Indian Low Commission

Yesterday I visited India. Took the tube from Stanmore to Holborn, walked along Kingsway to Aldwych, a few steps down India Place and lo and behold, I was in India. People visiting London often mistake Southall, Wembley, Illford etc. for India. But these places, while they see multitudes of Desis, are still British in many ways. For one people more often than not obey the local rules and two, what we call Desi is a curious mix of people from all parts of the subcontinent, not just India. However my journey yesterday took me to a sarkari office in an Indian metro, any metro, you name it.

That door or rather Portal on India Place not just Teleports you to India, it also works as a Time Machine. Technology so advanced that it takes you to India of the early nineties. A railway platform, a passport office, a land registration office, any and all of these sarkari offices bundled in one. Everything about that place reeked Bharat Sarkar at its best. I am talking about the Indian High Commission in the United Kingdom of Great Britain. And while the High Commission itself was Raj personified with glittering brass and glass and a spanking black Ind 1 Mercedez S Class parked in front defying all no parking rules, what was hidden in its underbelly was the Consular Office dealing with Passports and sundry.

Was I home sick? Not really. Two things, apart from the usual Desh ki mitti, make you home sick. Food and Family. No Indian can complain about food in London, and family, they are all currently west of the Prime Meridian. So no it was not because I was missing India. It was because my passport/s (like every Indian who has travelled a bit I carry a few with pride and feign inconvenience every time asked about it) was missing space for any more border crossing stamps and I needed a new booklet. The last time this had happened was in Bombay(MNS are you reading this, I want to be roughed up, banned etc etc) in 2002 and it took 30 mins to submit the application and I had a new passport the same day. Modernization, technology etc. have swept India since then and I thought being London, the process will be even faster. Was I in for a shock or what? It took me six hours to just submit my application.

The officials of the Indian High Commission are smart. Very Smart Robert. First act of smartness, they do not issue Visas from this location. Hence no Non Indian has any reason to visit this place. Second, the entrance to the consular section is so far removed to one side of the High Commission that to a passerby the long queue of Indians outside a door in India Place might seem like an audition for Gandhi 2 in the adjacent BBC building. Like a true patriot I went and stood in that queue that circled around a statue of Nehru with a sly grin on his face as if the building opposite was called Mountbatten House. After about 30 minutes I reached the counter and got a token number. I am a great fan of Token Numbers. They are a great equalizer. Irrespective of where you come from, once you have a token number, caste, creed, colour, religion all merges into that number. Readers of Ayn Rand including a certain Mr Greenspan might disagree but I for one believe there are places where individuality has to give in to uniformity. Unless as an individual you play golf with the High Commissioner and in that scenario you will have no reason to visit the basements of India Place.

With that token in hand I opened a door and found myself in India of 1995. While the rest of India has progressed, the Indian High Commission in UK is desperately trying to latch on to the last vestiges of the Raj and the red tape that came along with it. The door led me to a hall full of people. They were everywhere, or atleast it seemed that way. There were eight counters and every counter had about 20 people all over the counter window. Plus there were hundreds who were sitting staring at the 3 LCD screens displaying counter numbers and their movements, if any. A little investigation revealed that every counter had two or three persons with tokens next in sequence and the rest were either general hangerons who you find in thousands in any Indian sarkari office or those trying to catch the attention of the lady behind the counter with that half grin, half pleading look to help jump the queue. Aren’t we Indians the master of that look.

I decided to wait for my turn with the token. The movement of numbers on that screen was excruciatingly slow. Infact the lady behind my designated counter was a great fan of Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. For about 10-15 minutes numbers would not change on her counter, and then they would move, two or three in a row. I knew it would be hours before my turn came hence I started observing and analyzing that microcosm of India. Except I had to change seats in between when my neighbor realized that the British have hidden the Kohinoor up his nose and was using all fingers and thumbs at his disposal to reach it.

There were eight counters in total. Out of which two were for Passport services, or in other words catering to Fresh off the Boat, like yours truly. Four were for consular services like PIO, OCI etc, more organized as they were dealing with those shouting in that strange British Indian accent. And the last two were people surrendering their passports, cutting that umbilical cord for good. Can you take a guess which counters were the most unruly? The first two and the last two. The first two is obvious because we are like that only. We can beat up people in the Parliament, this was just a consular office. And the last two because this was their last chance to display their Indianness. Once they left that hall, they were expected to be British, get drunk and beat people at Football Games.

And the staff, courteous, multilingual (with Punjabis they were speaking in Punjabi and with Gujaratis in Gujarati and so on, until I realized it was all English) and always smiling (more at your plight). I can understand they were dealing with a difficult people. But that does not give them a right to be self indulgent, self righteous and condescending. It seemed they had graduated from the Air India school of customer service summa cum laude. They had no clue on what token numbers were running as the screens were facing the crowd, so every now and then they shouted, ‘what number on screen’. They were all specialized in their specific jobs like Passports, OCI etc. I guess the concept of cross skilling will last reach the Indian Government. If all this was not enough, promptly at 1:30 the system went down. As Mr Murphy said, right when it was my turn at the counter. “System went down and will be back up at 2 PM please come back after lunch”.

Do they realize that Systems do not go down even in India. We Indians pride ourselves in keeping the Systems up for the entire world. Its time you read The World is Flat which talks of India of 2002 and learn a thing or two about India’s progress Mr High Commissioner. I can't bring myself to call you Excellency, the experience yesterday was not even mediocre leave aside excellence.