All I want is to take a relaxing vacation with my cousins! I want to see some places, eat some good food and luxuriate in uninterrupted comfort. In my mind I am picturing a lazy person's perfect, self-indulgent holiday experience! I have the time for it, the company, the wherewithal.. I am any country's textbook example of an ideal tourist... the kind they should care for.

The problem with being a lazy tourist however is that I am also not made for the paperwork I need to fill out to get to that lazy holiday! It is a very sadistic exercise full of irony. I am trying to fill out these "tourist" visa applications that require me to attach a million documents, many of which are letters from my bank and insurance companies indicating that I can financially support myself in these countries at all times. I am not averse to the idea of proving my financial worth, but the multitude ways in which I am to do that is off-putting and unsettling even. I feel defensive, like some fraudulent criminal trying to pass off as being law-abiding... when in fact I am sometimes more law-abiding than people find convenient!

Now I am waiting for one last letter from my insurance company and have had to postpone my visa appointment to a week before I leave. I am not sure if I will still receive my letter by then, or if it is enough time to get my visa. I am beginning to question if it is worth going through this trouble at all. Do I need a vacation that badly?

You must think I am making a mountain out of a molehill, but this visa application process has begun to raise a lot of questions in my mind about my self-worth... which is somehow tied to the fact that I am an Indian (living as an alien in another country!). I am angry with myself. I feel letdown and also like I let myself down.