A Charming Day Spent With The Bangalore Police

In most countries, you are encouraged to register with your embassy or the police as a matter of courtesy and to make tracking your family down easier when you pitch up in some rural hospital with Lyme Disease.  In India, it is a means for crushing you between the colossal gears of government.

Due to our trip to Rajasthan, we miss the stated fourteen day deadline to register by a couple of days.  But, hey, we are leaving the country anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem, right?  We are advised that we cannot just turn up at the airport when our flight is due, have our work visas voided, maybe with a nice big red stamp, and be on our way.  This is confirmed when we join the hoards of foreigners (update: Did I say hoards?  I meant hordes.  I was not implying that there were large piles of foreigners stacked up like gold bullion.  C'mon, gimme a break.  This editor doesn't even have a spell check (apart from Shirls); you're lucky I spelt foreigner correctly)  at the Police Commissioner's Office, some of whom have been turned back at the airport and have missed their flights.

So, let's get this straight; most countries will not allow you to enter without a valid visa.  India will let you in but won't allow you to leave.  Maybe they are trying to crack the big two billion people using captured foreigners.

The Foreigner's Registration Office has seen better days.  Mould grows on the walls and piles of random documents are stacked on every available flat surface.  Rows and rows of clerks sit behind more piles of documents and a couple of ceiling fans turn lazily over the lucky few.  In the public area the fans have long since broken down.  The pressing mass of overseas students and workers clutching their papers soon makes the air unbearable.

I survey the nationalities written on the application forms in quadruplicate: Iran, Cote d'Ivoire, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Yemen.  We have each been given a numbered token, implying some sort of order and procedure.  This is charade.  There is no procedure.  We wait for a couple of hours outside in the sun before being admitted inside.  We then press four deep around an empty counter while Official No. 1 is off having his lunch in another building.

Finally, we are seen.  But there are problems.  One of the documents is not an original.  A taxi brings the original letter from Shirls' sponsor (Disksha).  It doesn't have the correct wording.  Another taxi.  And so it goes on.  Four taxi trips, calls to 'Influential People', two more helpers from Diksha in addition to the three already helping us, three meetings with the Police Commissioner - who yells at us in Hindi and throws our application forms back at us; we do not have our original wedding certificate!  How dare we try to leave the country without presenting such essential evidence.

And then, eventually, we are allowed to proceed to the next counter.  We've been here almost 6 hours by now.  A clerk prepares the all essential letter allowing us to leave the country, more checking of documents, stamping, a signature from the scowling Police Commissioner, and we are free.

Private sector Indians we have spoken to have been universal in their criticisms of corrupt, underworked, overfed state employees and we now have our own evidence.  What a country India could be with an efficient public service.