After a few impatient moments and a thousand ‘Why do the waiters not come to us?’ from my daughter, I beckoned a guy who looked like the maitre’d . I asked him if it was self-service or whether they served us. The guy asked me to give my order. I ordered Chicken Fried rice for my daughter and Chicken Noodles for me.
After about half an hour there was no sign of anybody moving.
So we quietly walked out of the restaurant and found a more ‘traditional’ one. The queue there was bigger than that in the passport office! We finally decided to head for an ice-cream shop and had ice-cream. We then headed back with a packed ice-cream for my wife.
So we quietly walked out of the restaurant and found a more ‘traditional’ one. The queue there was bigger than that in the passport office! We finally decided to head for an ice-cream shop and had ice-cream. We then headed back with a packed ice-cream for my wife.
15:30 or so into the queue and we finally reached the counter. It took 7 hours for us to accomplish this!!! We were overjoyed! The clerk looked into the application and after a few moments of grim scrutiny looked up at us with a placid expression.
“Your husband’s passport does not mention that you are his wife (!). You will have to get this information into the husband’s passport.” said the woman.
“What?!” screamed I. “Do we have to make an application for that too?!”
“Yes!”
The thought of standing in the queue again for another 7 hours almost gave me a heart attack!
Luckily, my wife intervened. The diplomatic personality that she is, she got things running. I would have screamed and banged my head at the walls and probably thrown the baby girl who was passed to me by a grandparent to be passed to the parent at the adjacent counter in a fit of rage!
We were told to meet the Passport Officer. Our application was accepted, only we had to get an ‘approval’ signature from the Passport Officer to get our daughter’s passport after my passport had been ‘updated’. The Passport Officer was sitting in a spacious room with the A/C turned to a freezing 16 degrees. He was looking charming in his neatly pressed Van Heusen shirt and Lee trousers. He had a look of disdain when he saw two unkempt people wearing totally bed riddled costumes, sweating and covered with grease and dust! We did look like beggars now! He was shocked when I spoke to him in English!! “What is this country coming to?! Even the beggars speak the Queen's!!!” seemed to be what he was thinking. Nevertheless, he agreed to take up the case after my wife intervened when I almost blew my fuse when this impudently relaxed and impishly smiling gentleman said we will have to make another application to update my passport!
He gave a small note that gave us the ‘permission’ to barge in a queue. The poor souls who were all being minced and mashed did not have energy left to protest. They did have question marks all over their heads but got the idea when we said that we were already in line number 11. Or was it 12?!
I had to dish out 350 rupees to add my wife’s name to my passport. My marriage was definitely a lot cheaper and relaxed than this!! We were told to collect the passports the next day which meant we had to spend the night in Ernakulam, the Queen of the Arabian Sea. And mosquitoes!
My wife, daughter and I packed up everything we had and shoved our way out of the passport office. It felt like we were kayaking against a ferocious river. We shoved here and there and after a significant amount of huffing and puffing, we could finally see the light of day. Hurray!!!
The pleasure of freedom sure is heightened after an experience of arrest. Those kids who keep wondering what ‘Independence Day’ really is should visit the passport office!!! Man! Was it great to be out again!!! The air was fresh with dust and pollution, the sun beat mercilessly at every object, the jetting noise of autos whisking in and out of the office gates. All this felt so refreshingly enjoyable!
Our next task was to find a place to lodge for the night. We enquired with a few passers-by and most looked just as confused as we were! Somebody told us there were no lodges nearby! We walked until we found some shops were we could enquire. We stopped at a juice shop for a drink. The lady at the counter said there was a lodge nearby. Her mature co-worker looked us up and said with a devilish grin “This lodge also has a bar! Do you really want to…?”
My wife looked petrified. Nevertheless, we decided to check it out. Fortunately, the lodge was OK. Moreover, there were images of Christ at the reception which gave my wife and me courage!
“A/C or non-A/C, saar?” asked the lady at the reception.
“Non-A/C.” said I. There was no real use of an A/C room during the winter thought I. How wrong I was. We were shown two rooms, both of which looked equally unappealing. We finally decided to get the one closer to the exit. As we put our things down we noticed very small teenie weenie roaches running on the walls. I decided to run downstairs and buy a ‘Hit’ can. I sure did not want to take these roaches home!
I sprayed the pesticide on the walls. All the little nymphets died. As I was about to remove my shirt my wife screamed out!
“EEEEK! There’s a cockroach here!” shrieked my wife. My wife and daughter both clung to each other screaming.
“Appa! There’s a BIG cockroach under the bed!” screamed my daughter.
I sprayed the pesticide lavishly under the bed and in its corners. In a minute or two we saw about fifty fully grown roaches popping up from under the bed!!! One roach was so fast he blindly ran for his life, banging everything in his way until somehow he ran out under the door! I ran after him outside and he ran under the next door into the next room!!!
I went downstairs and asked the receptionist to give us an A/C room. She graciously handed me the key for the A/C room with an impish gleam in her eyes. This sure looked like a great way to do business!
We moved to our A/C room and boy, was it super! There were no roaches, the room was clean, the A/C running with a working remote and the bed was large and neat. I looked under all the mattresses and the bed for roaches. What a stark difference it was!!! This room also had a T.V!!! My daughter and I fought over for Cartoon Network and Star Movies/HBO while my wife went in for a bath. We freshened up and went to sleep.
