My Passport Experience

Went to NYC to get my passport renewed. Had to get up earlier than usual and took off to the railway station. Secured the tickets after waiting in line and reached penn station NYC. Had to walk a couple blocks to take local subway that took me to the indian embassy uptown. Then walk some more blocks to join the serpentine queue waiting at the embassy! Walking in that bitter cold, I couldnot believe these were the very lanes we used to enjoy strolling down when we first came to US!! Some relief when my portion of the queue reached indoors! While waiting for 5 hrs in that jampacked room , I had to hear the woes of so many disgrunteld co-applicants. Some of them stood in the passport line for more than an hour when they actually came for a visa. Added to this , standing there for so many hours ( you guessed it - insufficient seating) made the weather outside look pretty ok.
Finally when she accepted my application, the lady at the counter tells me to come on monday evening to pick my passport..WTF...It was so crazy...my head just went for spin..just with the thought of repeating the whole travel and wait ....

While walking back I remembered my stay at bangalore 10yrs back where I first applied for my passport. It was a simple application. A few rupees of appreciation to the local cop and the postman and you had your passport!!

Anyways, I was happy I got my passport on monday with NO errors!