FRRO spa day

We are lucky. We spend very little time in our lives dealing with soul-crushing absurdist beaurocratic minutiae. We also don't spend time doing things like, say, waiting in a crush of thousands to wait for handouts of UN-distributed bags of rice. We haven't had to come to a new country as refugees with nothing but the clothes on our backs, make new names for ourselves, and rebuild our lives from the ground up. Well, ok, Phet had to do that. But it was, like, a really long time ago. For the most part, we live a pretty sweet life.

But once, every year, we are faced with a dreaded trip to the FRRO office.

[A short-ish sidenote here, we also regularly enjoy the thrill of applying for a new Indian visa before we get to go to the FRRO office. This year we flew with the kids to Ottawa to get our visas done two days after Phet had gotten in from Delhi. We would've, of course, preferred to have stayed and relaxed in Toronto, but we chose to go to Ottawa. Hm, why? Well, there was that first time we applied for visas. Went to the annonymous building at Sherbourne and Yonge, had to take a weeks-old Seung Yi and a none-too-happy Ji Hong along with us, had to wait endlessly, only to be told that - among other things - they weren't issuing visas for teachers anymore. I was pretty worried about that. We decided to try our luck anyways and left the passports there, but then two weeks later once we were already up in the countryside some random employee left a message for us in Toronto that one of our passports didn't have a long enough validity and therefore they were returning ALL the passports to us. Which left us in the unenviable position of having to race back to Toronto, race to Ottawa where we figured we could get the visas done faster, and then hope for the best that our jobs and new lives would be ok and not totally down the tubes. When we went to Ottawa that time, the embassy was still accepting applications. They had a neat little office, friendly and helpful employees, and a one-week turn-around time for most visas. (This, compared to the Toronto office's posted schedule of 4 to 7 weeks!). They even Fed Exed our passports back to us so that we didn't have to pick them up. So you can see why we like Ottawa. Oh, and they DO issue teacher's visas. So there.

This summer, I was really anxious about getting the new visas and we decided to go to Ottawa again. Intriguingly, the embassy has now - get this - outsourced their visa application operations. So, we went to a really truly annonymous building on Bank street across from the Shwarma King and found the correct office just down the hall from a very retro dentist's office. (Not cool, tongue-in-cheek - ha - retro, more like haven't-redecorated-since-1962-retro). We went in. There were two other applicants waiting. We took a number. We looked around and checked out the help desk and - double get this - all of the employees were French African Canadians. Like, ALL the employees. Even the security guard. We wondered how things went with all the Hindi, Urdu, and Tamil speaking applicants... Still and all, they were pretty helpful, sent in our applications, and we got our visas within a week once again. Three cheers for Ottawa. And now, back to FRRO...]

The Foreign Residents Registry Office is located somewhere near the Hyatt hotel in Delhi. It's got a scrubbly and large parking lot, no snack vendors (there are a few drink sellers located outside the office property, though, but they're pretty sketchy), a few beggars, and lots of traffic too-ing and fro-ing. When you want to get into the office, you have to line up outside. We always seem to luck into having to do this during the summer season. It seems to help to go early. Everyone lines up about an hour before the office opens. Truly, all manner of people end up mulling and waiting alongside you. There are Afghan grannies, Nepali shopgirls, African embassy types, Italian ne'er-do-wells, British NGOers, Pakistani dudes, passels of kids of all shape, age, and volume-level, and of course plenty of unhappy babies. I had heard from my colleagues that things were going pretty well at the office lately. Some mentioned a short hour-long wait, others whispered unheard of times like TEN MINUTES. I therefore made the unbelievable error of not bringing any food with me to get through the day's excitement. Very unwise.

