Today we awoke at a better time + took ourselves down to the Immigration Office, where we hoped to kill 2 birds with the one stone, obtain both visas + road permits (permission to leave Bangladesh by land.) It was our first real taste of Indian bureaucracy – alright, Bangladesh bureaucracy, but they’ve both sprung from the same womb – + was, from what we’ve heard, a typical experience. Forms, passports, were shuffled back + forth between the various offices of the establishment, while we were told simply to wait, only very occasionally being called upon to perform some minor role – generally, it would be signing a form. The desks in all the offices were piled high with stacks of dog-eared files + loose pieces of paper, the latter being held down by round glass paperweights to prevent them from being blown away by the busily whirring fans overhead. They were just about the only things that were moving with any energy. The human toilers pushed their pens slowly, working their way thro’ their allotted red tape without enthusiasm, as if they realised their work was entirely useless. The more intelligent ones must have, of course.
Eventually, Val decided to attempt to stir the pot a little, + marched off to the place we had last seen our passports. They didn’t have them, they told her, but if she would care to go to Rm 9, the gentleman there would be able to help. At Rm 9, the gentleman was polite – yes, he had seen the passports, yes, he had signed them, yes, he had now returned them to the end office, where she could now collect them. Back to the end office, the one she had started at. “The man in room no 9 says he has finished with them now, + that you have them.” “No, they are not here. They are still with him.” Back to no 9. “The people in the end office say you still have the passports.” “They are mistaken. I have returned them.” Val went thro’ this a couple more times, but eventually stormed back to where I was waiting, furious at the ping-pong ball treatment. “It’s your turn, “ she snapped. “They both insist the other one has got it, and I can’t get anywhere!”
So, without too much optimism (I generally over-rate other people’s intelligence, + think that when they say something, they know what they are talking about) I went down to see the man in Room no 9 – he had seemed the more sympathetic. It proved a wise choice. I said nothing, merely sat down at the back of the room. The man there called in a colleague, presumably one from ”the room at the end”, + spoke to him firmly, tho’ not angrily, in Bengali. I was then escorted to the by-now famous room, taken inside, + asked to sit down. The gentleman then went to a large cupboard like a wardrobe, + took from it our 2 passports – I had to scrawl, “Rec’d – 2 passports” + my signature on the back of one of the forms, then, to cover his embarrassment, I imagine, he asked if I came from Bradford. He had a brother-in-law there. Then, abruptly, he shook hands with me + I left, with visa + road permit.
Val was convinced I had succeeded where she had not because of the authority afforded my maleness in a Muslim country. I pretended it was because it was because of my greater negotiating powers + force of personality, but privately, I am sure I provided the tiniest little push to send the rock hurtling over the edge, when she had performed all the hard work of shoving it laboriously up the slope.
The morning was now almost over. We took a rickshaw to the tourist office, where they tried to be helpful, but were so long-winded in their explanations that it was difficult to take everything in. The rain returned now, so fierce that we couldn’t even think of returning to the hotel until it eased, even by rickshaw. So we sat in the foyer of the Sheraton Hotel for an hour or so. I suppose our white skin will not by itself be sufficient to gain us automatic entry to such places. The rain eventually eased by just enough to allow us to get back, but not to venture out again, so we spent the rest of the afternoon in our room.
At evening time we ran into Gordon + Annabelle, 2 of our group in Burma, + went out with them, plus Chas + Dave, the Americans, to the Beijing Hotel for dinner. As a social occasion it was alright, but the food was indifferent, bland after the real thing. All the others were leaving late tonight by various means for the east of the country. We plan to go there too, but had been warned off travelling tonight – a big Muslim holiday, Eid-al-Fitr, is coming up the day after tomorrow, + apparently huge chunks of Dacca’s population will be returning home for it.
I think we would almost have been disappointed if the bureaucracy had been efficient, such reports that we have heard of the Dickensian pace of it; suffice it to say we were not disappointed at all. Other than that, it was enduring the rain and the floods which came soon after, the infrastructure being unable to cope.
