My First Passport

Sankalpa Basu

I thought it was excessive when I first heard about it; yet another ID! There were already too many IDs, one for work, one for the library, one for the gym (not that you would ever find me there) and a bright blue store card that gave me a few points every time I shop there.  I also have a Voter Identity Card, which I hope to use someday when I find someone worthy to give my vote to. I have a PAN card too; I don’t know of what use it is to me. Now I had to get myself an Aadhar Card.

I tried to snap out of the negativity. After all, it wasn’t something I could do without. I would need this card to buy a flight ticket, a railway ticket, to open a bank account or even to get money out of the account. I heard that it would be linked to my PAN card, my bank account, my phone number and the progress report of my grandchildren. It was after all just another ID.

We didn’t need IDs in DM School. You knew who you were and I knew who I was. Things have changed; children going to UKG are being tethered to their IDs by colourful lanyards, God knows what they need their IDs for. I didn’t get an ID card in before I went to BJB. I didn’t need it even when I was voting in the student union elections. Thinking back I don’t see what would have been the point of having an ID. Everyone I wanted or didn’t want to know me seemed to know me. The manager of the canteen where my friends had managed to build up a debt knew me and looked at me accusingly, my neighbour from whose garden I stole flowers before daybreak could recognise me from my silhouette and complained to my dad, Hajari sir could recognise me from my fingerprints when I drew hearts on the dusty window panes and pulled my ears. There were of course some who showed no sign of recognition, but then girls will be girls.

Somewhere down the line I applied for a job in UK and for a passport, I expected to get neither. Do you remember how long it took to even get a LPG connection those days? It was an amazing moment when the passport arrived; I imagined of seeing new lands, meeting new people and making new friends. I went and joined the queue before UK embassy in Chanakyapuri for the visa, there were so many people there, all clutching their paperwork like me. It was a cold foggy morning, probably a portent of the weather I was going to see a lot of.  

Passports and farewells go hand in hand; with it in hand a man leaves his own country and seeks challenges in another. Friends raise toasts to the future and reminisce as the so-called dreams come to fruition.  Somehow it feels so much better to have a drink with your old friends, you don’t worry too much about getting blotto and there is always someone to take you home, or you end up taking them to a place of safety.  I experienced some serious bonhomie; embraces, tears, songs, a bit of dancing and everything else before leaving. Would I ever again have friends like this? I didn’t know. I was going to an alien country.

I am a bit sick of the whole ID business. I would like people to be free like flocks of birds as they go to different countries, giving each other company and nest next to each other, and not to be burdened by pieces of paper when the falcons give them chase.

My first passport looks quite old now, its pages are rumpled and stamped, reminding me of all the places it took me to, it is cancelled now and no longer my ID. I looked for it when I heard about the Aadhar card. I look so young and different in my first passport. My first passport is no longer a proof of who I am; it has rather become a reminder of who I was.