Aizawl Again - April 16th

The silence is deafening! It is sometime in the early morning, and the power in out. No fan, no lights. Even the birds and bugs are unplugged. My internal clock is shot, and I never really had the chance to reset my mind after Haiti so here I lay with a thousand voices screaming in my head and no sound to drown them out. This is not the time or place to deal with Haiti, so I will occupy my mind with more immediate and familiar issues.

Getting to Aizawl, again, is never an easy task. The worst part is that you can only fly there from Kolkata, and that means spending a night in Kolkata. This time around, however, the experience was comparatively good! It was 43 degrees when we arrived, but there was a room at the airport and the air conditioner worked. I even got water to come from the shower head! We managed to board the aircraft to Aizawl with a set of badly distorted permit papers. Photocopiers these days!

Rama met us with a truck, and off we went to find all the hotels full. This sounds familiar, eh? The very helpful young lady at David’s Kitchen hotel took a while to recognize me without the beard, but, when she did, she gave me that familiar big smile and said I looked 10 years younger, very good. I figure any time you are told you look very good after 40 hours of flying, it is a banner day. We spent the night in a very nice, private residence. I look at Aizawl differently after having been to Haiti. I love Aizawl--one of the last places that really took my breath away--but in the light of my earthquake experience, I feel less comfortable here now.

The voices screaming in my head are not the voices of earthquake survivors but the voices of average people all over the world screaming at each other. I have had too many conversations lately about how this group of people are bad or how that group of people needs to go away. I am uncomfortable with prejudice, although we all possess it to some degree. People should be judged on their actions, not the color of their skin, the spelling of their last name, or the church they attend or don’t attend. We are all different, but we are all together on one very small rock that is getting much smaller! Within any group, there are people who want to make a positive difference. Those are the people I want to work with; those are the people I want to support.

Form Challenged

Those who know me well will know that I am form challenged. I am not referring to poor body image; I mean that when I have to fill out a form, I freeze up. I once heard a comedian talking about childbirth who said that, when her baby was born, half her brain came out with the placenta and the other half slowly leaked out every time she breast fed. That is sort of how I feel when confronted by a form; half my brain leaks out my ears!

I am very careful with my passport when I travel; it is strapped to my body under all my clothes at all times. I do this for two reasons: first, if it is attached to me, I cannot lose it, have it fall out of a pocket, leave it in a bag on a bus or set it down and forget to pick it up; second, it is my hope that, if I am robbed, the robber will see the environment my passport has been in (fat, hairy, sweaty waist/groin region) and be so disgusted that they won’t want it. I hope I never have to put the second half of my theory to the test!

When I am home, I am not so careful with the passport, unfortunately. After my last trip, I accidentally washed my passport when I did my laundry--turning it into a 'coming home' passport (so called because, if I'd done this in Bolivia, I think I could have ironed it enough to get me back home). But it was not a 'going away' passport anymore, so I needed to replace it.

Enter “The Form.” With the passport form filled out and all the ID I think I need, I steeled myself for the dreaded trip to the passport office. It is not so much the waiting I dread, though there is sure to be plenty; it is the forgetting to fill in one line, having the picture somehow not being right, or running into any one of a hundred imagined circumstances that scares me. Filling in a new form on the spot would certainly have my brain leaking out and the rest of me hoping I retained enough grey matter to speak and walk.

We (my wife and I; she is my first line of defense against forms) entered the office and were greeted by the always-present white-haired commissionaire who was not surly or authoritative but pleasant and respectful. He politely asked us to turn off our cell phones and held the door as we entered. Next was the form-tearer/ID-checker. She, too, was very pleasant and efficient, sorting through the assorted documents, photos and ID, and neatly clipping the appropriate documents together. She handed back my documents with a number tag and suggested what wait time we might expect.

Eventurally, my number was called and up to gate 5 I went. I was greeted by a very pleasant and professional young lady who started processing my form. Everything was going swimmingly: all the boxes seemed to be filled out correctly, the ID seemed adequate and I briefly had a sense of hope. When I showed her my washed passport, she asked if I had filled out a lost or damaged passport form. My heart sank! She assured me that it was going to be OK. She gave me the form to fill out and explained that it had to be notarized. Seeing the look of terror on my face, she gently wiped the dribbling brain matter from my shoulders and handed me a sheet with addresses for nearby notaries. She gave me driving directions, her business card, and said that upon my return, I would not need to get in line again but that the commissionaire would direct me straight to her gate.

She was right! The copy house containing the notary was right were she said it would be. He was very pleasant, very welcoming and very understanding about my extra washing. He professionally did his duty and sent me on my way. When I got back to the passport office, the commissionaire held the door and directed me to gate 5--no waiting. My additional form was pleasantly accepted, and all is well...I think.

I want to thank all of you who dealt with me that day. Your cheerful manner went a long way to relieving my stress. If only I could have avoided driving diagonally across the entire city during rush hour! I will see you all in two years when I get to renew my passport; I promise I won’t wash this one.