F.R.R.O.........

Well unbelieveably Dean’s almost been here 12 months which means his visa is up for renewal!  No such thing as having a work visa granted for the duration of your contract, no that would be too sensible!  So let’s have create extra paperwork every year shall we?  It’s job creation you know and with 1.3b people in the country we’ve found soooo many ways to keep as many of them occupied as possible, red tape is one of them.

Actually applying for an extension to our visa isn’t that bad …. If you know the right way to do it .. and standing in line for 5 hours ain’t the right way (which is what Dean had to do the first time … before we knew there was an agent who for a large fee, do it all for you with only a little assistance from us!).

So we arrive at the Foreigner Regional Registration Office this morning, having only been there a few weeks ago to apply for a 3 month extension of our visa!  This time we’re applying for the remaing 9 months.  And we’re doing it in a hurry cause one of the pa’s at work suddenly decided it’s perhaps not a good idea (last minute in true Indian style) to leave for Dubai (on Saturday) without a full visa cause they just might not let us back in (hmmmmmmm and that would be a BAD thing?).  Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, hand over our passports, 2 days before we need them, to a bunch of bumbling, inefficient, beurocratic Indian FRRO officials!

So Agent A (just in case I shouldn’t give his identity away) meets us at the entrance, shakes our hands, in what can only be described as the weakest, most pathetic handshake I’ve ever encountered … I think he managed to touch 3 fingertips … but after he wiped his clammy hands on a hanky!  I’m not surprised his hands are clammy he spends his days “bribing” officials to cut redtape to make what would be THE most infuriating process ever, completely seemless!

While he's reminding us of the process, which is basically ultra confident queue jumping … I'm surveying the chaos behind him, it's a writhing jungle of races, colours, ages, the infirm, bored, irritable, tired, yet every single one of them fiercely determined to get their visa ..... so there's pushing, shouting, elbowing, paper waiving, lots of yelling, no doubt insult hurling in a variety of languages while everyone trying their best to convince the FRRO official to let them in next. The entrance is heaving, pregnant with expectant Pakistani’s and Afghani’s & dreadlocked hippies (no doubt here to do a 6 week how to be a yoga instructor course!!!!!) and outside teams of women in sari's and burkas sitting with bored, hungry children … while ours sit in the car watching a dvd in airconditioned comfort scarfing down a box of Panda biccies (yup feeling guilty already).  

so the instructions are ..... follow him .... past security, don’t stop, even if someone yells at us, smile at the lady in the counter, follow him, smile at another lady at another counter and get out of there quickly and quietly (and don’t make eye contact with those poor suckers who are hopefully clueless at what we’ve just done (hopefully they've mistaken us as officials? hmmmm only wrong skin colour!) and who’ve been in line for god knows how many hours and are just about to be disappointed big time because what they probably don’t know is that the FRO closes completely and very soon for lunch).  I don’t know which is worse, the fact that the FRO staff do that to the queue inhabitants or that we (the company) have paid a rather large sum (ok bribe ... let’s not mince words here) to bypass that massive heaving queue AND a hell of a lot of red tape.

Soooooooo, we do as instructed, smile when expected (I throw in a few namastes) and leave.  No-one tells us to get to the back of the queue, no-one chucks a hissy fit that we’ve gone straight to the front, no-one checks our photos against our actual faces, no-one matches our forms to our id, no-one looks at our passports (I’m a brunette in my passport pic you’d think someone would stop to check), no-one asks us to get the kids out of the car … Amit takes care of everything, it probably goes something like:

“see these two smiling white people, well they are the people who’s forms and passports I’ll be bringing in later, their kids are in the car but you don’t neeeeeed to get them away from their favourite in car movie now do you??? these are the people who need their paperwork done pronto, so they can go on their holiday to Dubai on Saturday …. now you want to keep them smiling don’t you because the only way you’ll keep them smiling is if you make this realllllllllllll smoooooth and quick, ok? Teekay? Handji ... and here’s my card, oops oopsyyyy oh will you look at that …. all that money accidentally on purpose fell into your hands?

So that was 11:45am yesterday morning and by 4:20pm that afternoon our passports were returned and we're ready to fly off with our visas all sorted for the next 12 months here in schtinking hot already New Delhi!