Lifestyle

Experience at Indian Consulate in New York Could Have Been Better

india asoka chakraGuest post by Vishal.

One beautiful morning in the Spring of 2012, I set sail (OK, not sail, I start my drive from Boston) to the office of the Indian Consulate in New York city, New York.

Why: I had to get a Power of Attorney attested for some property in India.

I started from Boston at about 4 am so that I could reach NYC before 9 am and get early bird parking.

For those who don’t know, if you reach NYC before 9 am, you can park for 12 hours for about 14-15 bucks almost anywhere, after that you are looking at paying 40-60 bucks for the same.

I did hit some traffic backups in NYC but still managed to pull over into a garage in happy hours.

Grabbed a coffee and sandwich at starbucks and walked into the consulate office located right across the central park in the posh Manhattan.

You take a narrow stairway down to the office, the stairway is wide enough to accommodate a medium built person, not wide enough for 2 way traffic.

It was early spring so the weather was pleasant.

The moment I reached the basement, I couldn’t find where to go so I went to the hall in the right where there was a African American guy who asked me why I was there and I told him why, he gave me a token and asked me to go to the hall on the left.

He wasn’t particularly polite but I didn’t expect much anyway.

Once in the hall on the left, I was shocked, there were NOT enough places to sit, there was some news papers which I thought looked hyper crushed and looking at the date revealed that they were 5 days old.

Standing at the side with my friend, we look up at the fans and they have tons of dust gathered on them. Bathrooms did not have toilet paper. The staff did not look fluent in English and often started talking in Hindi.

After submitting the papers for attestation, we decided to actually use the public toilet at central park as that way way cleaner.

We went for lunch and came back later to collect the documents and that went through smoothly.

Although we were able to get the work done, I expected the consulate in NYC which is the face of the country to be way better than that.

I know I will hear lot of comments on what I am going to say now, but that day, I couldn’t say I love my India or India is great.

Thoughts?

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7 Comments

  1. I appreciate you have taken an additional step posting it in blog.
    I read it last night since I had to visit to Indian consulate NY this morning, I drove all the way from Massachusetts preparing myself for the worst after reading this.

    No offense but I found nothing bad in the office as you posted in this blog. May be I didn’t expect a Hitech corporate office level amenity.

    I found toilet was clean and had enough papers stacked. Although it as raining today, found both halls clean enough.
    I found Security person was polite with me although I had to reach him multiple times with different questions.
    There was a seating for about 25+ in each hall = ~50, good enough I think.
    I visited consulate for POA attestation and was given back the attested document with my passport within 20 minutes.

    Jai Hind!
    Saikrishna P

    1. Things have improved a lot under Modi Government. They answer the phone calls and respond to emails. But, CKGS needs lot of improvement. It’s a pain to use their application system.

  2. You could’ve still said I love India and India is great. But you couldn’t have possibly said I love hygiene and India is clean.

    1. You have a right to express your opinion. Its good that you at-least expressed your views. I don’t know about how you should feel about your own country but being an Indian what you did seeing all the messed up stuff. It’s hard to understand why people just complain always and don’t do anything about the problem. A country is great because of its countrymen. If you find your country is not great then its just because of you as you didn’t do anything to change the things and me too as I just could reply this post and nothing else.

      1. What would you expect me to do?

        If you remember Anna Hazare did try, what happened? When I was in India, I in-fact tried to do a few things, simplistic like help educate the slum dwellers, go sweep the streets with a group of engineers like me (yes engineers), I donated blood to Indian redcross atleast 25 times in 10 years since my college and when we needed a few units of blood for my maternal grandpa, Red Cross told me to f**k off saying my moms dad is NOT my direct relative.

        I GAVE UP, I am sorry that was as much Saint I could ever be, if you think you can do better, then go do that, let us know what you achieve in fixing India.

        1. did u sublit complaints in written to the consulate about this mess? if not mail them expressing your displasure.

          on a funnier note, Indian Consulate was probably mess because its “Indians” who are supposed to visit the consulate ofthen and they want to give you a quick trailer of India so that you can miss the motherland & ur life back in India! Jai hind!!

    2. Amen to that brother. There is no way the Indian government is going to get the habit of cleansing itself or better representing itself in a foreign nation, at least not any time soon.

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