As a result of a vitriolic dispute between the washing machine and Clare’s passport, the latter developed a disintegration based malfunction and a new one was needed at short notice. This meant that we couldn’t apply for our Indian visas before we left the UK but we knew the embassy in Abu Dhabi would ride to our rescue on a proud Indian, visa bearing stallion.
Unfortunately, what we didn’t know was that shortly before we arrived, it had outsourced the messy business of issuing visas to BLS Indian Visa Services who, in turn, had sold the nag to a local Emiratee Glue Conglomerate in exchange for a kilo of post-it-notes and a three-legged donkey.
Thrown into the arms of the BLS, we stepped into a world of organised chaos which gave us a small insight into what lay ahead.
The process for obtaining a visa is simple. Complete an application form and file it with a prescribed fee and two passport photos and the visa will be delivered to you by courier at an address of your choosing within five working days.
Simple enough?
Clearly, BLS didn’t think so. Add them to the equation and everything takes a quantum leap in complexity. And the fee goes up like a balloon.
The Indians and the Emiratees do not have a tradition of queuing patiently. Perhaps it is the heat. They squabble and shove in the general melee, all to the exasperation of the Visa Officer, who could really do with a bare chest and a bull-whip.
Here, the pecking order of Emiratee society, where visiting workers from the Indian sub-continent come marginally below household appliances, is turned on its head. Emiratees, who are used to having Indians at their beck and call, are suddenly forced, not only to stand in a queue with fragrant Indian builders and street workers, but also to wait their turn. Gratifyingly, their turn is considerably delayed by the bureaucratic revenge that BLS staff exact for decades of perceived mistreatment of their fellow citizens by their hosts.
Sharp-dressed Emiratees huff and puff as scruffy Indian labourers push in front while BLS turns a blind eye. When they try it themselves, there is sharp and instant retribution as the crowd erupts in protest. The Arabs are not on home turf here and it soon dawns on them that the Visa Officer has his colours nailed firmly to the mast.
But if they are all in the same boat together, it is a leaky one. As the broad ocean of bureaucracy laps over the gunwales, BLS staff spend more time bailing out their sinking ship than paddling it forward. Time slips through everyone’s fingers here as processes are duplicated and triplicated. Nothing can be done in a single step.
First, you must join the queue to obtain an application form. Then you must join another one to ask for guidance on answering the ambiguous questions. There is another to hand in the completed the form for checking and another to have your photo trimmed to size. Yet another is needed to obtain a photocopy of your Abu Dhabi visa. With the end in sight, there is a queue to pay the fee and another to obtain a receipt. Finally, the last queue is to hand over the accumulated documents to the processing officer, from which point the picture is one of seamless efficiency.
At least that is, until the delivery courier calls to say he is at the wrong building and you chase him around the city block as he ignores your request to stand still while you track him down. In a game of cat and mouse, you are always one step behind. You miss him at the foyer of the neighbouring building when the concierge shouts vague directions as the door closes behind you. The man at the shop has seen him just seconds before but can’t tell you where he has gone. The laundrette is more helpful and following their lead, you see him disappearing around a corner as you emerge into the midday furnace, but when you get there he is gone.
All the while you call him on his mobile phone but, it transpires, he is calling your host’s home number and so his line is engaged. Finally, with intelligence from the host, you learn he has made it to your building and you follow him, sure in the knowledge that there is no escape as the net is closing.
Up you go in the lift. He will be waiting with your host, with papers to sign. Of this, there is no doubt.
But, alas no!
When you arrive, he has gone down in the other lift to find you, shaking free from your host’s grasp as she tries to pin him to the wall long enough for you to arrive. More phone calls; more chasing. Eventually, he is there. You take the package with passport and visa and he makes a bee-line for the door.
“Check them!” whispers your host. “They get it wrong all the time.”
Barring the way, you tear feverishly at the plastic wrapper and check the visa to ensure that all is in order.
Off he goes into the heat of the day to run someone else ragged with his desire to help.
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