Mes Secrets Inconnus

Getting reissued your passport is easy. At least that is what I thought. Since I stayed at the same place from the time of my birth , there was no address change that was required to show to the passport officials. So i had minimum documentation that was needed to be furnished. When I first walked into Bangalore One they gave me a good feel, but after realizing that i still had a valid visa ( for the land of opportunities) they asked me to go to the regional passport office for the reissuing.

So i went ahead and applied for one. It was a pretty smooth process. I choose the non tatkal stuff, as i was in no hurry to travel anywhere. At least that is what i thought. When bad luck strikes , it strikes fast. The next week, my boss walks up to me and says that i need to travel on an "Important business assignment" in the next 15 days. That's when I realized I did not have a passport. And i started to log on to their web site to check the progress every 2 hours, like they update it so often :-)

So I waited for a couple of day's only to realize that my passport application was sent to the police station for verification. The only problem there was it was sent to a different police station which was not under our area's jurisdiction. And since I mentioned it to the cop who called home, he passed it back to the commissioners office. My saga started here.

I had to go to the commissioners office to have that passed on to the correct police station limits. After that I myself went to the police station to get myself "verified' . Sounds funny, but this is the way it works. Again I was in waiting for my file to move from commissioners office to the passport office. Once there , I learnt that it would require another 2 weeks for my passport to get reissued. And here, my days for the 'important business assignment" was running fast. I had no other choice but go back to passport office and request for the passport under the tatkal scheme. Beats me , i had to cough up the extra sum now to get the passport in another 3 days. So in effect, I had spent slightly more money than the fee required for the passport in tatkal scheme and not to mention the numerous visits to commissioners office and passport office queues.

But all said , i just filed my application for tatkal. It's due this Saturday.