I have a strong suspicion that peep holes with their concave lenses were made with the sole purpose to make the person on the other side look like an alien. A cruel joke on the person on both sides of the door, yet open the door we must each time the bell rings. So, when I peeped through the peep hole of the front door and saw an oblong face of a stern looking white man staring at me angrily I felt very sure that this was foreign invasion waiting at my front door. The doorbell was ringing insistently, and I could hear a voice telling me to open the door quickly for I cannot have the visa officer standing on our welcome written foot mat forever. What if he gets angry and marches off, my dream within a dream to visit his country will end here and now. The bell was getting louder and a strong hand started jerking me awake from my early morning fearful dream. It was my husband asking me to switch off the alarm I had set at an unearthly hour for a 9 am visa interview at the US consulate. Yes, it was a nightmare indeed, from which I was trying to escape for some time. Like my many other phobias (lizards, cockroach, barking dogs, crowded places, angry people) getting a visa for a country was a latest addition. The more I thought about it the more fearful it was getting in my mind.

A few hours after my scary dream I find myself standing in a serpentine queue of men, women, and children of all age groups. The Gujrati lady ahead of me with her sidha palla sari and her hair in a small bun at her nape or the priest in a white robe, or the potbellied business man, they all looked relaxed and confident. But the butterflies in my tummy would not stop fluttering. I wondered at the number of people wanting a visa, and most of them did not look like tourists or even like people who travel a lot. Neither did they look worried or apprehensive. Why is it then that I am so anxious? I start to think for the first time that perhaps my building sense of fear and anxiety is a fear of rejection.

In my sweaty palm I am clutching on to a fat file which has been organized very meticulously and cross checked umpteen times, the file contains every relevant documentation of my very irrelevant identity. I am as nervous as I have never been before, my children have scolded me for this unreasonable behaviour and have categorically stated that they are not entertaining any conversation on my ‘imagined fear’. I have been a tourist before, I have visited countries for its beauty, for its history, for its untold stories of war and love, but never had to give an interview to a foreigner with an accent trying to explain my purpose of visit. This time I wanted to travel to a country where my daughter stays, to visit a foreign land to see the batch of 2017 graduate from a certain college, and amongst those thousands of students passing out I wanted to see my daughter’s happy face. And to be a witness of that moment I needed the permission of that country to visit their land. .

My endless ‘ifs ‘ kept playing on my mind till I am face to face with a smiling face on the other side of the ‘window’.  A pleasant looking bespectacled young lady (not an oblong stern face of a white man from my dream) greeted me and looked into the screen in front of her (my life’s story on her screen, I tell myself), she looked up at me and asked the easiest question of my life ” what do you do”? Oh, I could have flooded her with ‘ I do ‘, ‘ I do’, but, lest she thinks I am weird, or perhaps ” I am …” would have been a better answer, I simply smiled and said that I am not a professional. She gave me a big smile (at this point I felt my heart in my mouth) and said “have a great trip “. Hello, am I surprised, happy, relieved? Of course, I felt all this and all at once! I came out grinning ear to ear still holding on to my file (which was unopened) feeling quite like a winner in a race!  Yes, that was how ridiculously silly and overwhelming was my joy at having passed this visa test.

Thus began my journey to the foreign land. Armed with the visa power, I make haste in preparations pertaining to the journey. Over the phone I am told that it is spring / early summer, so I shouldn’t pack all my woollies into my 46 kilograms of permissible weight of baggage. Oh, this part of the preparation was easy, I bought clothes, and more clothes, and then another round of clothes (just to be sure). I packed shoes of all style, the silent father of the daughter had a few extra creases on his brow but maintained his stoic silence and patience. In reality I was packing for my daughter, the girl who had set this whole journey in motion. The girl who would now see her parents and brother sitting in the left most corner of the twenty fifth row of the convocation hall, sitting tall, craning their necks, looking at the huge screen in front, and waiting to catch a glimpse of her on her special moment, special day.

The travel day arrived soon and we reached the airport well in time to join endless queues once again. I like airports, the activities happening in the airport, busy people walking purposefully, the smartly dressed airport staff, I like to sit back with my boarding pass, an unopened book / iPad and observe people around me. The naughty child, harried mother, unmindful father, old grandma in wheel chair, each scene like a screen play in my mind with a story spun around each character, I write my book of stories borrowing a page from their life. The boarding is announced and as I am boarding the airplane I look at the extra wide, extra leg space, and the extra soft blankets and pillows that is provided for the first class or business class passengers. Of course, I don’t stare, for even my economy class sensibilities tell me that it is rude to stare. I am also aware that all those ‘extras ‘ that I was eyeing at comes with a big sum of ‘extra ‘ on the ticket. And that settles my envy and my body in my not so spacious seat, which also one has to book with some extra, to get the choice of window and aisle.

I settle down with my book, glass of juice and a screen in front of me. I don’t sleep well in flights. After midnight I take a stroll along the aisle to stretch my legs. I look at the sleeping passengers, most of them at some stage of sleep and awakening, with their eye mask, heads tilted, blanket covered bodies in the dim blue light, they look so alike, almost like aliens, and this time I am not peeping through any concave lens. I get the feeling of being in a space craft, of being transported into the vast emptiness of space. To shake off my eerie feeling I walk towards the back of the aircraft, exchange pleasantries with the in-flight crew, take a glass of water and return to my seat. The buzz of the big machine and my own fatigue soon lulls me into sleep. When day breaks I wake up with a strong sense of displacement followed by a gradual understanding that I am floating in the sky in an airplane. I peep through the oval window (No convex or concave lenses this time), smilingly I wonder whether my newly acquired visa power allows me to fly over any country, any continent, any space at all times, forever!

Link to Part II