While studying architecture, we also learned a lot about the history of architecture. Also about the Taj Mahal.
And so, on a fine Sunday afternoon on February 26, 1989, I studied whether everything we were taught was true. Taj Mahal in all its beauty. I was so carried away by all this beauty that I forgot to be careful. At some point, I realized that I no longer have a passport. Panic.
In the evening at the hotel in New Delhi, together with the hotel security guard, we turned the whole room over, but the passport was nowhere to be found. In my subconscious, I knew exactly the moment when someone had touched me. When I turned around, I saw uncertainty in his eyes. And I know for a fact that it was he who stole my passport.
In the evening, we reported to the local police station. A small room, dim light, a light bulb on a wire above a table with two chairs. Wanted posters on the wall, cops with guns around. A record I had to write myself. I had to add my address at the end. Why? If we get your passport so we can send it to you.
The next morning, a trip to the embassy with a police report on the case of theft. OK, you need two photos. Back to the hotel, where the hotel photographer takes a picture of me in front of the sunny facade. Photos were ready in fifteen minutes.
Back to the embassy, where they tell you that unfortunately they only have Serbian passports. How Serbian, do you mean Yugoslav? Yes, but they are in Cyrillic. OK, give me what you have, just so I can travel home. And the passport was ready in half an hour.
While I’m waiting in the reception area, five decorated Yugoslav generals walk past me and mutter something about the miners’ strike in Kosovo.
When I receive my passport, the matter is not over. Now it is necessary to go to the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs for an exit visa. And here we go, me, the guide, the local guide and the attaché from the embassy. The attaché says, I know how things work here.
We get to the first floor of the ministry and find the visa issuing room. Five, six tables, behind them a few officials, in front of them a line of waiting people. Our man was under the sign which read “Soviet Union and other socialist countries”. The attaché confidently passes the line and tells the officer that I need a visa. The official calmly says, no problem it takes twentyfour hours. No, the gentleman is traveling this evening. The official coolly repeats those twenty-four hours of his. OK, who’s boss. He sits behind the table on the opposite wall. The attaché explained the problem to the boss in a raised voice. OK, the boss calls the official, shouts something at him and within fifteen minutes I have a visa. And yes, they offered us tea while we waited. Meanwhile, I am watching a small gray mouse walking down the corridor. The ladies chatted. The guide asks how it is now when there is the new ambassador. And she gets the answer, you have to work, he’s Slovenian. Ernest Petrič.
And so in the evening, in spite of everything, I get on the plane to Belgrade.
The next day, February 28, 1989, at noon I take the bus from airport to the center of Belgrade. There were crowds gather, protesting, shouting “We want arms,” and “We will go to Kosovo.” On the square in front of the federal assembly, Slobodan Milošević addresses the demonstrators “Those who manipulated the masses will be punished and arrested.” As Milošević spoke, the crowd shouted, “Slobo the Serb, all of Serbia is with you.”
But that’s another story.
When Your Passport is Stolen in India
Category: route
Serbian passports, huh?