The retro phone kicks into gear, I hear the metaphysical cogs whirring, the bureaucracy has woken from its deep slumber.

Ping a SMS/Text arrives:

Your application with file no xxx has been granted on a Pre Police Verification basis. Received on 30/03/16

Passport printing initiated for your File No xxx You will receive SMS once your passport is printed. Received on 31/03/16

There is a sudden surge of activity after over two whole weeks of SMS lethargy (its maybe down to the hot weather and the Ministry has fallen into a vat of Lethagy Air – check previous entry in bloglet)

For one more time, (I hope) I log into:

Passport Seva, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India

I’m feeling nostalgic, have I become institutionalised and will I miss it? I imagine in some weird science fiction way that everytime I log on someone in the Ministry notices and nudges their colleague to say: “look here that English guy is visiting the site again, he is persistently annoying, what else can we do to wind him up!?”

What date is it? Surely as it’s not the 1st April it isn’t a joke!

Now I wonder what to do next.

NO NO NO, don’t apply for fresh passport AGAIN you nutter.

I think I’ll view Saved/Submitted Applications and then maybe

check the Status Tracker

Phew.

We wait with baited breath.

It still has to arrive

and our friends….?

Ok we admit it, we gave in and we asked for help.