Well, we had an unexpected trip to the Foreign Residents Registration Office, or FRRO today due to our visa stamp requesting us to do so. We were advised by our friends at ASHA that we were best just to go and ask at the FRRO as they couldn't determine anything from the website. They also advised us that we should be there by 7:30am at the latest as they opened at about 9:30. We were a little puzzled by this but we duly arrived to find approximately 100+ people already there, all the seats taken and two bits of paper held down by a couple of stones, one for afghan nationals and one for all other foreigners. We were not sure exactly what to do but we spotted someone who looked liked they knew what we are doing and asked him. He explained that it involved approximately 3 queue's, 3 forms (one in triplicate) one of which we did not have and a whole lot of patience as this was his 5th attempt at obtaining his visa.
Obviously we were a pillar of confidence after this so we duly waited in 'line' with everyone else as what seemed the entire non-Indian, non-afghan population within Delhi pushed in front of us. Of course this is India so we expected a very strict and organised ledger along with smart allocation numbers at the end of this queue........no. What we found was a man with what can only be described as a school jotter copying our passport numbers into it next to our names (in order of the list we initially signed) and another man tearing a bit of paper off with our names and an allocation number written in biro. “Welcome to India” has never meant so much as it did in that moment.
To cut a long story short it turned out we didn't require to go to the FRRO office in the end. The lovely gentleman behind the desk explained it was when we re-entered India we would have to make a visit to the FRRO. I tell you this, I've never appreciated Glasgow City Council and their remarkable efficiency so much than on this day.
What did impact us most on the day though was the sight of around 250+ Afghan nationals, men, women and children all desperate to get their forms handed over and seen. People were being pushed around, thrown out of one queue and into another and it could have turned nasty very quickly. Thankfully it didn't, however for Louise it did bring to mind the novels 'the kite runner' and 'a thousand splendid suns', both set in Afghanistan, and she wondered what these peoples journey's had entailed...
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