Just when you thought it was safe to fly again…
We are in an online era. We do a lot of tasks on the internet, from buying unneeded things to paying overpriced bills to protecting our identities from hackers. So when asked to fill out an online immigration form, the average person would say, ‘yeah I could do that’.

And as an average person, I too thought I could do my digital duties with due diligence. So when air suvidha said ‘upload passport page and vaccination certificate’, I said no problem, easy peasy. A lot of people were doing it, and so could I. But I soon realized this task was not meant for the average person at all. You had to be a competent computer commando to play the air suvidha game.

With great overconfidence, I clicked a picture of my passport page with an old iphone and tried to upload it. A prompt error message said ‘file too large’. So I went back to the saved image and reduced the size. Again ‘file too large’. So I made the file as teeny weeny as possible, but no go, still too large. I was confused. I read the form again to figure out what I was doing wrong, if I had left anything unread between the digital lines. But no helpful clue there. So hesitantly I walked up to an airline employee who was busy checking if passengers were standing in the right queues. She ignored me as long as possible, but when she noticed I was looking dazed and confused, she decided to finally help me. Upon hearing my problem, she offered a valuable suggestion. She said in a confidential whisper, “we are not really supposed to help passengers with these forms, but you have to change the file to pdf.”

So someone please explain this to me. Behind every successful computer program in the world, there are surely a few Indian programmers. And these programs are successful not just because they work well, but also because they generate precise error reports when things go wrong. For instance, if anyone sends a space shuttle to dock with an orbiting space station, and things don’t go according to plan, a screen would immediately flash an error text. ‘Warning, module interfacing nozzle not aligned to connecting dock lock, manual override option activated’. Or if you are buying underwear online and your order is not being processed, you get a text gently reminding you that you forgot to fill in your waist size. And when you do input your waist size, there will pop up another little error text to inform you that currently there are no fake leopard-skin underwear in your rather generous waist size.

So why doesn’t air suvidha tell you anything other than ‘file too large’? The only explanation I could think of was this. Uploading passport pages in a pdf format is some kind of well kept national secret.

Now I started panicking. ‘Sir, you will not be allowed to board the flight if air suvidha is not filled out’, the airline employee had warned me. And I had already been struggling with the form for two or more hours. Though I had gone to the airport a day early to beat the traffic, apparently I could not beat bureaucracy.

So I had to resort to cheating. I decided to outsource the project to Gopi.
India is full of bright young techies who eat dinner with one hand and perform digital duties with the other. And Gopi was one such person. Luckily he was not too busy when I whatsapped him from Heathrow. And though he was not at home, he had his laptop with him. I poured out my air suvidha woes, and he helpfully asked me to send the passport image so he could convert it to pdf. He did it and sent me back the pdf-ed file before I could say ‘**** Delhi Airports Authority’.

Though I have heard this expression before, only now I understood the meaning of ‘size does matter’. At last the file had been changed from a big nasty jpeg to a nice little pdf, and I could surely take care of the uploading part. But no. Don’t know why, but air suvidha was not accepting my pdf passport page. Back to busy Gopi, who asked me to forward the Delhi Airports Authority link. Pulling up air suvidha on his laptop, Gopi impatiently shot out questions and I gave him the appropriate answers. There was a brief pause as Gopi efficiently uploaded the passport and vaccination certificate pdfs to air suvidha. And the form was really and truly completed and submitted online.

I heaved a sigh of relief. And said a great big thank you to Jan Koum, the guy who had invented WhatsApp.

But I sighed too soon. When you submit air suvidha, you receive a confirmation email. This has to be printed and given to the airline people or they will not let you board the flight. But I forgot that my hotmail account had been misbehaving the past few weeks, probably because I was not using my home computer. But Gopi had cleverly sent me a copy of the acknowledgement number he had received upon submitting air suvidha. By now, most passengers had boarded the flight. Only a few irresponsible people like me were left, most of them either goofing off or buying booze at the duty free shop. It was just half an hour to take off, and I was grudgingly allowed to board, based on the air suvidha submission acknowledgement number.

All this happened in May 2022, when international travelers still had to pay penance for sins from a past life by filling out air suvidha. But recently I heard filling out this form had become easier, and now you don’t have to upload passport or other pages. And more recently, I heard from a lucky passenger that all karmic sins are forgiven for people traveling from the West, and they need not fill out air suvidha at all.

But do you really think international travel will be easier now that covid is behind us? Air suvidha might have taken a leave of absence, but surely other red tape reforms will follow. And will leave us knotted up in a tie that binds us to our beloved Indian bureaucracy.