by TALIB QIZILBASH
PHOTO/Aman ki Asha
Three months sounded like enough time. Heck, it’s a whole business quarter. It’s also a trimester: a newly conceived baby will start to develop fingernails and its face will gain a human profile in less than 12 weeks. As such, three months is a lot of time to make a decision. After all, it didn’t seem like a big, forever-type of issue, such as marriage. (Actually, in South Asia, deciding on a life partner can be done in a living room over tea). But to the Indian government, this was a forever-type of issue. A big one, in fact. A wrong decision could have deep ramifications, permanent fallout. Just as, allegedly, granting a visa to US citizen David Coleman Headley did. Headley was charged in December 2009 for scouting locations for the Mumbai attacks.
Under this pressure to not screw up again, Indian officials struggled to come to a quick visa judgement on my father. Three months wasn’t enough to do their due diligence. After all, he, unlike Headley, is automatically suspicious. My dad holds a Pakistani passport.
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