I don’t look too bad.
I don’t have a mouth that promises wild wanton whispers like Angelina Jolie’s. It isn’t bird-like and terse and taut like Jennifer Aniston’s. When I’m not smiling, my mouth droops as if to say that the world isn’t a happy place. That’s about right anyway. My nose is short, pert and just. It comes to the point on most things. It keeps out of other people’s business (unless something happens to justify its mindful meddling). My eyes, evenly positioned on my face, voice my mind instantaneously. They don’t have a gate they open and shut when thoughts wander in unarmed (in the same way my mouth doesn’t have a spam filter when, really, it should). On my best days, my skin shines, sparkles and slithers like I’m on the late side of thirty.
Really, I don’t look too bad for nearing the half-century mark.
So enlighten me, please, won't you, as to why my passport photos tell me I need to check in at Guantanamo Bay?
Has anyone taken a passport photograph in the United States? At $7 a pop, an ugly passport photo shot on a polaroid camera which blinds you for life is at least twice the cost of a gallon of Berkeley Farms milk at my local Safeway. We've thought of every possible contraption in this country: the post-it note, the whitener, the velcro fastener, the PC, the iPod, iPhone. And just today Mr. Jobs put out the iPad on the shelves.
Won't someone please create an iPassport app so we click our mugs ourselves and create a passport photo that we like that makes consular officers treat us with more respect when we apply for a visa? Consular offices remind me of funeral homes. The people who go in there look mournful. They are talked to by people who conduct their business looking deathly serious. The visitors are dying to get out as quickly as they can. They spend the better part of the day inside the building and when they finally walk out, their faces are bathed in a curious glow of solemnity and relief.
As the owner of an Indian passport, I've spent the greater part of my life in consulates. Yesterday at a dreary consulate tucked inside a long hallway going to nowhere in a building in San Francisco, I was applying for a six-day tourist visa.
"Ma'am. Which hotel you stay at?" asks the lady to whom I turn in my papers.
"You need hotel information? Your website didn't say anything about it."
"I'm sorry. No hotel. No visa."
"But your website didn't say a thing. I don't have it."
"Sorry. No hotel. No visa."
"I didn't get appropriate answers to two emails. I called your offices in three states and I didn't get a response from any of them. Nothing, nothing, is in English except a six-line list of documents to bring which, by the way, did NOT, I repeat, NOT include hotel information."
"No hotel. No visa."
"I don't believe this. So I take all this trouble to follow through before my long drive from Saratoga to San Francisco, send you two emails for which I don't even get a decent response addressing my questions, call three offices to find out what else I may need to bring that the small English translation may have missed and all you can tell me is no hotel, no visa and that I have to come back all the way another day to give you the hotel information so you can grant me my visa?"
"Yes."
At about this time, another corpulent visa officer behind me tells me to shut up and settle down.
"Madame, when you came to America, did you have instructions in a language other than English? Tell me, yes or no. No, yes? So then, now you better settle down, okay?"
The officer tells me to use his computer to book a hotel. In seconds I have the name of a hotel after making a reservation online. The lady officer then gestures for me to go sit in a chair in front of a camera. Another dreadful picture to validate the dreadfulness of the picture I gave her. She stares at my photo and then at my face, shakes her head, pastes two stamps on the visa page, presses a seal on the stamps and waves me away. And, sure enough, every time I get a visa I walk out feeling I'm rising from the ashes. Strange, isn't it?
Back in the car, I look in my rear-view mirror. My eye-pencil has smudged under my eyes. My hair is out of place. But I don't look too bad. Not as bad as my passport photograph, at any rate.
I don’t have a mouth that promises wild wanton whispers like Angelina Jolie’s. It isn’t bird-like and terse and taut like Jennifer Aniston’s. When I’m not smiling, my mouth droops as if to say that the world isn’t a happy place. That’s about right anyway. My nose is short, pert and just. It comes to the point on most things. It keeps out of other people’s business (unless something happens to justify its mindful meddling). My eyes, evenly positioned on my face, voice my mind instantaneously. They don’t have a gate they open and shut when thoughts wander in unarmed (in the same way my mouth doesn’t have a spam filter when, really, it should). On my best days, my skin shines, sparkles and slithers like I’m on the late side of thirty.
