On planes, passports, and such

There was a conversation on my twitter timeline this morning that I wanted to reply to, but my reply wasn't fitting into one tweet, and then I got distracted by this silly thing called work. And then by the time I remembered I felt I should just bring it here.

A plane from India to Dubai crashlanded at the Dubai airport yesterday. And once it was established that all the passengers and crew were safe, beyond some injuries (although a firefighter died), most of the conversation online turned to the behavior of the passengers online during the evacuation process.

Every time you board a flight, and they take you through the safety procedures (which, let's face it, most people don't pay attention to, because "that's never going to happen to me"), one of the things they tell you is in case of an evacuation, leave all your belongings behind. In the case of this flight, there seems to be video evidence that these passengers didn't listen to that particular of advice.

And the internet (especially some of the travel bloggers I follow) went crazy with all kinds of "omg look at these selfish morons" comments.

And I get it, I do. When you're in that life or death situation, every moment counts, and every moment spent looking for things you absolutely cannot leave behind adds to the danger of the situation.

But. Let's take a moment to look at the other side of things, yes? This was an international flight, and I would assume the passengers (a majority of whom were Indian) were therefore a mix of business travellers, tourists, and migrants - people who were leaving their home country to work in another country. And when you're in those groups, on an international flight, going to a country that is not your own, you belongings matter. Right, I mean, they always matter, but when you're travelling or living outside your country, your documents and your passport matter more than ever. Because they're all you have that can let you go anywhere. Everything else - money, phone, clothes, electronics, gifts - can be replaced. More easily by some than others, depending on your financial situation. But your documents? Renewing or replacing them in ordinary circumstances is a nightmare. Can you imagine having to do them when you have nothing to prove who you are and that you have the right to be there?

I remember reading, when the Brussels airport was attacked a few months ago, about the Indian passengers who were stranded there when the airport was shut down. Jet Airways used to fly a fifth freedom flight through Brussels at the time, so most of these Indians didn't have a visa for Belgium. So they had to be kept in one of the hangars at the airport till alternate travel arrangements could be figured out, because they didn't have the right to leave the airport. And this is when they had their documents with them.

It's been six years since I was robbed in Italy, and had to spend a week borrowing money from coworkers each time I wanted to buy even a bottle of water. But every time I think back to that episode now, I thank all the serendipity that helped me not lose my passport at the time.

A couple of years ago, the fire alarm went off in my apartment building at 2 am on a Saturday morning, and we all had to evacuate. I grabbed my phone, which was next to my pillow, and my keys, which hung next to the entrance door. I can't remember if I had grabbed my wallet or not. But I remember standing on the road outside, shivering, and wishing I had grabbed a sweatshirt. And My passport. More than anything, I wished I had grabbed my passport, because if that darn building had burned to the ground, where would I be? It didn't, because the alarm turned out be nothing more than a bunch of drunk twits thinking they were hilarious, but I still wish I had grabbed my passport that night.

And I didn't have a hundred other passengers behind me to consider that night. So to the universe who doesn't read this blog, I say this: give the folks who were on that plane a break, will ya? They're dealing with enough trauma without needing the internet to dump on them too.

More woes.

This is the transcript of a call that happened between my father and me on a Monday morning in June 2014, and as is usual with my passport and visa related woes, I'm going to wait a while before I actually publish it.

Father: Hello?
Me: Father!
Father: Ye...ah?
Me: It is official, I am jinxed.
Father: Now what happened?
Me: My I-797 came in, and the I-94 at the bottom says I'm a citizen of Nigeria*. And I waited to talk to the lawyer before calling you and he says to let it be till I get my license renewed and then send it back to him to get it corrected because it'll take several weeks for the correct one to come and I have only a month before my license expires and WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME?
Father: *muffled laughter*
Me: This is NOT funny.
Father: *sniggering* I know it's not funny.
Me: Just once I would like all passport and visa related processes to go through smoothly without giving me a panic attack. JUST ONCE.
Father: Well you have several years ahead to achieve this.
Me: Do I? Do I really? This has happened every time, all my life.
Father: Well that's not true. It's only been happening in this century. Nothing happened in the last century.
Me: Is that supposed to comfort me?
Father: I'm just saying.

