Passport?
The airline employee at the check-in counter looked irritated and impatient. In contrast, I was probably looking tired and confused. I hurriedly searched the overfull side pocket of my travel bag, but my passport was playing hard to get. Anxious minutes of wrestling with a clutter of miscellaneous these, those and a few assorted pandemic masks, and I whisked out my passport triumphantly.

Ticket?
Of course this was in another corner of the bag, and further fumbling later, I presented the required printout to her.

Aaer sooveeda?
What, now?… And then I got it. She was speaking Arabic. The woman was obviously Middle Eastern and of course she was talking in Arabic.

Turned out it was not Arabic after all.

‘Air Suvidha’ was yet another inessential form to be filled out to appease Indian bureaucracy. But this was no ordinary inessential form. Not the kind of form you could fill out using a cheap pen borrowed from a fellow passenger while sitting in a comfortable corner of the waiting lounge. No sir. A form that tested human perseverance and patience, air suvidha had to be done online. And it was probably designed by frustrated, unpromoted Indian officials with the sole purpose of unleashing panic and pandemonium amongst unsuspecting air travelers.

It was 5.00 am at Heathrow Airport. Well, it was 5 am in the rest of England too, but the rest of England was still sleeping. But not me. I was standing in line to board a 9 am flight. The early hour probably explained why the airline employee was irritated and impatient. She looked like she would rather be anywhere else but here. But anywhere else would not pay her salary, so she was at the check in counter, coffee cup on desk and curt expression on face. The curtness extended to her voice too. She shooed me off with impatient instructions, probably hoping the next customer in line would not be as ignorant and disorganized as me. ‘It will take a while, go sit in one of those chairs, go to the Delhi Airports website, and fill out air suvidha.’

No problem, I thought, I could do this easily. After all, I have filled out a few immigration forms before. But how wrong I was.

As mentioned earlier, I was feeling tired and confused. You see, I had spent a sleepless night at Heathrow, waiting patiently for the check in counter to open. Since I am not a morning person, the thought of getting up early and taking a frenzied trip through unpredictable London traffic during the wee hours had filled me with dread. This dread was further intensified by the fact that wee hours were when notorious insomniacs became active in London. That’s when Mr. Jack liked to do his ripping. And Mr. Holmes played footsie with criminals in the-game’s-afoot games. So long story short, I had gone to Heathrow around 7 pm the previous day. After aimless wanderings I had managed to find a little hidden lounge, apparently a parking lot for wheelchairs kept in readiness for the arrival of handicapped passengers the next morning. By the way, wheelchairs are a bit more comfortable than airport lounge chairs.

But back to that mind numbing sport, Air Suvidha Filling. I was not a laptop owner yet, so I had to tackle the wiles of the Delhi Airports Authority armed with an old iphone. At first glance, air suvidha appeared innocently bureaucratic. Name, flight number, seat number… briefly wondered why Delhi authorities wanted to know where I had been sitting, were they creating passenger profiles or planning a raffle draw using seat numbers?

I soon realized air suvidha took uninitiated travelers from kindergarten quizzing to what-the-heck levels in a few brief steps. I soon came to a puzzling question. PNR number. My mind went blank. But then I realized they were talking about PNR/100, the formula to find interest earned on investment! Principal into Number of years into Rate of interest by 100 equals the interest rate. And hey presto, you would know the earnings on your investment. How nice of the Delhi airport folks, they were hinting you should invest your money instead of wasting it on air travel. After all, a prepandemic return ticket to the US was only about Rs 90,000. Now that same trip would cost you more than Rs 2 lakhs. Worth doing a PNR/100 on 2 lakhs, eh?

Then came other confusing questions. Took me a while to figure out the difference between ‘First airport of entry’ and ‘First airport of entry state / union territory’. For example, if Delhi Airport was your ‘First airport of entry’, then New Delhi was your ‘First airport of entry state / union territory’. You might think answering either one would be enough. But no, the Delhi airports authority has prepared air suvidha for all contingencies. For instance, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has leased out eight airports under Public-Private Partnership (PPP). Of these, seven airports are managed by Adani Enterprises Limited, namely Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru. So if Mr. Adani decides to rename Thiruvananthapuram airport as Ahmedabad Airport 2, after his favourite city, things could get really confusing. Or what if an airport is right on the border of two states? So ‘First airport of entry state / union territory’ would depend on which runway you land on.

Here’s another puzzle. Be honest now, do you know what a Tehsil is? I could figure out things like Destination House No., Destination Street / Village, Destination City, Destination Pincode, etc. But what the heck is a Destination Tehsil? Later, Google told me it was just a fancy name for Taluk or District. So why not just print taluk or district? When you are filling a form in a foreign airport early in the morning after a sleeping night, all you want to do is break a few bureaucratic bones for creating such a needlessly difficult form. I just had to sympathize with those unenlightened foreign tourists who try to wade through Tehsilly Indian red tape.

But air suvidha was not done with poor foreign tourists yet. They had to list a mobile number in India. How could foreigners who are just going to see the Taj Mahal or laze on the beaches of Goa be expected to have an Indian phone number?

Till now, the Delhi airports authority was just having a little fun with you. But now came the real test of character. Are you the kind of person who will boldly face adversity under pressure? Then just try uploading two documents online. We defy you.

(to be continued)…