Landing cards RIP

The death knell has been rung for the landing cards in Indian ports and they will be a part of history from September this year. Am I glad? The government says it will bring in efficiency and speed up clearance at the immigration desk and minimise degradation of green cover by cutting out paper work which, in turn, will save trees.

That sounds suitably modern. But what about people like us who are used to desk jobs, revel in writing notes, filling forms and so on? During a ten-hour flight, when the last dinner and drink service is over, the trays and cups collected, the duty-free goods’ purchases are complete and all of these well before two hours to land, what have we left to look forward to? The distribution of landing cards, of course.

Nothing is more welcome at this stage than the steward or airhostess ambling down the aisle handing out the landing cards. Any delay in handing out the cards used to make me a little jittery as to whether the airline had some other ideas on the flight’s final destination. Receiving the card prescribed by the great Indian Red Tape Unlimited gives me hope that I am going to Chennai or Mumbai and not to Kandahar.

Acrobatics in the seat

Having received the cards, trying to fill them is more fun. Tired as we are, finding the pen itself from the various coat pockets in the case of men and different clutch purses in the case of women — ladies usually carry bags within bags like the Matryoshka Russian dolls — in near complete darkness while getting entangled in the cables of headphones, protruding TV panels, is an obstacle event. Having found the pen, switching the light overhead, one starts filling and finds that one needs the passport, the ticket to get the data and again the ransacking of pockets and handbags begin. If you are travelling with your spouse, often you have to do his or her form also.

Just as I settle down to fill, I might find my neighbour ask for a pen or help in filling the form itself. It is a welcome chore, even for men with honest intentions and I am among them, if the neighbour happens to be a well-groomed lady of indeterminate age. Once, as we settled down in our seats, my wife and I were speculating, in whispers, whether the lady sitting nearby was in her forties or fifties. If we are determined to settle the issue, the landing card filling presents a great opportunity to peer over our neighbour and find out her date of birth.

Stumped by two questions

While most questions are easy, two items used to stump me. One, whether I should tick the Box for Yes or No in the case of Emigration Check Not Required (ECNR). To be safe, I used to tick ‘Yes’ in my landing card and ‘No’ in my wife’s and the officer at the desk did not seem to care either way. Another dilemma was what I should write in the small strip for Customs as to the value of goods I carried. I was always afraid that the Customs man would order a search if I wrote a respectable Rs 2 lakh or look at me with disdain if I wrote truthfully Rs 10,000.

I read some years ago that the landing card filled by John Lennon of the Beatles fetched £15,000. It was reported that he wrote while travelling to Japan with Yoko Ono; Nationality: “weird”, Occupation “hazardous” and passport-issuing authority: “God of Air”. To envision a world without visas or landing cards, we can only echo John Lennon when he sang “Imagine there’s no countries”.

(The author is former Member, Ordnance Factories Board)

COMMENT NOW