Visa Saga, Continued

On Monday night at 10:30 I received a message from the Visa Office of the Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C. telling me that they have not been able to find records that the Iyengar Institute is registered with the government. In order to grant my visa, they will need me to get the Iyengar Institute to fax them a copy of their registration. I called the Iyengar Institute.

Now this is a call I had been dreading. The last thing I want to do is single myself out as the stupid, American girl coming in July who cannot even fill out a visa application appropriately. But I figure, even though it is going to be the first time I get yelled at by someone at the Institute, it certainly won't be the last. So I take big breath, act like a grown up and call the office.

"Hello," in an Indian accent.
"Hello, is this The Iyengar Institute?"
"Hello... Hello...Hello...Are you there Madam? Hello? Madam, will you please call back in 15 minutes?"

So I take a shower, say my prayers and call again. Kelly falls asleep. (Asleep? Nice support there, big guy. Oh well, he was tired. Me, I was a bit wired being that two years of planning may just be hinging on this phone call.) Now it is actually hard to explain the difficulty of communicating on the phone with the very nice man who is speaking rapidly with an accent I cannot really understand coupled with the cross-continental delay of a few seconds after each phrase that either one of us utters, making it pretty much impossible for either one of us to know what the other is saying for several minutes.

It went something like this:
Pandu: "But you do not want a student visa... you should not have applied for a student visa... student visas are so hard to get, you want a tourist visa..." (yeah, I am picking that up, believe me...this, I have figured out...)

Me: "But, I didn't mean to...I made a mistake... and now they need a registration form from you to show that you are registered with the government."

Pandu: "But madam, we are not registered with the government... We have no such form... You tell them we are a private institution and make them give you a tourist visa."

Me, thinking: "Yes, make them. Yes, I think that sounds great. I will make the people at The Embassy who I cannot even get in contact with, give me a tourist visa. Yes, that will work." Right.

So I thank the nice man and get off the phone and then I send an email to the embassy pleading my case again, begging them to allow me to get a tourist visa as I am really a tourist, not a scholar wishing to go to the university and so on.

Later today I call and finally after a few tried I get a live person on the phone. (Miracles of miracles.) She knows my case and was just listening to the messages I sent.

Embassy Lady: "I got your message that The Iyengar Institute is not registered with the government."

Me: "Yes, they told me that they are a private organization and that I should ask for a tourist visa.." (Okay, this is not making them by any means but merely an attempt to subliminally impress upon them the solution to the dilemma we are in.)

Embassy Lady: "Do you really think it is safe for you to go to a place that is not registered with the government?"

Me, not worried at all about being sold into the human slave trade and not worried at all that the Iyengar Institute may be a front for human trafficking: "Absolutely. I will be travelling with my sister and another companion who has made the trip several time and I know many people who have made a trip to study there and no harm has come to them. In fact this particular organization as been teaching foreign students for almost, well, 60 years. Really, they have an impeccable reputation."

Embassy Lady, after a long confusing discussion about my travel plans pre-India , tells me that she will have an answer for me tomorrow, that either I will get a visa or they will send me my passport back.

So, that is where it stands tonight. I hope to conclude this chapter tomorrow with a happy ending.