Closer to Bangalore

It’s been a very hectic two days, folks. I got on the train at London Bridge destined for Gatwick Airport and the Atlas Health Clinic. It’s fiendish to find (go behind the Costa Coffee at the International Arrivals area, down a flight of stairs unmarked except for “Emergency Exit”, then walk along the pathway until you see the brown building…) and I entered noon into my PDA rather than 11 am. Thus, when I arrived, I was 3/4 hour late. Luckily for me, they took me anyway (after profuse apologies), and I got vaccinated (three shots, GBP 100) and malaria pills (24 pills, GBP 84), and got back on the train home. This was Wednesday, the day I normally would be at the consulting job. I thought I didn’t have any meetings scheduled for that day.

Thursday I went to the Indian High Commission to get my visa. I arrived around 7am, and there were two ahead of me. An Indian older gentleman seemed to be “in charge”, and he assigned us numbers, and then shepherded us into line at around 7:30. I brought John Allen’s biography of Benedict XVI (originally published as a bio of Cardinal Ratzinger, hurriedly updated with one chapter and a new picture on the cover) to read, and got through quite a bit before the place formally opened at 8:30. By that time the line consisted of about 70 or 80 people snaking around India Place (which is what the plaza next to India House is known as).

?When the window handing out queue tix finally opened, I was number 2 rather than number 3, as the first-in-line person turned out to have an Indian passport, and they go to a different line, to a different window, and that window doesn’t open until 9:30.

We scrambled through the door, through a metal detector (which beeped slightly when I went through but I was told not to worry; I presume that people with large amounts of metal in them or on them might make a louder noise), and up to the hall. A bank of metal chairs faced the clerks’ windows. As number 2, I got right up to a window and got my application accepted. I got a 6-month multiple entry visa, GBP 30 please. I was told that I could return at lunch to pick up my passport from Window #1.

So I went into work, and got called over by one manager, “Where were you yesterday? We waited for 1/2 hour for you.” Oh dear. I forgot to enter one meeting into my PDA, and thus ended up missing it. I had emailed the office admin and my company supervisor to explain that I was changing days, but neither of them happened to be in so the information didn’t get out. Luckily Jeff likes me, so we rescheduled after very profuse apoogies.

Back to India House at 11:30. I again scrambled up the stairs, through the faintly-squealing metal detector, to find a gaggle of people in front of Window #1. They crowded in, right in front of the little slot through which (we hoped) passports would soon be slithered. There was no room for someone in back to step forward and claim a passport. No clerk was visible at the window. Ten minutes later the clerk emerged with a handful of passports. He started calling out numbers beginning with D (as in D85). Those at the back had to hand their receipts to someone right in front of the window, and had their receipt and passport handed back the same way. Those at the window seemed nailed to the floor. My heart sank. Obviously, he’d called out “Number 2!” many hours ago, and I was at work rather than waiting for my visa. One by one those who were nailed to the floor in front of the window got their passports and left. After twenty minutes of waiting, and a further reinforcement of passports from another clerk, he finally ran out and my turn came, and I got my passport back. There went my lunch hour. I now know what being in the middle of a human feeding frenzy feels like.

I recounted my experience back at the office, and was told that my life from June 21 to July 1 will be like that…at the mercy of faceless and often-absent clerks and functionaries in the Indian Subcontinent.

I just hope I can avoid the water and the mosquitoes.

Oh, and that I can swot up the course fast enough to ensure that all my students pass the exam and I then get more gigs training. Perhaps some of them might even be here, where you can drink the tap water and mosquitoes are (at present) only a slight annoyance, not a deadly danger.

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