“Blessed are the meek
The one’s whom God will save!
O turn the other cheek
— I love your aftershave...”
From The Book of Gadarene
by Bachchoo

At the tender age of eight I was entrusted to Miss Sangha, our Parsi piano teacher, who stood behind us as we played Bach’s The Well Tempered Klavier and kept time by banging on our shoulders. “One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three and rest two-three...” she would recite as she pounded them. Bach’s compilation of piano pieces was intended to make pupils love the piano and get a taste for music. It didn’t work on me.
The trials of a journey often put one off the destination. So it was with Miss Sangha, myself and the piano. The process of getting there sometimes threatens to put me off my goal. I often feel that about flying somewhere. I hate the hassle of getting to airports, going through the motions, however mechanized, of checking in, being examined by security guards, submitting passports, walking to the gate and queuing for everything. The tribulations of travel start long before the day.
My most recent trial is even in progress as I write. I have been very kindly invited to the Karachi Literary Festival (KLF) this February. I have to get my own visa for Pakistan.
My Pakistani friends said they were surprised I had been invited. They weren’t even being rude about my qualifications.
“So what’s surprising?”
“You’re Indian.”
“So? Vikram Seth went last time,” I said.
“Yes but this is tit for tat, isn’t it?”
My friend explained. An Indian soldier had allegedly been beheaded by the Pakistani Army in a skirmish at the border and India professed itself outraged. This has caused the BJP to demand that the Jaipur Festival cancel any invitations to Pakistani writers. In retaliation doesn’t it follow that some Pakistani party will demand that the KLF ditch “Indian” writers.
This was all news to me.
Nevertheless, I waited a couple of days for the ditching email. None has come so far. So I decided to apply for a visa. An Internet search eventually presented me with application forms which I could print and, again after googling (Yes, it is now an acceptable verb!) “Pakistani Visa requirements” and being referred to a hundred diversions, I got a list of what they would want.
The application form asked me for my parents’ names, places of birth, nationalities and to attach photographs. So far so good. I remember the US form asking me if I had AIDS and the Australian form asking me if I had any criminal convictions, to which I replied that I didn’t realise it was still a requirement. (The lady at Australian High Commission wasn’t amused.) I put together the entire pack of required documents.
The Pakistan High Commission has outsourced its visa application process to a firm called Gerry’s. The name suggests an ice-cream or coffee parlour rather than a Pakistani visa depot.
I got to Gerry’s and waited in a three-hour queue only to be told that the letter of invitation from the KLF was not adequate proof of sponsorship and that I should submit a photocopy of my host’s passport. The lady who perused my application didn’t accept my profession as a ‘writer’. She wanted proof.
How does one prove that? Did anyone ask Shakespeare or Dickens? Would I have to wait three hours again?
I then recalled that in the letter of invitation, there was a reference to a grandee at the High Commission who would expedite the visa. Nepotism, the eternal answer in South Asia. She must have thought that people of Indian origin are made to cross hell and high water and forced to wait months before being told that their application has been refused. This is, of course, the mirror image of what happens to people with Pakistani connections who apply for visas to India.
I got to this personage after endless phone calls and he sent me down to the basement and emphatically said I didn’t need any more documents. I waited a further hour, paid £140 (the application form said £44, but I wasn’t going to bargain at this point) and entrusted my passport and papers to a gentleman who said he’d call me on my mobile when the visa was ready.
It came the next day. Wah! Now it’s true that India doesn’t send terrorists across the ocean to kill innocent people in Karachi, but still, the caution exercised by India in granting visas to people with connections to Pakistan is exaggerated and unthoughtout.
I now anticipate going in and out of Karachi airport and comparing it the experience to Mumbai or Delhi.
I have never understood the point of these checks, especially those imposed on travellers out of the country and I have one request and one suggestion. I’d like to know, as would the nation, how many terrorists or criminals have on average been detected by these checks at airports?
I put the question to one of our senior officials in the Indian Home Ministry once. He smiled.
“They may not catch anyone yaar, but think of the employment it provides!”
So here’s my suggestion: Why not increase the numbers of checking policemen ten-fold. It will give employment to ten times more personnel and the airports will have to employ people to expand their departure halls ten-fold to accommodate their desks, giving rise to more employment, albeit for the duration of the building.
The benefit to passengers should be that their queues will be cut to one-tenth their length — but don’t count on it, I am sure there will be some way of getting round that and keeping the janta que