But getting into it for us mere mortals is difficult. It's the online visa application that has us tearing our hair out. In the good old days, it was a trip to the Indian consulate, armed with photos and money, then waiting breathlessly for a few weeks for the visa to be stamped on your passport. Today, it's just you and the Indian government website, which is very scary. What if he doesn't like your answers? The thing about this silent arbitrator is that he won't always directly tell you what you're doing wrong. He simply refuses to budge.
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Take a picture of our identity, so to speak. We do a crash course in what makes a good idea. Stand straight, no shadows, no boundaries, no flying hair, no smile, no wink. But none of this matters because image measurements are key. The image must be square. Down to the last millimeter. If you go up one millimeter you will never be able to see the Taj Mahal. Three hours and five drinks of brandy later, we've mastered the image upload.
This makes written things look easy. barely. Oddly enough, indianvisaonline seems more interested in your parents than in you. They want to know their addresses – “current” and “permanent” – their nationality and… former nationality. In addition to the phone number. The instructions say: “One phone number is mandatory.” Our parents died some time ago. So I enter my own phone number in the space. If the Indian Embassy needs to call, I will deliver them to my mom and dad in “tow.”
Another small anomaly is my hyphen. Like the Mary Anns and Billie Jeans of this world, I carry my little police wherever I go. It shows that we are a special breed: weird and punctuation-loving. The only problem is that computers can't hack it. The application form states that unless you write your name exactly as it appears in your passport, you may be expelled from the planet. So I write Jo-Ann. But the figure is angry. It won't budge until I get rid of that annoying non-letter thing. So I delete the hyphen and add a space and everything is fine. It's not the same name as my passport but at this point no one is taking a look.
In the final pages, the questions get really interesting. “Have you visited a SAARC country in the past three years?” What is a SAARC country? I googled SAARC to find that it stands for South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. This looks like a nice set. I say yes and wonder if Bali is important. I'm sure they will always be helpful.
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Then the mother of all questions: “Have you ever been involved in cybercrime/terrorist activities/sabotage/espionage/genocide/political murder/any other acts of violence?” Stop! We have been progressing well up to this point. And I'm a little offended that the default is yes automatically.
I read the options carefully. Cybercrime? No, I'm hopeless with computers. Terrorist or sabotage activities? I enjoyed jumping out of the bushes when my older sisters were kissing their boyfriends, ruining their entire moment. Espionage or political murder? I was a huge fan of The guy from UNCLE – This is the leadership of the United Network for Law and Law Enforcement. It could be read then, it can be read now. I think that leaves out genocide.
I think carefully about this. We all adore Mr Tom, our first year French teacher at university. We all detest the girls series that became his latest work – how do I say it in French – Squeeze. I hovered over the Yes button because, yes, the ability was there. In the end, I hit no because I really wanted to pass French. And I really, really want to enter India.