We started off standing in the outside line. You have to line up, they look at your ID card, and you sign yourself in in a lined-paper lab notebook type thing with the security guard. Then, you enter line hell. Actually, we enter waiting hell and Phet's assistant from the office enters line hell. In line hell, every applicant has to go over all their documents with ONE GUY. So, there's a line up of about 60 odd people, which trickles like sand through a very, very tight hourglass past this guy's desk. We left the house at 9 am, we left Phet's office at 9:35 am, we got to FRRO at about 9:50 am, we were in line hell by 10:00 am, and it was 12:15 before we got to the front of line hell. You have to visualize this scene, though, to really get the bigger picture. Ok, so 60+ people in a single file line-up entering a rectangular room with a very, very low ceiling. The paper guy's desk is in the middle of the rectangle. The "Afghan Line up" is off to the right. (And if the normal line is line hell, then their line is some deeper, ever-more-torturous seventh circle of specifically Afghani-Indian hell. If that's possible). The center of the room is filled with rows of chairs with suspect murky plaid upholstery. Ranging around the walls of the room are the various numbered desks that one must pass through (though not in numberic order of course) in one's quest for the correct paperwork - only accessible, naturally, after having gotten the correct approval from desk guy first. Now, mind you, many of the numbered desks have moments of not-so-business. After all, line hell holds everyone up for agonizing hours because ONLY. ONE. GUY. IS. THERE.

We got through desk guy at 12:15 and Phet's helper made his way over to, let's say, desk 3. At desk 3, he waited supplicantly until he was able to pass our documents over to the official residing behind the desk. After several fraught exchanges, it became clear that we were - for the second time in our history of going to FRRO, if you can believe it - not going to get through even the first of the desks. Apparently, there were two problems: 1. we didn't have the original residency papers that we ought to have kept in our passports (and which, ok, we did know were missing, but I thought we could just tell them that they were stolen and carry on with things since we had an exact photocopy of the papers) and 2. our lease was not printed on the correct type of paper. We were therefore ejected from the desk and told not to return until we had fixed these problems.

I was not happy. I hadn't eaten since 6:30, I had been expecting to get back to school in time for my second class, and I was really grumpy because all my colleagues had been getting whisked through in no time flat. I think that in their case, the paperwork is always perfect before they go, and then the helpers wait in line hell and only call them when they are at the paper guy's desk, and then they flit in through the desks and leave quickly. That, or some palms are getting very worthwhile-y greased. The end result of me being grumpy and Phet having had to deal with beaurocratic absurdity was we got quietly mad at each other and didn't talk till the end of the day. The good news was that we didn't beat our children in public after our rejection from desk 3.

John dropped the kids and I back at home for some much-needed sustenance and Phet and his helper raced over to the local police station to get our papers signed and checked and inspected by the correct officials. He had to tell them we'd had our papers stolen the previous day. The policemen - smartly - were curious, then, why our photocopies were so out of date, but Phet somehow managed to get them to sign nonetheless. Then, John came back to get us, we had a quick stop at the office for some new photocopies, and we rushed back to FRRO. The FRRO office, of course, closes at 3:00 and will not admit any new applicants after that time. We hustled through the doors at 2:52 and jostled our way into the eyeline of the desk 3 officer. Phet's helper had to wait there for, oh, another 20 minutes while the desk officer took his tea. AT HIS DESK. Right in front of all the applicants. Sipping his tea. Not looking at any papers. Not adjourning to, say, a TEA ROOM or the OUTDOORS. Just...sitting...at his desk. After tea time he deigned to assist people again, and finally after much flurrying and fussing our papers were accepted. I whiled away the time letting Ji put my fingers in knots and watching all the crazy other people in the office. The one group that really caught my attention was an American family. The Dad was in line hell and the mom had four kids with her. She was dressed in a sari and all the kids were dressed in Indian-style clothes. She had a 6 year old boy, a 4 year old girl, a 2 year old girl, and a month old baby in her arms. She was chatting with a British mom nearby and she explained that the whole family was staying at an ashram in Delhi, as they do for several months as often as possible, and that her 7 year old and 8 year old were left back at the ashram to take care of themselves. Must note here that her kids were without doubt the best behaved American kids I've met in a horrible office. Ever. Though they were a little rash-y around the elbows.

After desk 3, our helper moved on to desk 2, and then after desk 2 he was finally allowed to go to the cashier's desk. I'd seen at least five people get turned away from the cash desk for not having correct change. Amazing, a cash desk with no float money. Who knew? Then, after the cash desk it was back into the other nook of the rectangle to go to the final grand official who made everything spinky spanky and stamped and allowed us to carry on along on our happy way.

We got home at 5:00 pm.

[Delhi-22-August-2009]