Last week I got to spend some quality time on US soil... in Chennai.
Andi and I weren't paying attention and almost ran out of passport pages. As my visa expires early Feb we need to go back to the FRRO soon, which means we didn't have time to add pages by mail. On short notice I booked a one-day round-trip flight to Chennai and spent the morning at the US Consulate.
(If anyone is reading this for tips on getting pages added to a US passport in Chennai, the process is really quite easy. First, make an appointment on-line here. I got the 10:45 and 11:15 appointments (one for me-as-Andi's-representative and one for me-as-me (the instructions say that each family member needs their own appointment; I wasn't sure if this applied for family members who weren't going to be physically present or not, so I made two appointments; nobody complained)), and so booked a later in the morning flight out of B'lore: departing at 7:50 with an 8:35 arrival which was about right on the timing, although if I had known what I was doing I could have taken an 8:30 flight and still been OK. The Chennai airport is fairly easy to navigate; or at least it was easy to find the pre-pay counter for FastTrack cabs where a one-way ride to the consulate was Rs500. Actually finding the cab was a little harder; "over there" isn't as helpful as you might think. With the assistance of some other, more experienced FastTrack travelers I was able to understand that "over there" meant the far right end of the pick-up zone in front of the terminal. With a bit of traffic it was a 40 minute ride, and the cab driver mostly knew where the consulate was, although he didn't know that there are two different entrances and three different lines. But then neither did the four security guards that I asked. After making it to the front of the wrong line I was finally told that the US passport holders entrance is up the street and around the corner. At this door security was quick and efficient. Since this was my first visit to a US embassy or consulate, I was surprised to have to check my phone and bag at security and was glad that I have kept my driver's license in my wallet even though I haven't needed it for two years as they did require a second form of ID to get through security. After security it was about a twenty minute wait until I was called, only a few minutes after my scheduled appointment. I was getting pages for both our passports, and so the process took about 45 minutes, 44 of which were spent waiting. The waiting room is not bad, and there is also a library upstairs which has better chairs. And just that easily I had our new thicker passports and was heading home. Getting an auto outside the consulate was easy enough - the first rick I flagged down was willing to take me to the airport. I didn't see any empty cabs drive by so if you want a cab both ways you should do that ahead of time with FastTrack at the airport. It was a little quicker ride in the afternoon with less traffic. At the airport the meter read Rs180, and he asked for Rs300. I split the difference and was back at the airport plenty early. Not knowing how long the process would take or how far the consulate is from the airport I booked the early evening return flight (departing 5:15). There was a 3:00 flight that I could have made, but if I did it again I probably wouldn't book a return any earlier than that. (To recap: for a 10:45 appointment and 2 passports, the 8:35 arrival was the right flight for arriving and the 3:00 flight would have been good for leaving.) The Chennai airport isn't much, but there is an OK if overpriced buffet and a few snack stands. And that was my day.)
The continued feeling of dislocation coupled with the sheer strangeness of our lives now (a strangeness that is more properly described as an everyday realization of the absolute privilege we live through) still occasions moments of self-reflection. Waiting in the airport for my return flight I realized how comfortable in the world I have become.
I had (as Andi likes to remind me: "Was it just like The OC?") a typical suburban, conservative Christian, Southern California childhood. One of the unintended effects of this childhood for me was that the world (as a theological, demographic, and socio-economic category) was a sinful, scary, and dangerous place. Inspired by the elementary school kids taking public transportation to school I started to get over this fear in San Francisco. Living in India for two years maybe I have gone too far in overcoming the fear: I landed in Chennai with an appointment at the consulate and the appointment confirmation slip, a demand draft for the fees, a book to read on the flight, the wonder drug Avomine, and the advice to get a FastCab at the airport. OC-Alan would have confirmed the appointment three times and gotten directions from the consulate at least twice. He also would have pre-booked a cab and a back-up taxi and memorized the route from the airport to the consulate, because you know those cabbies are just going to try and kidnap you and take you to a hotel to steal your kidney's! India-Alan simply got off the plane and started walking in the direction that seemed right with the hope that people are generally nice and you can usually tell when they're not; knowing that when things are new and complicated the best thing to do is stop and watch how the other thousands of people are doing it and follow along; knowing that if things are really that hard, it's OK to ask - sometimes you might get an answer, sometimes not, but if not, it's OK to ask again.
It is difficult to know how this experience is changing us, how it is entering into who we will become. But it is clear that because of our dislocation and the strangeness of this living each change comes with a realization; in this case, the realization that my growing comfort is conditioned, at least in part, on the wild and radical discrepancies in the precarity of life, on the many privileges that allow this dislocation and strangeness in the first place.
Maybe my professional disciplinary training has taken so that I will eventually simply fold this realization back into a knowledge, coming to articulate the logic by which the discourse of a victimized faithful remnant works to dissimulate power and privilege. The harder thing, and what will take longer to live out, will be allowing this realization home, as a realization learning to live with our privilege in a new way.
