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Published: July 26th 2012
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I'm posting this six days late, but below is my experience registering with the Foreign Regional Registration Office:
Good day comrades!
I am sitting in a cafe, "The French Loaf" in Indiranagar as I write this. I've just ordered myself a coffee and a donut (quiet, gays!). No one here seems to know what a black coffee is, and no matter what you order, it's a cappuccino. Le sigh.
I arrived at the FRRO this morning at 8:35; twenty minutes late. My assistants (yes, plural) from ISO were already waiting for me. They saved me a spot in line and had all of my documents completed. My only job, as explained by Lohith, was to stand in line and get my token. After that, I was to promptly report back to him for further instruction. To my surprise, the office opened five minutes early and the crowd of foreigners waiting with me piled into the FRRO in an orderly fashion. The day was off to a smooth start.
I was seventeenth in line, making me token 17. After I retrieved my token, Lohith told me that I was then to sit on the ground floor until they called me. At such time, I was to report to the reception desk. So, when they called token 1-7, I dutifully reported to the reception desk. They checked my passport, signed in a few places, and sent me upstairs to the Scrutiny Desk. Once upstairs, the masses were split by visa type: students, researched, etc. in one "line", and those on an employment visa in another "line". Now, before you get all excited and quietly accuse me of misusing quotes here, let me assure you that they are 100%!w(MISSING)arranted; for, once upstairs, all semblance of process disappeared: the employees refused to speak to the helpless foreigners, and all of us knew that we were now in the Wild Wild West. But, I must admit, to our credit, we followed what we believed to be the law of the land; we compared tokens, claimed a corner of the room, and set ourselves up in order. Several numbers were missing in the middle (they were in the student visa line), but we managed to get ourselves in an orderly, seated line. I have no idea how many people were in front of me, but I know it was less than sixteen. Things weren't all
that bad (yet).
For no less than an hour, I sat, happily, playing sudoku, reading Rachel Maddow, and playing solitaire. Once it was my turn, a lady and a gentleman, in succession, shamelessly hopped in front of me and handed in their papers. I did not see tokens in their hands, and so I looked to my clueless friends in line with me who, in response to my bewildered look, shrugged their shoulders. Those doing the scrutinizing behind their desks didn't think anything of the line cutters, so I went back to my games. After the cutters were finished, it was my turn. My scrutinizer didn't say a word to me, which I assumed was a good thing. After fifteen minutes of watching him flip through my papers and sign things, I was finished! Time to go home, right?
Nope! Time to go to the authenticator. So I queued up behind a line of one (score!) and was authenticated in about five minutes. Where to now? The signature line, of course! I was directed by my pearl of an authenticator to the "cabin", about ten yards to my left. Once in the cabin, my documents were signed by the fourth person... but this time, with a fancy blue pen. Certainly this was the last step! Four reviewers
and a signature with a fancy blue pen. What else could there be?
Some may call it judgement. Some may call it torture. I haven't quite found the word for it, but let's just say I think I have a pretty good idea of how Jesus felt for those 40 days in the desert. It was time for Counter 4.
What could I possibly be talking about? What could have been that bad? Well, let me start by saying that the woman staffing Counter 4 would have been well suited for the Third Reich. She was hands down the most sadistic person I have encountered during my time here (even more so than that dumb fuck rickshaw rickshaw driver who dropped me in the middle of nowhere yesterday ). As I sat in the chair, facing her, I was ignored for twenty minutes; imagine facing your judge and they could not even bother to acknowledge that you were a fellow Homosapien. No one else existed in the world except for the two of us, but it was her world. I sat there, sweaty browed, anxiously waiting for either a directive or the end of days. To my relief, I received a directive. Granted, it was in the form of a grunt that was in no discernible language and an outstretched hand that I assumed meant she was ready for my paperwork. Since she could not be bothered to lean forward over her bloated belly to accept my paperwork, I had to maneuver through the 12"x12" square in the glass to deliver my papers right to her hands (picture Princess Leia feeding Jabba). We repeated our dance once more as she petitioned, again in her own cute way, for my passport. Sadly, after chatting with her friends in what I can only assume was Kannada and without even hinting at providing any sort of service, she handed me back my passport and our adventure together thus ended. She gave me the ol' stamp of approval, and I was released.... for 2.5 hours while they "processed" my documents (Again, quotes warranted. I'm pretty sure this was another one of their Gestapo tactics). Which brings us back to the coffee shop, where I sit, eating this God-awful donut and typing on my Kindle Fire. In a perfect world, I'd have been lost in this entry and 2.5 hours would have fit in the last fifteen I spent writing this. But, alas, this world is far from perfect.
So, I will leave you with a closing thought: I would rather spend my next TEN birthdays at the DMV than ever have to step foot into an FRRO again. Yes, it's that bad.
Cheers folks,
TR
Appending note: today wasn't
all bad; my visit to the FRRO gave me license to dress casually and consequently show up to the office looking like Richard Engel. It doesn't even the score, but it is a small victory, and I will take what I can get.
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