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They told me on the phone that the place would be open between 9.30am and 12.30pm for the delivery of application forms and passports and all other relevant documentation. But that they'd only accept 200 applications per day on a first-come-first-served basis, so I thought I'd get there early; didn't want to make more than one trip. I got out of bed when the larks were still dreaming and got on the train to Birmingham. Commuters. Newspapers. A crush of people, not one happy face amongst them. Smells of shower gel and aftershave and half-digested breakfasts on sour breath. Usually, whenever I'm out in the world at such an hour, I haven't been to bed, but when the reason is a legitimate civilian one the perspective changes; you're not at the tail end of fun, you're at the starting line of drudgery. You haven't got rest to look forward to but several hours of being somewhere you don't want to be doing something you don't want to do with people you don't particularly want to be with. Looking around at the bleary faces, their common expression akin to something like horrified disbelief, a surge of gratitude and contentment washed through me for the pattern my life has taken. I didn't have to do what all these people had to do. I could deliver my application forms and get back on the train and in a few hours be back in bed, while all these people would still be at their desks or stations or windows with more long hours of that still to go. So be of good cheer.

I'd been in Egypt a few days earlier and caught the galloping craps and had been operating above a perpetually tensed sphincter ever since. The beans were to blame, I reckon; the bowl of boiled beans that'd been put on my table in the shebeen in Alexandria and which I'd eaten plenty of, they'd been washed in water gone brothy with bacteria and my stomach had been rebelling for several days. Think of what happens when you unscrew the sump on an old car. I'd been eating lots of oats and other forms of roughage but their binding effect was only partial and my lavatorial alert light was still flashing red. No panicked claxon as yet, but it wasn't far off. I looked at the crush of people between myself and the toilet. Impassable. I'd never make it. Sit tight, clench, and think of Immodium.

New Street station's a buried overlit hell of a place but outside, in the bright and rising sun, Birmingham had a certain appeal; glass-glinting, all that. I gave the cabbie the address I needed: Augusta Street, Jewellery Quarter. Indian Consulate? Yes, I said, that's the one. He grinned. "Good luck to you, mate; get my visa through the post, myself. Best way." "Aye," I said, "but I'm going in a week or so. Don't have the time for that." "Goa?" "No, Mumbai."

He dropped me off at a pokey little doorway behind berms of fag butts, a dirty, cracked-lino vestibule with a few vending machines in it each bearing an 'OUT OF ORDER' sign. Up some stairs reminiscent of the dank wells of Cairo still fresh in my recall, through a metal detector which, of course, shrieked at my belt-buckle and Zippo and coins. I stopped, waiting to be frisked. No-one, uniformed or otherwise, came. Went down a peeling corridor, turned a corner and oh Jesus - a tangle of humanity, a long, low-ceilinged room lit by humming fluorescents, hundreds of heads, babies screaming, ringtones burbling, a man already shouting at someone behind a Plexiglass window, a hundred headphones tinnily clashing and voices voices voices. These people must've been waiting for hours, queuing outside in the icy night. Why wasn't I warned? I took a ticket from the reception window; number 167. An electronic sign read: NOW SERVING 54.

What are we supposed to do, in such situations? The - generally speaking, of course - active mind of the human animal seeks stimulus, rapidly-changing occupation, engagement frequently refreshed. There were a few posters of tigers with 'Indiaaaahh' written on them but once I'd read them I didn't want to read them again. I'd brought a paper, but no book, so I read it from cover to cover; every word, the advertisements, everything. Did the crossword. Threw it away. NOW SERVING 92. Stole surreptitious glances at the strikingly beautiful Indian woman sitting a few seats down from me. Went outside for a cigarette. Studied people's shoes. Ran through entire songs in my head, Liverpool teams from the early 80s. Scratched. Yawned. Pinched the skin on my forearms and picked a scab on my knuckle. Read another sign: FOOD & DRINK NOT ALLOWED. Watched the bed I thought I'd soon be returning to float away to the horizon, become a speck. Did it all again; woman smoke shoes songs team scratch yawn pick and pinch. Shouting voices screaming babies ringtones tinny tunes half-heard. NOW SERVING 96. Indiaaaaashite.

Never thought I'd welcome stomach cramps; something to feel, something to do, something to be distracted by. There was an open doorway under a sign that said 'TOILET'. I went, a bit hunched, over to it. But the doorway had to remain open as it had no door in it, so you went through it and across a few feet of piss-slick and stinky tile and into a cubicle where people in the waiting room could see your shoes and ruckled trousers under the door and, no doubt, hear your noises and smell your smells. I couldn't do it. I'd fight the cramps. Amazing how the sense of shame can override even biological imperatives. So I just washed my hands and went back into the waiting hall and of course someone had taken my seat. Only to be expected. I leaned against a wall. NOW SERVING 101.

Many bits of me had died and atrophied by the time I slid my documents under the window. The sun was no doubt high in the sky behind the barred and dust-caked windows. Felt like I was filled with sand, damp builder's sand. Skull full of wool. The lady in the sari behind the reinforced glass ticked off application form and passport, took my thirty quid, put it all to one side. "Return at three, please." "What? I need to come back? Today?" "Return at three for visa." NOW SERVING 168.

It was like being a zombie. As if a force outside of my own will or volition steered me the four miles or so down into the city centre and into a bookshop and the HMV and onto a bench outside the town hall then into a clothes shop and then the bookshop and HMV again and then back onto a bench and then another bench and into a public toilet where a man in a mac gave me a wink so quickly out of that toilet, ablutions undone, and into a taxi and back up into the Jewellery Quarter again and into a caff. That force put a chicken salad sandwich in my mouth. Guided me into a newsagent's and then onto another bench to skim through the local paper. Read through and then deleted all messages in the Inbox and Sent Items folders on my mobile phone. At 10 minutes to three that force took me back onto Augusta Street where the queue snaked down the pavement and around the corner onto the main road. If I squinted, I could make out the entrance to the Indian Consulate, a long way away, over hundreds of heads, a dot in the distance under the sinking sun.

And somewhere, on the other side of the planet, in a different hemisphere, is a colossal city where I'm meant to be. I have appointments to meet and work to do in that faraway place. There is a hotel room booked there for me and a reserved place at a restaurant table with a tag bearing my name on the empty plate. People are waiting to greet me, there. My name features on the programme of events that they're perusing. By all accounts it is a huge and crazed and vibrant city, where I'm meant to be. But I'm still here, stuck in this queue in Birmingham. And my stomach's still cramping. I will be here forever.
© Niall Griffiths 2008

Niall's trip to India gets off to a bad start - in Birmingham

Passport Control