On that flight from London, I sat next to a Philippino couple. The husband worked in an UK warehouse. With them, I boasted about my country. What could I glory in? Neither our republicanism nor our government’s efficiency nor our Maoists’ utopian Switzerland. Rather, I concentrated on God’s creation (or what remains of it): The highest mountain in the world, our swift rivers which contrast so greatly with the Thames, our country’s sheer beauty, and the Arctic to the tropical climate Nepal offers within its breadth of 90 miles.
As I waited, this couple quickly cleared through immigration at the second booth and gave me a glance as if to ask, “Is he trying to enter Germany illegally?” Did they think that in the airplane they had sat next to a Nepali Charles Sobhraj, and luckily escaped his murderous conspiracy? All I could do was respond with a faint, embarrassed smile.
“Please wait for about 10 minutes on that side. I have called my superior!” So, I stepped away from the counter, and leaned exhausted against the yellow-painted wall. She continued inspecting travel documents belonging to other passengers. They all had the machine readable passports (MRP), and she didn’t flip pages to check them. She slid the documents through a gadget in front of her, and promptly handed them back to their owners.
My Nepali topi, a source of pride till then, began to embarrass me. Our national cap resembles a type of headgear worn in countries that have reared terrorists. I wondered how many fellow passengers staring at me thought that I came from such a nation to create havoc in Germany.
The 10 minutes felt like a week. Finally, the superior arrived. He and the lady officer started examining my passport page after page through a magnifying glass. They checked and rechecked the photograph. Perhaps, they tried to decipher if I had stolen someone else’s document and just stuck my picture onto it. They gazed at the computer screen often, looked at my face now and then, and made comments in German. The officer at the next booth continued processing passengers, finished his job; and walked away, probably for a cup of coffee. There, I stood alone, the last traveller from the flight EZY 5409. I carried only hand-luggage, but my plan to meet my host quickly without having to pick up a checked-in baggage went haywire. While I waited, I prayed. I also mentally crucified all our Nepali foreign ministers of the last 10 years, but could remember the names of only three.
“Everything is OK, Sir,” the boss finally assured me in halting, polite English. “Did you detain me because I didn’t have a MRP?” I asked nervously. “That and more; you see, not many Nepalis come to Berlin!” I’ll never know fully why the same passport now satisfied them. Was it the desperation they saw on my face?
When I finally reached the arrival lounge, I told my elderly host that our country had failed to produce the MRP even though it got the notice 10 years ago. She had worked in our Himalayan land for many years, understood “Nepali time” only too well, and forgave me for the extra waiting she had to do.
Returning home to Nepal, I find our Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala trying to kill the latest MRP deal. Now, Dec 31 has become the new deadline and she probably thinks that’s an eternity away. Sujata wants to exact her pound of flesh. From whom? We’ve already wasted 10 years late; she doesn’t mind.
Had Sujata opted for open bidding for the MRP right from the beginning, perhaps we would have possessed this modern travel document by August, after missing the April deadline. Instead, she on her own decided to give the contract to an Indian company. Though the Maoists called an unnecessary strike in protest, the former rebels exposed Sujata’s undemocratic behavior. Obviously piqued that she didn’t get her way, Sujata has now threatened to withhold her signature for the French Oberthur Technologies to go ahead with the MRP. Piously, she cites security as her main concern. She has even asked the Nepal government to apologize to India for not granting the latter the contract. We read that the caretaker prime minister (PM) will bypass Sujata and give his signature. Then, we learn he hesitates to do that. Only God knows our MRP’s future.
Koirala would never have become the deputy PM cum the foreign minister hadn’t her senile father twisted PM Madhav Kumar Nepal’s arms and the cowardly Nepali Congress (NC) big shots kept silent. Perhaps, nothing has damaged NC’s reputation as much as Girija’s nepotism. The patriarch doesn’t exist anymore, but we continue to suffer the effects of his arm-twisting.
Thanks to Madhav Kumar’s resignation and our political jokers’ inability to form another government “within two hours”, Sujata still reigns over the foreign ministry. (Meanwhile, our politicians continue to insult a noble animal by calling their present, insidious practices “horse-trading”.) Koirala will do all she can to hinder the French company producing the MRP because her India didn’t get the contract.
Nepalis already suffer enough traveling overseas. The harassment begins right from the attempt to get a visa. The embassy staffs presume you’ll go overseas, disappear from the airport there, and spend the rest of your life as an illegal immigrant doing hand-to-mouth jobs while living under a highway bridge. Submit the filled, multiple visa forms, and sure enough, your “passport-size” pictures, which your nearby studio-photographer took, don’t qualify. The embassy has its own camera-bearer, who will eagerly take the right pictures, but at four times the regular cost. Why don’t the application-forms simply state, “Don’t bring your pictures, we’ll take them at the embassy”?
Even after you pay for the visa, the Nepali attendants at the embassy behave like miniature kings. After I phoned a particular embassy and sent my office staff to get the visa-stamped passport, I got the document alright but not the receipt for the money paid. Only when I threatened to write to the ambassador did the Nepali staff oblige. Fellow travelers can add other agonies they have experienced.
Suzie Auntie, please don’t impose further woes on Nepali travelers. Think of your uncle Bisheshwar Prasad Koirala who did a few good things to make “Koirala” a revered mantra to some. Don’t drag that name to the gutter. Who knows, you may even become Nepal’s first woman-PM (your deceased father’s pet wish) if you begin to put the country first and your personal, hurt pride second. Right now, many Nepalis like me may be standing nervously in front of immigration booths overseas because they don’t have a MRP. They may not have the good outcome I finally had at Berlin’s Schönefeld.
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