Visa Madness continues

Today was the day when I went back to the consulate to get my visa. Whatever entropic fog was hanging over me last week when I went to apply was still hanging over me today, and my surreal adventures continued.

It started innocently enough. I got on the subway and had a nice ride, I walked down the lovely Toronto day to the consulate. I took 7 numbers from the guy at the door and discarded them down to the lowest. I sat for two hours in the sweltering heat and the humidity so thick that at one point the air started to condense into dew on my canvas backpack. All was right with the world, because all was going according to plan. This is what it is to get an Indian visa, and I was reassured because it meant the world was in order and everything would go through without a problem, I would be able to go to India next week (7 days, 2 hours as of this moment).

But no, life doesn't ever actually work that way. I don't know where I get this idea that the world is a rational, orderly place. It isn't. It is a bizarre series of random incidents strung together by a mad and irrational demiurge whose job is to constantly remind me that nothing is more real than the surreal.

My number comes up on the board, I go to the window without even having to shove my way through anyone to get there. The lady behind the counter takes my receipt, looks at it, looks at her computer screen, purses her lips and looks up at me with narrow eyes. "You" she says, with her finger pointing in the imperious gesture of a Mughal begum speaking to the barbarian whose people were beating each other to death with clubs while her people were building the grandest palaces that the world has ever seen, "you must go wait over there."

The "there" that she is pointing to is a waiting area guarded by two Sikh guards next to an ominous sign written in blood red Hindi letters. I don't know enough Hindi to actually read the sign, but I know just enough to start to mouth out the sounds of it as I cross the floor with my bladder in my left foot. I just know, at this point, that something has gone wrong with my job as a rodeo clown and now they won't let me into the country.

So I sit and twitch for about fifteen minutes when the most obviously rajput man I've ever seen (outside of a picture) comes out of an unmarked mystery door in the back and walks straight over to me. He's got that hard, angular face that speaks of desert warriors who die before dishonor and he's wearing a thousand dollar silk suit that makes everyone else in the room look like they were dressed by monkeys. And not good Hanuman monkeys, but crazy fashion-challenged monkeys that Stacey and Clinton of TLC's "What Not to Wear," would beat with sticks.

Said man walks right up to me, asks if I am "Mr. Robins, the author" and then shakes my hand hard. He then says the following to me, as close as I can recall:

"We wanted to apologize to you for the confusion the other day. The government of India is always happy to have authors visit our country. You are a welcome guest, and we hope that your travels in our nation inspire you to write about us. Here is your passport and visa, and I hope you have a blessed trip and enjoy your stay."

With that he gives me my passport, complete with visa, shakes my hand again, and goes back through the mystery door and out of my life forever. I feel the poorer for his absence. He was just that kind of guy.

So, on the way out, I check my visa and everything seems to be in order. Then I notice my friend from the last trip up, who has just gotten her visa and her daughters visa as well. She looks at mine and lets me look at hers, and she points to a line and says, "I've never seen this before." There, where she is pointing, is a series of hindi letters in a line marked "special permissions." I ask a Canadian who is leaving the office with us if I can see his, and he doesn't have the mark either.

Mo and her mom think that the mark means I'm special, and that because I'm a writer they don't want me to have more hassles.

I think it means "strip search this man at every possible opportunity."

We'll see in 1 week, 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Visa Madness

Early this morning I rose from my too short sleep to schlep my way downtown. This is a daily grind for most people, and I felt blessed in my foggy, grumpy state that it isn't something I have to do. Being a writer certainly has its downsides, which I will get into shortly, but the ability to set your own hours makes up for almost all of them. So despite the humid haze of hot still air and smog that was hanging thick over Yonge Street, I was mostly happy.

My joy was only added to by the fact that I was on my way to get my tourist Visa for India. I had a bag full of all the forms for me and Mo, and she was my grumpy morning traveling companion as we wandered down the listless street and into the surprisingly quiet subway. We got to the Indian Consulate General in good time and in good spirits.

Neither of these things would last.

It started with the guy at the desk near the door, a small man with a wicked mustache who looked much like the villain in a Bollywood picture I watched last week. He spoke perhaps 5 words of English, and dealt with it by speaking to every in very, very slow Hindi -- the way Americans speak to those who don't speak English and assume that if they talk slow enough in the language natural to mankind, the unenlightened barbarians will be able to recall their dim ancestral memories of a time when they too spoke the language of the Lord Jesus Christ and understand the communication. He also would not speak with you unless he was seated in his chair and his chair was behind his desk. This was a problem, you see, as he didn't have any of the forms he needed to have, and so would get up and run around the office trying to find them. And the whole time he would not respond to anything you said or did, because until he was behind the desk and in the chair, the world did not exist. Not even his fellow consulate officials were immune to this, and once he ran across the room, leaped into his chair, and then shouted an urgent message across the room to a woman who had asked him a question all the way back when he was standing next to her.

