FRR-Oh No!

Maybe I would have had more luck at the FRRO if I had worn my Kerala dhoti.

Travelogues about India invariably feature stories about the country’s infamous bureaucracy. In his book City of Djinns, William Dalrymple recounted the laborious process it took to get his visa certified, which involved more than a half dozen trips to a dark and dusty office in Delhi.

Jenna and I had been relatively lucky in this regard. In our experience, government services like customs and the post office have worked with an efficiency that is, if not rapid, at least no slower than their American counterparts. For instance, the Tirur postal department successfully delivered eight packages shipped from America to our apartment without losing a single one. And airport officials in Kochi successfully found my parents’ suitcase after it was lost on their flight from the US over Christmas.

Our luck changed on Monday. On that day, we visited the Foreign Regional Registration Office (FRRO) in Kolkata in order to register our student visas. (For background on why we had to leave Kerala and return to Kolkata to do this, see an earlier post entitled: “Oh Visa, My Visa”.)

We already knew we would be in trouble for we had failed to register our visa within the requisite 14 days of arriving, which would have been way back in September for us. Yet, we had also been told it was simply a matter of paying a fine.

The FRRO in Kolkata is on a commercial stretch of AJC Bose road near the Victoria Memorial, a short Metro ride from where Jenna and I are staying. When we arrived Monday, we were pleased to find the office neat and orderly with no lines, unlike the chaotic FRRO we had visited in Delhi, which was in turmoil registering dozens of Afghan refugees. Our feelings continued to be lifted when we were directed to an official after waiting only a few short moments. So far, the ugly Indian bureaucracy had yet to rear its head (though the office we were in still had heaping stacks of moldering paper).

“Your purpose here?” the official said in a clipped tone. He was a slight, middle-aged man with glasses and salt-and-pepper hair complemented by a neatly-trimmed mustache and goatee.

“We have to register our student visas,” I said, handing over our accordion file of documentation—copies of our passports and visas, a letter from the American TESOL Institute, a letter from JM school, receipts from guesthouses we had stayed at, a note confirming our residence in Tirur for the past four months.

The man flipped through the papers. He licked his fingers as he turned the pages. His eyes scanned over the documents. He clicked his tongue and looked up at us, over his glasses like a schoolmaster.

“You are very late. Your passport says you arrived in September,” he said.

“I know,” I replied, taking a deep breath. “We simply did not register then. It was a mistake. You see—“

“A mistake, yes!” the man said, cutting me off. “A big mistake. You cannot come to India with a visa and not know the regulations. That is very irresponsible on your part.”

Jenna and I sat there placidly as the official off on a diatribe. “It is the same in America, your own country. American immigration is very strict. They do not treat Indians that well. Indian students in America are treated poorly if they make a mistake on their visa. We have regulations here, just like in America. What am I to do? You have made this mistake.”

As he was speaking a young man had come up to the desk and poured the official some chai in a small clear plastic cup. The chai sat on the edge of his desk steaming while the official spoke.

“I believe we can pay a fine and we can still register,” I said, nervous bile rising in my throat.

“Yes, a fine. One thousand, three hundred and ninety-five rupees. One. Three. Nine. Five. Rupees,” he said, enunciating each number with heated precision.

“Yes, we have that. We can pay that,” I said, starting to get out my traveler’s wallet.

“You also must write a letter,” the official said.

I stopped rummaging in my backpack for the wallet. “A letter?” I said, rechecking the list of required documents I needed. I saw no mention of a letter.

“Yes,” the official said. “A letter stating your own ignorance.”

“Our what?”

“Your ignorance. It was your ignorance of Indian visa policy that caused this problem. You did not register when you should have registered because you were ignorant.”

“A letter?”

“Yes.”

“Stating my own ignorance?”

“Yes.”

“My own…stupidity,” I said, feeling the tension rising in my voice.

“Yes.”

“What exactly should this letter say?”

“You can word it however you want. But it must make the point that you failed to register because you were ignorant. It was not our fault. It was your fault,” the official said. This all seemed to conclude the matter, for he put all our papers back in our file and handed the file back to us. He began sipping his tea, as if to say the interview was finished.

“We need to come back tomorrow, then. With our letter…the letter of ignorance,” I said, as we got up form our seats.

“Yes, anytime tomorrow after eleven. But we take lunch from 12:30 to two. Then the office closes at 4:30.”

We left frustrated and a bit confused.

“What was that about a letter?” Jenna asked. “What are we going to say?”

“I guess it will start something like this: ‘To Whom It May Concern: We are idiots.’”