Mahatma Ghandi would have been 138 tomorrow.
In honour of this most revered figure in the making of modern India, the day is quite properly a national holiday. The visa office at India House in central London will be closed.
That is just as well since I am not sure I could cope psychologically with a return visit quite so soon after my two-and-a-half hours in the queue snaking round the Aldwych today. And that was just to obtain the so-called Q ticket that entitles the applicant to enter the building in hope of re-emerging some time later with the magic stamp in the passport.
Even without today's downpour, it would surely rank among the grimmer experiences of London life. It certainly made me question my choice of a holiday in the sub-continent.
Now I realise that seeking a visa is never going to be one of life's more pleasurable experiences wherever you are going.
Poor Piers Morgan rounded off a splendid flight to New York, in the first class cabin free of any hint of charge (it was for a promotional TV appearance) with lashings of champagne and a spare seat for his girlfriend, by having to stand in line like everyone else to wait an age for clearance to enter the United States.
We didn't have champagne, and it didn't feel first class as we inched forward in a long queue of wet, bedraggled souls veering between gallows humour and a resolve never to contemplate visiting India again in their lives.
At the entrance to the visa hall, a couple of undoubtedly hard-pressed officials dealt in cursory fashion with a barrage of questions from would-be travellers. When I failed to understand one response, one of them informed me that he would say it again only once.
A poor woman was virtually in tears after the solitary man at the window at the head of the queue for Q tickets refused point blank to give her an extra application form for her daughter.
The one smiling face I spotted belonged to a man who was handing out leaflets inviting people to spend another £35 on top of the visa fee to a specialist service based a few Tube stops away at Oxford Circus.
There will be reasons why this process has to involve inconvenience and discomfort in such measures for people proposing to spend a lot of money visiting India. It may be no better at a host of other London consulates, though the Kenyan gentleman beside me in the queue spoke longingly of the efficient service he had received from the Irish.
These things can be done by post, or via your travel operator, but that entails giving up your passport. Plenty of people cannot be without their passports for the length of time this might take.
India is constantly being touted as one of the great global trading powers of the near future. It ought not to be beyond its consular service to devise a better way of handling the large numbers of people who need visas.
Those obliged to give up half a day of their lives this morning, in the knowledge that the exercise remained unaccomplished at the end of it, would have settled for the minor courtesy of someone appearing from time to time along the miserable queue to keep them informed, and offer explanations or understanding.
As it was, we were left wondering whether some form of revenge was being exacted for all of the colonial sins inflicted on India by the British.
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