Guarding the borders

I stood in utter exasperation at the transit immigration counter. Not definitely from the days when armour clad, sword brandishing giants secured the borders, but here was a grim looking aurat looking me down through her eye glasses, through the bullet proof windows. The lady had still not finished deciding whether my passport was genuine and if I was a terrorist or not. This was the immigration counter at the Stockholm departure terminal. She turned the well worn blue passport with visas from so many countries in it, back and forth, she consulted her companion manning the next window, she looked at me, she looked at the computer terminal, she showed the passport under her UV lamp, she tapped more keys and she looked at me again for the 5th time. Then she said lamely ’you know, the computers are so slow’…I am sure she entered my name into some terrorist database and was waiting to see if bells rang & red lights came on! Why? Because I was brown and had black hair and a moustache??? Anyway after a few minutes during which I stood and cursed mankind, she waved me on..

Why me? What is wrong with my passport? Yes, I admit that the quality of the Indian passport at that time was probably a bit lower compared to the ones issued by others, with the picture pasted, the details handwritten and then the whole page laminated. After some years, one end starts to peel off or an air bubble is seen in the lamination. What happens is that this triggers alarms in the minds of such immigration clerks who have been entrusted with the responsibility of determining the bonafide and strategic plans of the unfortunate passenger standing in front of the cubicle. In my case this really happened. One of my earlier booklets (as it is called) was getting pretty old and I was at Kimpo airport Seoul. The girl looked at me, back to the passport, back to me, and then decided that she did not like me. She put her long and manicured fingernail under the corner that had the photograph and lifted it. I was shocked to silence, but the dictum is, when in doubt, never question of argue with immigration staff. What did she do that for? Was it to see if it comes off, or to see if the photo was switched? Well, in this case, it did peel a little above her nails. She finally decided that I was harmless; the passport was OK and stamped the entry visa. But since that trip and till I changed my ‘booklet’ I was harassed by so many immigration staff due to that slightly peeled off corner.

The other day my friend was travelling via Frankfurt to UK. The airlines seized his passport and kept it under safe custody with the pilot till the plane reached Heathrow. Now what did he do wrong? Nothing whatsoever, his ticket was OK with a return fare, his visa was OK, he had money to support his business trip…but then the airline confiscated his passport (they felt his face looked fishy!!) so that he would not destroy it enroute and land in UK as a ‘no nationality’ asylum seeker.

If only we had the high quality or biometric passports, if only we had a better international standing, if only all immigration staff were better trained, be it in India or elsewhere… If only there were no visas, and travel was borderless ……If only there was no racial profiling…but I hate passports, visas and all of that. Just because I am born in one country, another determines if I am eligible to pass by their land, what is right in this?

No wonder I spend time studying and thinking about the time when people risked life and limb to see and grovel (like the Vasco de Gama who tried to bribe the Calicut Zamorin with petty gifts and got told off) at the ‘Proud and rich land of the Ophir’ - a time when the balance of trade with India became very unfavourable to Rome since large amounts of gold and silver were shipped to the East to pay for the costly imported commodities. This is confirmed by the elder Pliny, who complained that there was "no year in which India did not drain the Roman Empire of a hundred million sesterces (1,000,000 pounds)....so dearly do we pay for our luxury and our women."

Oh! Come on now; stop thinking like John Lennon did, when he wrote & sang ‘Imagine…’

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

Utopia does not exist…Border security does…. Walls & fences do… Bureaucracy does…

And so, now you know why I enjoyed the Movie 'Terminal' starring Tom Hanks.

P.S. – Actually this was written some years ago, with a plan to refine it and submit it for publication, but was never done. I dredged it out from an old 32MB (ha! They existed those days and were state of the art hot stuff) flash drive that I was going to discard and touched it up a bit.

Seoul Incheon airport pic - Unlawyer's photoblog