Visa Matters

I am beginning to see a lot of humour in this situation of late.

Being Indian, I need a visa to get out of my front door. And I am generally not surprised to see an immigration officer eye me up and down before deciding to stamp my passport. Oh, and of course I better smile through the process.

I have had many bones to pick on this whole issue of visa and immigration. In fact, I was an angry young man for many months last year. Talk about visa and I’d begin fuming. That’s changed. Maybe I’ve grown up. Maybe not. I’ve just come to accept it as it is.

There are many obvious reasons to be pissed off with the system. It is not based on merit. Far from it actually. It’s probably the most legalized racist system that exists. Easy passage is directly proportional to the lightness of skin. The process is also age old, complicated and incredibly annoying. And it took me a good year or so to make peace with it and accept it.

I have even gone through the whole process intellectualizing what the right immigration system should be. That phase has gone too.

Right now, I look at my 17 point check list to get myself a Schengen business visa and grin from ear to ear. Of course, there’s the voice in my head that laughs out loud and says ‘Here we go again.’

There are some things we control and some things we don’t control. For things we control, it’s best we think and act. For things we don’t control, finding humour is probably the best thing we can do.