8) On His Consul’s Secret Services – I

Foreign Visas

If you’ve ever had to apply for a visa, there are high odds that you will get at least 60% of this post. If not, what country are you from, and how can I emigrate there?

As an Indian, I have the privilege of taking sojourns; entire days off work to hold onto a machine-barfed number, as though it were a life raft in the bureaucratic deluge of the several fine country consulates I’ve visited. In generally off-white spaces, with visa officials sitting judiciously behind Hannibal Lecter-type sheetglass, I mentally prepare jumping through all the shiny bureaucratic hoops that will come with my five minutes of being questioned like a refugee wishing to attempt a border crossing.

‘Do you have all your papers?’
‘Yes master.’
‘I see you don’t have your travel insurance. Sorry. No exceptions. Come back tomorrow.’

And like that, all that waking up early in the morning, getting preened and prepared, and standing in line is for nothing. I throw my used life raft away and drown in my own vitriol and stupidity on the way out. Tomorrow I shall have the privilege once more of holding more machine-barf and standing in the breadline, waiting my turn at the travel lottery. Tomorrow I must try better to appease the master, with the right papers.

On other visits, to other sterile offices, I am treated to wall posters of the Swiss Alps, cheery Beefeaters, the Eiffel phallus, the Trevi Fountain and the Statue of American Liberty - each a place I am just dying to spend my painfully-converted cash in, feeling rotten for not earning in dollars in the land of plenty and random incarceration. For the lucky ones amongst us, these posters are just insipid reproductions of the real thing; vistas we shall capture badly on our digicams for our 547 friends on farcebook to ‘like’. Unfortunately, for many, these posters are just tantalising and cruel views of places they might never visit. Spectacularly, for the privilege of finding out whether we might be given a visa or no, we’re coldly informed on the application forms that we won’t be refunded the administrative cost of being told ‘no’ – which sounds suspiciously like some other glass-clad places in London’s west end I’m told to steer clear of.

The trick is in the paperwork though. The game is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt with reams of paper, that you're not likely to go absconding in the country you’re feeling poor in. Consular officials are petrified that a cornershop owner is waiting for you at the other end, A-Team style, gunning his Ford Transit, swing doors at the ready to throw you headfirst into the illegal immigrant work machine, with a free oral guide on the way on ‘How to Gain Quickie Citizenship and Screw the Taxpayer’. Most of the time though, the paper-pushers are right to be so afraid.

I’m ashamed to say it, but one of the quickest ways to learn how to get the most out of any country’s benefit system is to take a short trip to community areas where immigrants have successfully taken over entire neighbourhoods (read - integrated into their host society) and made them their own. Try asking around, what benefits the government has on offer and you’re likely to get a free and comprehensive consultation based on your age, financial status, and job situation – with all the ‘Make sure you don’t do this and don’t declare that...’ info that a bonafide citizen of the country probably couldn’t give you. It's probably the most efficient my countrymen have ever been at anything. I blame that whole aspirational, vicious-cycle OIYBY phenomenon (Only In Your Back Yard). Oh, you haven’t heard of it? Pity. Take a number and go to the back of the queue.

Back at the foreign consular office, I am to be presented in smart clothes, shaved and shorn, with a shower of cologne and perhaps some of my wife’s jewellery. Consular offices tacitly encourage vulgar displays of consumption (that whole ‘I’m rich, I don’t need your benefits’ trick). Then I get to strip financially (on paper) for the master sitting officiously behind the glass wall. Again, not so different to those Soho bars I’m told to steer clear of - the difference being that here, I pay for the privilege of baring all, even if ultimately I get a 'no'.

And then comes all the paper (why hasn’t someone cottoned on to electronic documenting for consulates? Google’s missing a trick here). Bank account statements for the last however many months are surrendered; a guarantee from my company that I shall return (so they know whom to cuff when I get into that Ford Transit); an invitation from the 'friend' or hotel who will harbour me during my stay and proof of mandatory travel insurance, just so the host taxpayers aren’t faced with paying my medical bills should I decide to run rambunctiously down a main street, clad in saffron and chanting praises to Lord Rama and Krishna.

What most countries don’t realise however, is that suggesting medical insurance for Indians is like recommending energy bars to hyperactive five-year olds. Indians by default are wired with some of the most formidable immunity in the world. When the plague came to India, it spread a little and then just sort of vanished – possibly in the Ganga, committing bacterial harakiri and becoming one with the flowing artery of disease that is the Holy mother river. Swine flu? We laughed in the face of swine flu. Swine flu hit India like bad coke hits a party – everyone’s passing it on, but nothing's happening. Indians don’t need medical insurance – we’re far too fatalistic for all that common sense and extra paper. Though tell an Indian consul official about this need for an extra sheet of paper, and you might be onto a Padmashree. Till next time...