Just another reason I love India

So yesterday was a rather stultifying day of red tape; I spent 10 consecutive hours at the Ministry of Home Affairs, primarily being 1) told to wait, 2) laughed at, or 3) asked why I didn't want to be a housewife. But let's put that aside for awhile. Bitterness is so passe.

The new black is belligerence, which I would like to illustrate with a short conversation shouted between a visa seeker and a visa officer.

Officer: "Why are you here again?"
Seeker, a middle-aged balding man, his rumpled purple Oxford shirt unbuttoned to reveal a delightful mass of gray chest hair: "I am needing visa! I am from Italy!"
Officer: "But you haven't followed any of the visa protocol!"
Seeker: "I have seen India! I have seen enough of India! No more!"
Officer: "One by one, you have violated the rules of the visa protocol! There is visa protocol!"
Seeker: "I WILL WAGE WAR ON INDIA AND CHINA!"
Officer: "We will put you in jail! You will be behind bars!"
Seeker: "I don't want JAIL, I want a visa! I hate your country! War!"

What surprised me most, perhaps, was that rather than being trucked off to Tihar, this individual was given what he wanted. Five hours before they addressed my concerns. I think the best thing for me to do is to stop trying to make sense of this utterly chaotic, irrational place.

Another day, another tangle with bureaucracy

Today, some cause for celebration: My employment visa has been extended. The babus have truly smiled upon me on this most glorious of Tuesdays!

My experience at the FRRO was BY FAR the least unpleasant it has ever been; though it did last about three-and-a-half hours, I somehow managed to wrangle a fixer from my company, who made the process much less bewildering than before. She was not just any fixer, but a fixer who specializes in relocation, a fixer who routinely spends time at the FRRO and knows how to handle every qualm brought up by the clerks, a fixer who speaks English and is utterly unflappable and balks when the bureaucrats make a lovely French (?) woman in delightful striped pants cry. I'm working up a verse in the fixer's honor, provisionally entitled "An Ode to Competence." (Aside: It's quite sad, as the beloved hubby pointed out, that competence is such a breath of fresh air to me these days.)

With a capable, strong woman facilitating the process, I got to spend some time people watching. If you're a people watcher, the FRRO is, indeed, a prime location. My favorite sighting today was a group of three women and three children, all under the age of five or so. The children were dressed in identical -- and likely handmade -- outfits of knitted, nubbly red yarn, intricately designed stitches and black stripes and fringe, yes, even fringe; the women waited stoically for their numbers to be called as the kids squirmed, their cheeks approaching the Valentine's massacre color of the sweaters and bloomers they were all trying desperately to shuck off.

Adorable, and I only hope their visa/immigration/extension-related business went as well as mine did.