I would like to point out that my father continued to snicker through the entirety of this conversation.

Gah.

* For those not in the know, I was born in Nigeria, but I hold Indian citizenship. Makes filling official forms that ask for country of birth followed by country of citizenship a lot of fun.

** I showed this post to the father five minutes before hitting Publish, and he chuckled all through it. At one point he claimed he hadn't said any of this, but when I retorted I had typed this minutes after the call ended so that I wouldn't forget any of it, he went back to saying all of the above is factual. He would also like me to clarify the reason I'm an Indian citizen is that I was born in Nigeria but of Indian parentage. Apparently that wasn't too clear above. Uff.

Passport woes

My annual flashback for 2013 is still pending, but recent events have fueled bitter tweets on my twitter timeline, which in turn prompted me to write this post that I really wanted to write almost two years ago, but thought it wiser to wait.

Some of you might remember a fleeting reference to a it-can-only-happen-to-me type incident from my annual flashback last year. This, dear reader, is the long-promised post about it.

This story truly begins in 2004 when I applied for a passport renewal in good old Dilli. In those days, children, Indian passports were still handwritten, and had none of these fancy bar-scannable stuff. So of course, when my new passport was issued on March 1st, 2004, the person filling it out glanced at his calendar, and put down 29th February 2009 as the expiration date.

Quick, who sees the problem with this? Wait, wait, it gets better.

Since we had applied for the renewal through the tatkaal process, it was issued only for five years. After the "verification process", which involved a drunk cop showing up at home at 10 PM and my  mum having to go ask our neighbours to write out and sign utterly useless letters, we then applied to have the passport extended to a ten-year validity, where again, yes, again, the fellow writing down the new expiry date on the next page glanced at the first page and put down 29th February 2014 as the expiry date.

Now, if you haven't gathered the problem by now, allow me to elaborate. 2004 was a leap year. 2009 wasn't; neither is 2014. So neither of those years have a 29th February. You savvy?

So anyway, when we realized this, we contemplated trying to get it fixed, but by that point any energy or motivation to go back to the passport office in Bikaji Cama Place had left us, so we decided to let it be till it became an issue. This, my friends, is the story of how it became an issue.

Honestly, for eight years, it wasn't an issue. I got multiple Schengen visas issued - from at least four different countries, visited the UK, China, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, and got two-two US visas issued. And never had a problem. Till two years ago.

After eight years of people from all over the world looking at the date there, applying the brains the Good Lord gave them, and using 28 February as the actual date of expiry, one bright lady decided that to do so would be perjury. And so four days into my internship in Chicago in the summer of 2012, I received a call from HR saying I was being let go till I could sort this out.

And so I did what any strong, collected, independent woman in my situation would do - called my father even though it was past midnight in India. Who in turn called every friend in the US he could think of, and also found me the phone number of the Indian consulate in Chicago.

After much hesitation, and also getting advice from sundry people who were really not much help, I finally called the consulate, where one old Uncle picked up the phone. And heard my situation and promptly handed me over to another Uncle. Who had the bright idea that since my home address in the US was in North Carolina, I should go to DC and apply for a new passport. Which, I mean, hello, I had already researched and discovered that it would be too expensive, take too long, and may not even work since I had more than a year before my passport expired.

So I went into whining mode. 

"But Sir, I'm a student and they've asked me to leave my job so how am I supposed to go to DC and get a new passport?"
"Hmmm. Achha, why don't you come to the consulate tomorrow morning and we will see what we can do."

So at 8 AM the next morning, I was at the Indian Consulate in Chicago. Where I got a ticket and waited for my turn, and when I finally approached the counter and explained my situation, got a big grin and:

"Oh, so you're the one who called yesterday! Wait, wait, give us your passport and we will call you in 15 minutes."

So I waited 15 minutes till one Aunty called me and gave me my passport where they had essentially written on the first blank page they found that the correct expiry date was 28th February 2014, and stamped it, and made a note near previous expiry date to look at other page. Very complicated, and yet so simple.

