The Foreigner's Residents Registration Office (FRRO)

Today was the day we had to register to be residents of India - our first real encounter with the Subcontinent bureaucracy. In order to live in India, every foreigner must register with the FRRO and must carry the residency permit. If you read the blogs, forums and books about moving to India, they all tell you this is the Indian equivalent of hell on earth. They warn of the long wait, the intense heat and the fact that Satan himself is the one that approves your certification. I have been really looking forward to this.


In order to ensure that we did not miss our 10:30am appointment, we left the house at 9:00am sharp. Although the FRRO is only a short distance away, Delhi traffic is unpredictable, so we wanted to be safe. Ten minutes later, we were there. The driver dropped us off outside the entrance and we began to orient ourselves to the compound.

Overall, the compound looked like what I would image the building permit department would look like in Kabul. The entry road is half torn up and there are vehicles of all types parked in every open nook around the buildings. As you enter the compound there is a blown-up/burned out car left for dead on the shoulder of the driveway. WTF!

The entry to the actually building is laid out in a courtyard between the FRRO and the adjacent building. They had thoughtfully constructed the waiting area on a concrete slab, outside, in a country that habitually reaches temperatures over 120 degrees. That is just mean. They did give you seats, though, but they were the plastic kind that were attached by a steel tube on the floor. They were placed so inconveniently close to the steel bonded row in front that only the first to seats of each row were actually used. The whole expanse was topped by a huge, translucent blue plastic sheet which in no way gave any relief from the relentless morning sun, but did bask everyone in a bluish hue making us all look like we had dengue fever.

As I said, we arrived a little early for our appointment, so we took a seat in the ocean of indigo people and began to take in our surroundings. The first thing that was apparent to us was that the reputation of this agency was universal. It was one hour before opening and there were two lines of at least 150 people a piece. One line was defined by the clumping of like people together - there would be two Europeans, then 5 slightly darker people, then an elderly couple that looked Mediterranean, etc. The other line was defined entirely by the opposite. This was a line of completely homogenous people. They were dressed the same and looked very similar. I glanced around for clues and noticed at the head of this line was a sign "Afghans Only." Well, that explained it. Many people do not realize that India and Afghanistan share a common, albeit small, boarder and these were the refugees from the war. Odd, because I thought the war was going so well according to MSNBC.

It was about this time, 2 or three minutes into it, that we also noticed that we were being overrun with flies. There were, what seemed like, millions of them buzzing about the hot courtyard full of sweating, stationary people. I would have to image that this is the fly-world's version of Disney World. I image that flies from Moscow to San Francisco talk of this land of bounty where you merely hop mindlessly and aimlessly from sweaty person to sweaty person. Between the heat and the flies, I had reached my limit.

I called the driver and we took a short ride down the street to the New Delhi Hyatt for a cappuccino and a muffin. This was more like it - air conditioning, comfortable, cushy chairs and bathrooms that were more seat than hole. We waited until 10:15 and called our escort. He was already at the FRRO, so we decided to head back. We were in much better spirits.

We again arrived, driving past the car skeleton, and were promptly meet by a smartly dressed Indian man who seemed to have everything under control. He whisked us past the dual lines (which seemed not to have moved), through security, and into the dark corridors of the FRRO. We emerged in a medium room that was dimly lit, packed with people and stunk of humanity. Around the boarder of the room, there were various desks with important people sitting behind them.

Next to an unoccupied desk, there were two connected seats that had been broken off from the other rows. We were told to sit there and a series of papers were presented to us for signature. It was, we were told, very important, not to sign outside the box or we would have to start over. We did as we were told.

Soon all the documents were signed and our escort collected them, organized them and walked up to one of the desks. Before my eyes, I watched as the obviously intelligent man took a posture of a humble servant in front of the man behind the desk. The shoulders slumped forward, the head tilted down and there was much head bobbing from side to side. The man behind the desk raised his voice, looked inconvenienced, nodded and waved the man off in a dismissive yet, granting way. Our escort had gained permission for something.

Sunil returned to us with an accomplished look. He asked us to get up and follow him to the long counter at the back of the room. There he basically explained to the attendant that the man behind the desk had given permission to him to finish the paperwork without us present. She looked at the photos on the documents, compared them to us and nodded reluctantly. We were done. This took a total of 15 minutes. I was amazed. We shuttled ourselves out of the office passing people I recognized as first in line earlier.

At 1:30, Sunil called me and told me that he was in the lobby of my office with the completed documents. We had completed the most dreaded evolution in moving to India in 15 minutes and a cappuccino.
We were now offical residents of India.