Travel from Canada to India is long, no matter how you do it.  We are pretty lucky in that we only have to take two flights, but when you take into account the travel to the airport and the time spent waiting around in airports, it is almost thirty hours door to door.  I am tired and cranky at the end of it, so I can’t fault the lils if they are feeling the same when we arrive at our destination.

For the most part, the lils were perfect on the way back to India. They mostly listened, mostly got along with each other, and at least one of them slept quite a bit (the other is as stubborn as his mama, and will only sleep when he is ready).  Still, it was late when we arrived in Bangalore, so we tried to be as patient as we could and let them do pretty much whatever they wanted, as long as it kept them moving in the right direction. This might have included rolling around on the floor in the airport.  They were rolling forward…

We were one of two large international flights that arrived at the same time, so there was a queue to get into the immigration room.  As we shuffled along, I mentioned to Willy that we might luck out and get pulled into the family line, that last line where the special people get processed before and faster than the others, to minimize their inconvenience.  His reply was less than enthusiastic, pointing out that there were a number of families on our flight, that we were one of the last off of our plane, and that they would likely find a way to screw that system up. If only I knew then how right he was.

We entered the immigration room and got into a long and winding line. We had made some headway as exited the plane and a number of people were still filling out their forms, but we were in the middle of this large group.  Given the two full planes, that meant that there were about 400 people ahead of us. Even though there were eighteen agents on duty, we knew this was going to be a long process.  Then it happened, one of the airport workers pulled us into the family line, a line where there were only four groups in front of us, the first of whom was already being seen.  This couldn’t take so long, could it?

We watched and waited as the officer very s-l-o-w-l-y processed the elderly lady at her counter.  I found myself wondering what she could have done to have warranted such scrutiny.  Was carrying too much cash? Had she admitted to smuggling plants into India? Was she packing heat?!?! Eventually she cleared and the first of the three families in front of us went to the counter.  Ten minutes later, we hadn’t moved, and it dawned on me that it might just have been the officer who was slowing things down.  The airport worker seemed to have realized this, and was now directing families to every line but ours.  We were caught.  All the lines close to us were more than twice as long as ours, and there were now only two groups in front of us. It wouldn’t take that much longer, would it?

The family in front consisted of an Indian father and a German mother.  They had three children, two little girls about Woo and Goose’s age, and a little boy who was about 9 months old.  He was being carried by his mama, and getting sadder and sadder as the wait dragged on, he started crying nonstop after about thirty minutes, and I can’t say that I blamed him.  I felt like crying myself.  The parents were obviously unhappy with having been put into this line, and were animatedly discussing it in a mixture of Hindi and German. They seemed to be suffering from the same paralysis that we thinking (though they would have been thinking in Hindi/German), what if we move lines and it is worse?

By the time that they were at the front of the line, the woman at the front of the line next to them indicated that they should take her place.  They hesitated ever so briefly, and in that moment someone jumped in front of them and took the open spot.  At this point the mom lost it.  She went to the agent that had been offered to her, and gave her a piece of her mind.  The complaint went unheard (possibly because it was given in a mixture of German, Hindi, and English), and the man who had jumped the queue was served.  So the woman just stood there, with her screaming child still strapped to her chest, making it extremely unpleasant for both the budder and the immigration officer.  Something I wish I would have been able to do.

By the time this all played out, we had moved lines and were one of about four passenger groups still waiting, waiting for any officer other than the initial slow one.  As luck would have it, she became free before any one near us did, but we averted our eyes and went to the next agent that came free. Her computer ended up freezing as she attempted to scan us, so we went to another officer and were finally sent through, the last four of approximately 800 that were processed in the hour that it took us to go through.  At least our bags were waiting for us at the carrousel.

I don’t understand how they could allow this to have gone on for so long, and clearly fail to in any way assist the families that were placed in that long. All through this process we wanted to say something, but did not want to irk the wrong person and end up with “special” treatment. There were clearly supervisors who checked in with each officer regularly, yet they did nothing to help her to process people at a speed would come close to what her peers were achieving.  As we left, I saw that the slow officer was sitting with what was obviously a superior.  I hoped that she was getting a reprimand, but somehow I doubt it.