Clearing Customs part two

So Wednesday morning I dress in another of my "dutiful housewife showing respect for Indian sensibilities" outfits. I hope I don't have to make too many more visits to the customs freight depot, because I really haven't got that large a supply of tents. This is something of which Rod is extremely grateful.


I phone the customs agent and he comes to collect me at the gate. I hand over my passport to get my gate pass again, and customs agent guy tries to save time and vouch for me. But gate security guy has his job to do, and I need a gate pass. I showed them yesterday's gate pass. Tuesday's passes were pink, Wednesday's are yellow. He wrote an 8 on my pass over yesterday's 7 and sent me through. So much for stringent security.


I give customs agent guy my passport and baggage declaration form. I was supposed to fill the form in last night, and have only managed to put my name, nationality, occupation and current address on it. There isn't actually a category for your sewing machine table. However there are sections for you to state you have brought in a typewriter, gramophone and gramophone records and a harmonium. It may surprise you to know that not even in our main shipment have we brought in a gramophone... Customs guy fills in the form for me, declaring the table to have a customs charge of 10,000 rupees.

Customs agent guys asks if I have seen my shipment. Personally I really only want to see my stuff once it's in my house. I don't think looking at a couple of wooden crates in a bonded warehouse is going to make my day. But he seems to want to show me, and I want this process over, so we troop out to one of the warehouses for me to look at my crates. It takes a little time to find the crates, and I'm asked if I recognise them. Well these crates didn't arrive in the UK until I'd left for India, so I've actually never set eyes on them before. But I know what the Nolting crates usually look like, and when they point out some that could be right, I check the shipping label, find my name and British address on them and say they're mine. Customs guy wonders what part of a table the long thin crate contains. I tell him they're the rollers that I attach the fabric onto so I can move the sewing machine over the fabric. He doesn't look like he understands what I'm saying, but he buys the answer anyway. They jemmy the side of the large crate open and he pulls out a sheet of the pink packing Nolting use. He stares inside, it obviously looks like a pile of metal parts - not the kind of table he was imagining - and queries, "It's a dismantled table?" Yes, I reply confidently. So he decides it probably is a table and we can go back into the admin block. This is good news for me, because it's 36 degrees outside, and probably 35 and a half in this warehouse.


Everywhere you look inside the admin block there are men holding sheaves of paper. It seems we need to visit various offices to get a stamp on our papers, and every office has an "Indian queue" (a collection of people standing in front of a desk, your proximity to the centre of the desk having no relationship to the amount of time you'd been standing there). Customs guy moves to the head of the "Indian queue" by announcing "Ma’am", and pointing to me. This makes the "Indian queue" part like the Red Sea. This works in the first couple of offices, and then he takes me to what he called the “safest place” in the admin block. This was three metal chairs in an air conditioned corridor between some accounts offices. Maybe it was the safest place because it was the only room I’d seen in two days where there were women (3 of them). This may have meant the women would protect me from the men, or that the men who worked in that area had seen a woman before and had actually learnt to control their urges. I am asked for my customs charge, I hand over the 10,000 cash in an envelope and am left to wait here for almost an hour. When customs guy returns he apologises for the delay. He had to wait for a different customs inspector to become available, because the first one was "confused, and may have wanted to ask some questions". He hands me the gate pass which releases my crates from the customs freight depot. It claims the goods are personal effects (which they weren't yesterday), worth 10,000 rupees and there is no duty payable. Patently this is all very dodgy, but I have the pass in my hand which will give me my quilting frame, so I say thank you very much and leave. Quickly.