Really, I don’t look too bad for nearing the half-century mark.
So enlighten me, please, won't you, as to why my passport photos tell me I need to check in at Guantanamo Bay?
Made for Guantanamo Bay?
Has anyone taken a passport photograph in the United States? At $7 a pop, an ugly passport photo shot on a polaroid camera which blinds you for life is at least twice the cost of a gallon of Berkeley Farms milk at my local Safeway. We've thought of every possible contraption in this country: the post-it note, the whitener, the velcro fastener, the PC, the iPod, iPhone. And just today Mr. Jobs put out the iPad on the shelves.
Won't someone please create an iPassport app so we click our mugs ourselves and create a passport photo that we like that makes consular officers treat us with more respect when we apply for a visa? Consular offices remind me of funeral homes. The people who go in there look mournful. They are talked to by people who conduct their business looking deathly serious. The visitors are dying to get out as quickly as they can. They spend the better part of the day inside the building and when they finally walk out, their faces are bathed in a curious glow of solemnity and relief.
As the owner of an Indian passport, I've spent the greater part of my life in consulates. Yesterday at a dreary consulate tucked inside a long hallway going to nowhere in a building in San Francisco, I was applying for a six-day tourist visa.
"Ma'am. Which hotel you stay at?" asks the lady to whom I turn in my papers.
"You need hotel information? Your website didn't say anything about it."
"I'm sorry. No hotel. No visa."
"But your website didn't say a thing. I don't have it."
"Sorry. No hotel. No visa."
"I didn't get appropriate answers to two emails. I called your offices in three states and I didn't get a response from any of them. Nothing, nothing, is in English except a six-line list of documents to bring which, by the way, did NOT, I repeat, NOT include hotel information."
"No hotel. No visa."
"I don't believe this. So I take all this trouble to follow through before my long drive from Saratoga to San Francisco, send you two emails for which I don't even get a decent response addressing my questions, call three offices to find out what else I may need to bring that the small English translation may have missed and all you can tell me is no hotel, no visa and that I have to come back all the way another day to give you the hotel information so you can grant me my visa?"
"Yes."
At about this time, another corpulent visa officer behind me tells me to shut up and settle down.
"Madame, when you came to America, did you have instructions in a language other than English? Tell me, yes or no. No, yes? So then, now you better settle down, okay?"
The officer tells me to use his computer to book a hotel. In seconds I have the name of a hotel after making a reservation online. The lady officer then gestures for me to go sit in a chair in front of a camera. Another dreadful picture to validate the dreadfulness of the picture I gave her. She stares at my photo and then at my face, shakes her head, pastes two stamps on the visa page, presses a seal on the stamps and waves me away. And, sure enough, every time I get a visa I walk out feeling I'm rising from the ashes. Strange, isn't it?
Back in the car, I look in my rear-view mirror. My eye-pencil has smudged under my eyes. My hair is out of place. But I don't look too bad. Not as bad as my passport photograph, at any rate.
Good one, Kalpana....It truly is tough for an Indian!!!! Hats off to all you guys who go through this. But in the end is it really worth it? And thats a question I've asked all my life till I've reached this point today where I say, I'm GLAD to be where I am!
Posted by: Kavita Shroff | 04 May 2010 at 06:08 AM
great article. No kalps with you Passport Pictures You can check in with any place of your Choice. You look adorable.
Posted by: Subha Chandran | 04 May 2010 at 07:36 AM
Dear Kalpana,
Most of us who were born here have not one iota of a notion what this is like.
I will share this with my daughter-in-law, who has a freshly-minted certificate of naturalization.
She should change her passport too.
Wonderful introduction, for me, to your blog and your writing.
Really a beautiful site.
All thebest
Posted by: Deborah Hirsch-Bezanis | 30 June 2010 at 09:29 PM
Fact: Noone looks as bad as their passport photographs or as good as their Facebook profile pictures!
Posted by: RT | 10 May 2012 at 01:45 PM