"It's just," she said, wiping the tears from her eyes, "I can't imagine a person who would hate India more than you."
I'm interested to see how this trip pans out because I've not been particularly looking forward to my trip to India. I'm glad to get it out of the way because I think to be the sort of asshole I want to be in life, I have to have a large stack of Lonely Planets casually piled somewhere highly visible and to be able to drop references to 'my time in India' in irksome Berkeley cocktail parties. This necessitates some time in India, and I've decided to start with a week-long business trip.
If I had to stereotype--and god knows I don't have to, I just love to--I sort of like Indian women. Although it drives me berserk, I like the way they stare at me--it's so bold. I don't like the way their husbands stare at me, though. Their husbands, in fact, disgust me. I hate everything about their look. Their beer guts (or are they dal guts?), their mustaches, their hair that is too long and parted so intensely that the back is always out of place in a way that brings out my maternal urge to fix it while at the same time making me hate them for not taking care of themselves, their sandals, their young wives. But most of all, it's the stare. The stare is at once lascivious and condescending and freaks me out most considerably. I sort of feel this way about all men between the ages of 40 to 60, but the thing about Indian men is that they act and appear to be between the ages of 40 to 60 from about the age of 9 until 90. I'm fine with the very old and the very young of India.
However, I've been told that things like the stare are just a cultural difference. Cultural differences are things one needs to accept. In the leadup to this trip, I've tried very hard to not focus on things, or stereotypes, if you will, that irritate me. I want to be the sort of person that could bring up the possibility of going to India for six months without having anyone laugh.
But then I attempted to get an Indian visa. This took a few weeks, two hundred and three euro and three trips to the Indian Embassy. The Indian Embassy in Dublin is much like the disused teacher's lounge of an Indian elementary school. There's mismatched furniture, piles of Indian picture books, pamphlets on Indian teas and bulletin boards with aged notices about things long past. The Indian Embassy in Dublin is mostly empty when I visit.
They have a filing system that is interesting--it doesn't involve computers as you might expect, but consists of giant manila envelopes at least three feet long, each with a year written on them, piled on top of a bookshelf. I don't really understand why it is is so difficult and expensive to get a visa for India.
Most countries I don't have to get a visa for, or can get one issued upon arrival. Most countries are grateful to have me come spend money on worthless knickknacks, overpriced drinks and on duty free goods. Some countries, such as Turkey, wish they didn't need my money, so they let me get a visa at the airport but make me pay for it as a small sort of fuck you on arrival. The visa stamp even has the price printed on it, an entrance fee into the country. But Turkey only charged me fifteen euro on my last two visits which is a far cry from the two hundred and three euro that India demanded of me. I wasn't even allowed to pay in any normal fashion but had to get a postal money order as if India were some decrepit eBay seller that was unable to accept credit cards or other standard forms of currency.
India, I think, should be grateful to have me. We have a lot in common, me and India. We were both colonized the the same dickheads, right? We both still struggle with trying to stop ourselves from loving those dickheads and realizing that it's not really possible. We both speak English with slightly ridiculous accents. We both constantly struggle with disaster. We both love fancy words. But India is not grateful to have me, and instead wants to test my dedication to setting foot on its soil. My friend Pam planned a trip to India not long ago and was refused at the airport because, not knowing, she hadn't gotten a visa in advance. She was clearly not dedicated enough.
The first time I went to the embassy they told me to come back in 10 days. In the meantime, I got a typhoid shot and a lecture on cultural sensitivity. Two weeks later, I went back. "Leave your passport," they told me, "and come back tomorrow." I do not want to leave my passport in a place that considers manila envelopes an adequate means of organization. As an expat, one learns to hold onto their passport rather tightly, as losing it means being stranded in a foreign country and a lot of unpleasantness at the American Embassy.
But what can you say in the Indian Embassy after all? "No, sorry, you've given the impression of a complete lack of competence and no I will not leave my passport here."? Of course not. I hand over my passport, stomach in knots and after a surprisingly restful night, return to the embassy the next day.
"Who?" Shuffling of paper but giving no appearance of finding any particularly relevant paper or related paper. "Come back tomorrow." I cannot, I declare, come back tomorrow. I have a cab waiting for me outside. I'm heading for Cork that evening, which is a foreign country by all accounts, and I didn't want to leave my passport into this documents graveyeard for a weekend. This is my third trip to the Indian Embassy. I was told yesterday that it would be ready today. The man behind the desk gives me a condescending look as if all of this was somehow my fault.
"By whom?" a woman next to the desk asks. I begin to describe the woman that I had spoken to the day before, and then notice the woman in question trying to hide behind a manila envelope.
"Her," I declare. The woman, who was next to the desk and who is now at the desk since the condescending man wandered off after realizing that my case was not important enough to deal with, shoots the woman behind the envelope a death stare, and tells me to sit down and wait. I do, mindful of the taxi driver waiting for me outside, which I now realize was a bad idea.
Finally, I am handed my passport which now has a sticker with my details hand written in it. This is what I paid two hundred and three euro and waited nearly three weeks for. This hand-written sticker is not a tracking mechanism for some sort of larger immigration policy as I would expect, but is really just a little bit of a "You think you're so superior? Pony up and hold your horses. We're in charge now."