As soon as we got in the door the first thing he made us do was take a number. Only then did he ask us what we were there for, and upon finding out (laboriously) that we were not Indian Nationals (because I look so like a Tamil) he made us take a different number. We then went to wait in line, and realized that the numbers we'd been given (E57 and E58) were going to be some time away, as the sign was currently on B02. So we settled in for a long wait, and several hundred people settled in around us as well.

You may recall that I said it was hot and humid this morning. There was also no air conditioning in the room, and several hundred grumpy people waiting in a line. Within a half hour the temperature was over 100 degrees, and the humidity was that of a swamp in the still time of year when the water turns fetid. So we would stay for the next 3 hours.

In the midst of our wait, punctuated by Mo and I taking turns reading the second book of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, I realized I had the wrong forms. So I went up front to get the right ones, only to be given another number, go through the drill of only being spoken to when Mr. Official is sitting, given another number, and finally getting the forms. I discarded all my unneeded numbers, and wondered if that would cause a problem.

Oh how foolish I was. The folks at the desk knew that there were too many numbers being given out, and they had a remarkable way of dealing with it. They would call for 4 to 6 numbers at once, despite their only being one window open. Sometimes no one would go up, and the officials would take a break, other times 20 people would go up all at once and have a tussle over who got served. Never was I so glad that I'm well over 6 feet and 250lbs, that I have a killer 1000 yard stare, and that I used to play highschool football.

After body-checking my way to the head of the line, I then got a crash course in culture shock. You see, it seems that the Indian Consulate doesn't think that being a writer is a job. It is more in the nature of being a birthday clown. When the woman looked at my form she asked what I did, when "writer" was clear as day on the sheet. I explained that I wrote books. She then asked me if I worked with children, or did shows. I said no, I write books. She then went into the back room and got her supervisor, who came out and asked me what I did. I told him I was a writer. So he gave me a blank sheet of paper and told me to write down the names of some things I had written. Luckily I've written books enough that I could fill out most of the sheet with things that were obviously books. At this point the boss accepted that I wrote things, though he still asked me twice if I had another job, and if I worked with parties.

While this was going on Mo was being given her own run-around. The forms she had submitted, which had been given to her by work from the Indian government directly, were not good enough for them. So they had her get new forms and fill them all out from scratch. These forms, for those interested, were exactly the same as the forms that she'd brought in. Then she filled them out wrong, and by "wrong" I mean filled them in exactly by the numbers. You are not, as it turns out, supposed to actually put all the information the forms ask for in the places where it asks for it. So Mo had to fill out the forms a third time, and this time do it right, and by right I mean wrong in the correct way.

Just as my forms were being accepted the lady next to me, whom had gotten to the front of the line in one of the moments when only her number had been called, realized she didn't have change. Of course the Consulate had no change either. So I gave her the four dollars she needed and promptly made a friend for life. She was from Rajastan originally and was taking her daughter home to meet the extended family. She told me that I should get used to "all of this" with a sweep of her hand across the sweltering room and the current tussel to get to the front of the line because "it will only be more crowded and hotter when you get there."

While our new friend went to get change, despite me telling her a dozen times she didn't need to pay me back, we waited for another 3 hours for Mo's Visa. As she's going on business, she gets same day service. As I'm a rodeo clown, I have to wait a week. My friend brought me change, and a bottle of water, for which I was ready to do puja. I played peek-a-boo with a cute little Sikh girl until her mother decided I was evil and dragged her to hide behind two Hell's Angels (they were going to Agra, wanting to see the Taj Mahal) who were apparently less frightening than I.

When we finally get up to the front to get Mo's Visa, they do not have it. In three hours they had managed to lose her passport. It took them 30 minutes to find it. Then they lost her pictures, and took another 30 minutes to find them. I went looking for a bathroom and on the way back was given 3 new numbers to wait in line with. At this point I must confess I lost a bit of patience, and proceded to stand at the counter and ask the lady there every 2 minutes and 30 seconds if they had my wife's visa done yet. I do not know if it is a national specialty, but the look of pure vexed hatred she gave me by the fifth time I asked was enough to kill all of my sperm in a single second. But finally my annoying persistence paid off, and visa in hand Mo and I headed for home.

But on the way she broke her two temporary crowns, both fell out of her mouth and onto the street. A stray dog paused to sniff them while Mo cursed and went running for a phone. So she is now having emergency dental surgery done, and I am at home in my lovely air conditioning.

Now I have to go, I have a party to write for.