The Passport and Visa Section

In our section, I used to sit side by side with Mr. Ramamoorthy and there were seven others in the room. It was no larger than my present meditation room. Two or three people had to share the same table. Mr. Mehrotra had his own office because he was the Passport/Visa Consul. In his office there was one big table and two chairs.

My colleagues and I did 40 or 50 passports every day. My job was to check each one of them and put stamps on the envelopes. At two o’clock I had to go to Shivaram’s section, Accounts, to show how much money I had spent during the day. Then around 4:30 I used to go from the Indian Consulate to Bloomingdale’s post office and mail the passports. Once I went to Bloomingdale’s, I did not return to the Consulate.

From the very first day, I had to check the passports to see whether my colleagues had done their job correctly. For $230 a month I started, working ten hours a day. Some days I did not even get ten minutes for lunch because there was so much work. We had to finish certain jobs by certain hours.

From:Sri Chinmoy,My Consulate years, Agni Press, 1996
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