Andi and I weren't paying attention and almost ran out of passport pages. As my visa expires early Feb we need to go back to the FRRO soon, which means we didn't have time to add pages by mail. On short notice I booked a one-day round-trip flight to Chennai and spent the morning at the US Consulate.
(If anyone is reading this for tips on getting pages added to a US passport in Chennai, the process is really quite easy. First, make an appointment on-line here. I got the 10:45 and 11:15 appointments (one for me-as-Andi's-representative and one for me-as-me (the instructions say that each family member needs their own appointment; I wasn't sure if this applied for family members who weren't going to be physically present or not, so I made two appointments; nobody complained)), and so booked a later in the morning flight out of B'lore: departing at 7:50 with an 8:35 arrival which was about right on the timing, although if I had known what I was doing I could have taken an 8:30 flight and still been OK. The Chennai airport is fairly easy to navigate; or at least it was easy to find the pre-pay counter for FastTrack cabs where a one-way ride to the consulate was Rs500. Actually finding the cab was a little harder; "over there" isn't as helpful as you might think. With the assistance of some other, more experienced FastTrack travelers I was able to understand that "over there" meant the far right end of the pick-up zone in front of the terminal. With a bit of traffic it was a 40 minute ride, and the cab driver mostly knew where the consulate was, although he didn't know that there are two different entrances and three different lines. But then neither did the four security guards that I asked. After making it to the front of the wrong line I was finally told that the US passport holders entrance is up the street and around the corner. At this door security was quick and efficient. Since this was my first visit to a US embassy or consulate, I was surprised to have to check my phone and bag at security and was glad that I have kept my driver's license in my wallet even though I haven't needed it for two years as they did require a second form of ID to get through security. After security it was about a twenty minute wait until I was called, only a few minutes after my scheduled appointment. I was getting pages for both our passports, and so the process took about 45 minutes, 44 of which were spent waiting. The waiting room is not bad, and there is also a library upstairs which has better chairs. And just that easily I had our new thicker passports and was heading home. Getting an auto outside the consulate was easy enough - the first rick I flagged down was willing to take me to the airport. I didn't see any empty cabs drive by so if you want a cab both ways you should do that ahead of time with FastTrack at the airport. It was a little quicker ride in the afternoon with less traffic. At the airport the meter read Rs180, and he asked for Rs300. I split the difference and was back at the airport plenty early. Not knowing how long the process would take or how far the consulate is from the airport I booked the early evening return flight (departing 5:15). There was a 3:00 flight that I could have made, but if I did it again I probably wouldn't book a return any earlier than that. (To recap: for a 10:45 appointment and 2 passports, the 8:35 arrival was the right flight for arriving and the 3:00 flight would have been good for leaving.) The Chennai airport isn't much, but there is an OK if overpriced buffet and a few snack stands. And that was my day.)
The continued feeling of dislocation coupled with the sheer strangeness of our lives now (a strangeness that is more properly described as an everyday realization of the absolute privilege we live through) still occasions moments of self-reflection. Waiting in the airport for my return flight I realized how comfortable in the world I have become.
I had (as Andi likes to remind me: "Was it just like The OC?") a typical suburban, conservative Christian, Southern California childhood. One of the unintended effects of this childhood for me was that the world (as a theological, demographic, and socio-economic category) was a sinful, scary, and dangerous place. Inspired by the elementary school kids taking public transportation to school I started to get over this fear in San Francisco. Living in India for two years maybe I have gone too far in overcoming the fear: I landed in Chennai with an appointment at the consulate and the appointment confirmation slip, a demand draft for the fees, a book to read on the flight, the wonder drug Avomine, and the advice to get a FastCab at the airport. OC-Alan would have confirmed the appointment three times and gotten directions from the consulate at least twice. He also would have pre-booked a cab and a back-up taxi and memorized the route from the airport to the consulate, because you know those cabbies are just going to try and kidnap you and take you to a hotel to steal your kidney's! India-Alan simply got off the plane and started walking in the direction that seemed right with the hope that people are generally nice and you can usually tell when they're not; knowing that when things are new and complicated the best thing to do is stop and watch how the other thousands of people are doing it and follow along; knowing that if things are really that hard, it's OK to ask - sometimes you might get an answer, sometimes not, but if not, it's OK to ask again.
It is difficult to know how this experience is changing us, how it is entering into who we will become. But it is clear that because of our dislocation and the strangeness of this living each change comes with a realization; in this case, the realization that my growing comfort is conditioned, at least in part, on the wild and radical discrepancies in the precarity of life, on the many privileges that allow this dislocation and strangeness in the first place.
Maybe my professional disciplinary training has taken so that I will eventually simply fold this realization back into a knowledge, coming to articulate the logic by which the discourse of a victimized faithful remnant works to dissimulate power and privilege. The harder thing, and what will take longer to live out, will be allowing this realization home, as a realization learning to live with our privilege in a new way.
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