We woke up about 8.30 in the evening and went out for dinner. We finally came to a hotel and had our dinner. We walked back to our room and went to sleep again. We had a job to do in the morning!!!
We woke up at 4.30 am!!! My wife had suggested we go this early. We wanted to be the first. We were going to be disappointed! We walked to the Passport Office as very few auto-drivers work at this time. When we reached the Passport office there were seven people standing at the gate!!!
My wife asked the people standing there if there was a queue. “Ha ha!” laughed most of the men standing there. “Usually there is a queue, but when the Security opens the gate we barge in!!!” My wife started a lecture on discipline and the benefits of queuing. Surprisingly, everybody agreed to stand in queue!!!
We started talking with the people who had come. Most of them came from places remote to Kerala. They too woke up at odd hours and traveled great distances to come here. A lady from as near as Trissur said she woke up at 3 am and caught a bus to Ernakulam. She had been coming to the passport office for the last two days.
Within minutes the queue became so long it started blocking the road! The most interesting thing was that the Security Guard on duty at the Passport Office was still sleeping!!! He was inside his ‘room’ which is just inside the gate. The gate was locked and there was no light in his room until about 6:30 am. At 6:00 am we heard the classic Mr. Bean Alarm go on. “Brrrrriiiiiiiiiing!”….click! Then about half an hour later the light in the room goes on and a lazy figure creeps out of the room. He disappears somewhere only to return as a fully dressed Security Officer yawning away an hour later. By this time people had queued up till the main road!
Some folks were joking they will stand in queue now and then barge in as usual. Somehow some guys (who had heard my wife and agreed to stand in queue earlier) heard this and they loudly protested. “We will not allow such behaviour! Everybody must stand in line!”. ‘My, what discipline!’ Thought I.
We also had made a make-shift list which registered the names of people. One kind gentleman had agreed to take the names of people who were in line. We were all standing in line and the outer gates would be opened by about 07:30. There was a small wave of people as the gates were opened. But this was just till the inner gate. Fortunately, there was kind of a roll call and so we did not loose our place! Thanks to my wife’s idea! She should run for president!!!
The inner gates were opened at 08:10 or so. All of us agreed to send people in one-by-one according to the ‘register’! This was perhaps the first time in history that this was happening at the Kochi Passport Office! And it was peaceful! One by one we went in. My wife and daughter stayed out as I walked in.
Surprisingly, there was now the need of a new order. We walked in one-by-one, but now we had to pick our counters! Fortunately, mine was that for ‘updates’ and not too many were there. I was the second in line. The gentleman in front was a mason who was already working in Dubai. He was really a kind gentleman and offered me his makeshift newspaper sheet to sit on. We waited this way on the floor until the babus came in until about 08:30.
With all the people coming in daily, this was the day I realized each person brings in about a kilo of dust and dirt through their shoes and sandals. I preferred to sit on the floor as all the dust and dirt took a while to settle down and my nose was below all the dust and confusion which hovered about mid air! I also realized nobody actually dusted this place!
Just about this time a couple of fat surly looking ladies came in and started dusting away! They stirred up all the dust in the room until the passport office looked like a scene from the Twilight Zone or something!
The babus started accepting the applications and entertained requests. I gave my chit and I was shocked when I got back my passport just with a scribbling and seal:
Observation: “Aishwarya Rai added as spouse” (name changed to protect identity)
Just to add this they took a whole day?! And 350 bucks?!! The second one is a bite on the groin! I can fathom the number of people that show up here. About 2500 people visit this place daily. I do not assume there is such a thing as a ‘peak’ season and so I assume this is the case throughout the year.
And how much square feet of space do we have here? Roughly 2000 square feet! Now THAT deserves a Nobel for space management! How in blazes could people tolerate this kind of torture? Lack of space, comfort, so much confusion and chaos. How I see it is they just weigh the things off. I spent two days or two weeks in hell, the rest of my life I could be in Iraq or Afghanistan! At least I get to breathe there – before I get blown away to kingdom come!!!
I was told that my daughter’s passport would be ready by afternoon and that as a routine I would have to wait to hear a roll call. Names were being called here and names were being called there. There was no sign of my daughter’s name.
The crowd began to finally recede like a bad infection after a strong dose of anti-biotics. We waited patiently for our daughter’s name to be called out. All this while, all of us were exhausted to the core. Finally, it looked like we would never get our passport. Looking up into the heavens through the roof we begged for mercy just as all the others who were there! For once the passport office did look like a Mecca or a Haridwaar with all of us staring up into the heavens! We were one of the last to be called that day! We finally got our daughter’s passport!!!
There it was! Shiny and new, with her photo and thumb print, the passport looked amazingly cool! My wife and I took turns to check for errors. We sincerely hoped with all our might that there were no mistakes! We could not stand the thought of making another application for the correction and lose another 350 bucks and our hope of a sane life!
Now the only thought that sends shivers down my spine is that my passport expires in another year or two!!! Can we have passports issued for a life please?!! Another visit to the passport office and there won’t be too much of life left in me!
