If THAT is my passport photo, should I be checking in at Guantanamo Bay?
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.
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Jason D. Hill
Kind of Blue
Verbal Remedy AKA Denise
Lea Lane
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Jess D. Facts
Salon.com
Comments
Hahahahahah! Every single time. Any visa office or any border crossing I feel like a criminal. I search my brain for any mistake ...anything .....anything ...did I take the candy in the duty free what what??? Sheeeeesh. Even in India. I feel like a miserable cockroach. I say this has to be acknowledged as planet earth some day and all this nonsense has to go.
Maybe I can dream ey???? Well written ...love your style.