Getting the Visa

July 31st, 2009.

Off to NY to apply for the visa. Apparently in recent years, the Indian consulate has outsourced its visa application process (go figure). So Blake fills out his application on line and gets an appointment with TRAVISA for friday, July 31st, while Arpana who has a PIO card (Person of Indian Origin) gets her project clearance paperwork (7 copies of several documents) to be dropped off at the Indian consulate - she does not require a visa per Fulbright. Instructions are fairly clear so we do not expect there to be too many complications.

Blake drops off his paperwork and things are going fine.... Its a different story for Arpana. She is at the consulate at 9am waiting to drop off the papers only to find that they do not know what to do with her or her application. She is told she needs a name in order to have things processed. At around 9:30am she is sent to the Education Department of the consulate where she waits for another hour or so before she is told that she should go back down to the consul office to drop off her papers - Tell them that Mr. Bajaj has asked them to accept the application. She has a name now!! (By this time Blake is at the consulate and joins Arpana in her adventures of the consulate). Arpana tries again to submit her application and is told that she has the wrong form now. Despite attempts to inform the official that we have the right form, she does not accept the application so off we are to an internet cafe to check to see if there is another form... but now - there is no other form... so back we are at the consualte but this time, Arpana goes directly to Mr. Bajaj and after about a hour she gets to see him only to be told that 15 days prior there was a change in policy -- despite being a PIO, she needs a visa. So she is asked to fill out a visa application to get an emmergency visa but then is told she cannot get the visa on that day -- they have to send the information to India and will get back to her on when they can approve her project. In the mean time, we wait for a couple more hours to get Blake's passport. We arrive at TRAVISA at 5:30 only to be told that Blake's passport was flagged and that he will not be getting a visa until Arpana's paperwork is cleared!!! we could have blown our top.. and we did on the way back to Cedi's. ugh!!! the trials and tribulations of visa. Well, we finally got our visa on August 10th!