Finally on January 5th Albina and I managed to lodge our visa applications successfully at the Indian Visa Centre in Hounslow. We arrived again in this gigantic parking area for visa and passport applicantes, other employees of the 7 storey Vista Centre and for second hand car traders, who use the site to display their offerings. Most of the cars seem to be parked here pemanently as I have seen the same ones on each of my three visits to this site. Actually paying the parking fee is very confusing as different signposts display different notices offering different telephone numbers to ring. It actually took me four phone calls and fifteen minutes to actually pay the parking fee. I deliberately left Albina in the car until I had completed that transaction as her fretting impatience would have been unbearable. Luckily when I returned to the car she had been busy chatting to her Warsaw cousin on the phone and had not noticed the length of time it took.
Back we went to the building entrance, only to find that the four lifts to the first floor, and probably to every other floor in this massive building, was not working. That is pretty scandalous for such a building with so much contact with the public. I had to help a grumbling Albina mount the staircase to the first floor, one painful step after another. Then there was a short queue to obtain the numbered ticket to reach the right window where we could lodge our applications until we finally entered a long crowded hall completely filled to the gunnels with Indian families sitting or standing and awaiting their turn. We found some seats near, but not next, to each other, as waiting applicants obligingly removed their bags from them. On checking our numbers and the ones displayed on the electronic notice monitor, we realised we still had a long wait ahead of us. There were around 20 windows, of which some 10 were open and staffed by consular officials. We watched as indvidual applicants and whole families awaited their turn and then approached their allocated windows when their numbers were called. Some took only a few minutes to have their documents checked and approved, others took longer or had to withdraw their applications after much discussion, though I saw few incidents of any flash of bad temper or louder arguments. Presumably they were aware that any argument with these officials would be futile, and probably counterproductive.
The overwhelming numbers of applicants were British citizens of Indian origin. They included families with little children, some with three generations present, while others were individual men, possibly businessmen or money earners in the UK visiting their families in India. I have to say that the chidren, though obviously bored out of their minds, were mostly quiet and well behaved, which was a welcome change from a British waiting room. There were some white British or Europeans like us there, perhaps a tenth of those present, and these were mostly middle aged women. In front of us was an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair with a younger middle aged couple, and I wondered how he had come up that forbidding staircase. While many applicants left after surviving their ordeal at the window, their seats were soon taken up by new arrivals, so the place remained full.
After a 2 hour wait it was finally our turn. We presented our application forms and our passports, as well as a copy of the email advising us of the application date. The young bearded official gave a facecheck to the applications and asked for photocopies of our passports. I gave him a copy of the two passports together but he shook his head. He needed each passport photocopied seperately on A4 paper. Also it transpired that he need a second copy of the invitation email, even though both our names and passport numbers appeared on the one page. That was not good. However, he checked the applications thoroughly, comparing the information on there to the information on our passports. Then he took payment for the visas, a total of £295.14 for the two of us, and asked me to arrange the extra photocopies of the passports and the invitation email, in the meantime handing me back our passports. Then he summoned the next applicants to his window. I rushed to the far end of the waiting room where they had a photocopier, but I needed a 50p coin for each of the three photocopies and there was no change available. So Albina descended down to the cafe at the bottom and I wandered into one of the private visa application agencies below the ground floor, asking if I could use their photocopier. Finally they did that for me at a £1 per copy. I rushed back upstairs and caught the guy at our window just as he had finished with the next applicants. He took back the passports and the extra copies, nodded, and said "You can go now." Apparently the passports will be returned to us by mail sometime in the next 10 days.
As I descended back to the cafe I came across the couple with the sick old man in the wheelchair. The man carred the wheelchair and his wife attempted to help the old man painfully, very painfully, down the steps. I was still encumbered by my documents but soon others rushed forward to help them down the two sets of steps to the ground floor past the redundant lifts. That was a miserable testimony to the inhumanity of those running this centre, and a salute to those who rushed forward to help the family.
At least the visa nightmare is over and tomorrow I have to nail that booking for the Taj Mahal, which has still not been made available. A true first taste of India.
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