After thanking them profusely, I called HR to ask if this would work, got a yes, and went shopping on Michigan Avenue, where I splurged on a lovely red dress from Nordstrom and sent my family a long emotional email.

And the first thing I did when I got back to school after the summer was find out if I could renew my passport even if more than a year of validity was left (yes, since the passport wasn't bar-scannable), and sent off my application to DC. Who promptly sent it back since I had forgotten to sign one measly form on one measly page. But then sent me a new passport eventually after I resent everything correctly.

So there you go. Eight years of no one but one airport security guy asking me about a wrong date, one woman who blows up the wrong date into epic proportions, and an Indian consulate who were incredibly sweet and helpful to me at least.

Honestly, I think I need a label for all passport-related incidents posted about on this blog. This is at least the third or fourth such post.
 

Where I want to scream and yell, but blog instead

Summer 2006, family trip to Europe. This happens.

March 2009, office holiday to Spain. Got robbed twice in Barcelona.

March 2010, office holiday to Italy. This happens, colleagues speculate I was a thief in Europe in a previous lifetime, and this is karma.

May 2011, family trip to Boston, London and Edinburgh. Nothing worse than a huge goof-up over train tickets courtesy yours truly, and the fact that a very expensive set of jewelry bought specially for this trip goes missing. Unsure whether it went missing in Boston or Edinburgh, but Europe jinx seems to continue.

And now, December 2012. I'm supposed to leave for India on Monday, but my passport is stuck with the UK consulate in New York, because I'm headed to London on exchange in the spring and need a visa. There is no way of tracking progress, it's too late to cancel or switch to priority service, and it seems highly unlikely that I will receive anything back in time for my flight. The cost of changing tickets this time of the year is giving me a heart attack, and all I want to know is - just why does Europe hate me so much?

Prologue to a Comedy of Errors

I've been reading this blog for a while now, and this post filled me with complete glee.

You see, two years ago, my family was finally leaving for our dream vacation in Europe. Only the thing is, at ten in the night, just as we're about to leave for the airport, we discover my passport is missing. I, of course, promptly went into hysterics (by which I mean, I started giggling and couldn't stop) while the father opened up every piece of luggage that was supposed to go with us (and mind you, my family does not know the meaning of travelling light).

Possible locations for the passport included the photocopy shop I had visited earlier that evening. The father has a penchant for photocopying everything as many times as possible, and for some reason mine was the only one with no copies having been made. So at 2230 hours, the brother and I dash down to the market, where of course, all the shops were closed. Resourceful person that I am, I called up the cell phone that was listed in front of the neighbouring shop, got the photocopy shop's owner's number, and called him up. He, of course, claimed that he had been in the shop at eight when the entire shop had been searched for some person's missing cell phone and no passport had been seen anywhere.

By the time we got home, my dad had searched through pretty much the whole house with no luck. My hysteria was rapidly reaching a peak when, after some discussion, the father announces that the mother and the brother will proceed with the vacation while we shall stay back and see what can be done. I still don't know who was more shocked - me, at the fact that I wasn't going, or the two of them, considering the only thing they knew about the logistics of the entire trip (which I had planned and arranged) was that it would be somewhere in the aforementioned continent.

So anyway, we dropped them to the airport, and spoke to the airlines, who said that two of us could travel later. We came back home, and went to the market again, with a torch this time. So at two in the night, the father and I are searching the market alleys and carpark to see if I had dropped it somewhere by mistake. No such luck, so we came back home and went off to sleep.

I got up at eight in the morning, and the first thing I did was call up the xerox shop, where the chap who picked up the phone very coolly informed me that of course my passport was with them. As I said at the time, may all the Gods shower curses on that owner for being so clueless about what happens in his shop, and zillions of blessings on the chaps who run the shop for keeping my passport safely.

The airline came through as well, and exactly twenty-four hours after the first half of my family, the father and I were on our way to Austria for what was to be the most accident-filled yet best vacation I've had till date. Although I could've done without the big grin and the bright "So it was at the photocopy shop after all, was it?" I got from the airline lady.

And it's not just me who does these things anyway.