Does the name India itself brings out the “take it easy” attitude

My daughters tourist visa to India expired and had to be renewed for the upcoming trip. After my first experience of sending by post, I decided to personally go and drop it off at the office in Houston. This time around Travisa is no longer the company it has been transferred to a different one called BLS international.

The new company is pretty professional and their website is pretty detailed. After due diligence and processes, I made an appointment for a particular day at 11:00AM. I showed up at the office at 10:45AM and here is how the conversation went

BLS: Hello, may I help you

me: Hi, I have a visa appointment for my daughter at 11:00, should I come back as it is not 11:00 yet

BLS: No you are fine, can I see your appointment letter

me: Sure, here you go

The lady looked at it once and started looking for my daughters name in her list of appointments sheet. She had a total of 3 sheets of paper and going by the font size I would guess a total of 50 odd names. She glanced through the whole list once and couldn’t find it and meanwhile I was getting slightly worried.

BLS: the appointment is in this name right? (pointing at my daughters name on a sheet)

me: yes

She handed me the first sheet and asked me to look through if I can find it while she looked through others. I took the sheet and looked at the appointment times it was sheet for appointments from 9:00-10:00

me: Maam, these are for appointments from 9:00-10:00 but mine is at 11:00

BLS: Oh yeah, found it

She marked my daughters name with a yellow marker and asked me to take a seat.

Assuming the BLS lady marks up all the names that has showed up for the appointment, there were only a couple of marked up names on the sheet I was looking at and couple more on the sheet the lady from BLS was looking at. So, does this mean people made appointments and never showed up during their appointment time? I think that is the obvious conclusion. If they haven’t shown up during their time then will they show up at some arbitrary time as they please?

Taking a guess here,since it is a visa for India and looking at all the people present there it will most likely be people like me who have booked their appointments and have not shown up. My thoughts on this incident,

1. If one cannot keep the appointment that too for a visa then why make it in the first place?
2. Would we do the same thing if we were applying for visa for any other country like Europe or while applying for USA visa from India?
3. I am fairly certain the people who booked these appointments are fairly educated and in some sort of white collar job. So, why this don’t care attitude for the Indian visa? 
4. Does the name India itself brings out the “take it easy” attitude in people?
5. For BLS, If you can make an appointment and can still show up anytime then why keep these slots for appointments?
6. For the BLS folks, since you know this is the case then why not just organize the appointment names in alphabetical order and be done or why not do the TRAVISA way and do on first come first serve basis. 

To be fair, I didn’t pay attention to the names to guess the origins of the people who did not show up for their appointment nor did I talk to the BLS folks to know how this business work and my post is based solely on my singular experience in that office.         

PIO, Indian visitor visa – some learning

I recently went through the process of applying for a PIO card for my daughter and for reasons beyond my control, I ended up just satisfied with a visa, but in the process I did learn a thing or two

• If both parents are citizens of India then the kid can only get a PIO and not an OCI
• Consulate General of India doesn’t handle the PIO cards or anything of that sort anymore, they have outsourced it Travisa (I found it the hard way when the consulate returned my application without even opening it)
• Unlike the old times, The new regulations require to send the passport along with the application for PIO card
• The Travisa website is well documented a complete opposite of CGI Houston which left things to imagination on requirements for either a PIO or a visa
• The Travisa office is also very professionally maintained, when I went to apply for a visa I was in and out of the office in less than half hour. They send you an email every step of the way (I got 3 emails in total, one saying they received the application, second saying they received from consulate and last one saying they have shipped along with tracking number)
• The only forms of residency proof they accept are drivers license or a utility bill, cable bill or DSL bill won't work
• Visitor visa is the simplest and fastest thing to get (I personally dropped the application I got it the very next day)
• One thing I didn’t like was the fact that they were willing to hand over the passport back to anyone who had the receipt. 
• Tuesday is a bad day to go to Houston as most Indian outfits in Houston are closed on Tuesday
• In spite of clear instructions I witnessed quite a few people sent back due to lack of things they were supposed to get

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