Dads: A gay couple's surrogacy journey in India (30 page)

The past few days have been a roller coaster. We picked up the passport Monday morning, and immediately contacted the FRRO to get things processed. We were even told that we would be able to get it done by Friday so that we might leave, as originally scheduled.

But a server that down, delaying issuing of visas yesterday and stopping all communication between the FRRO and the ministry in Delhi (redundancy anyone? It's bloody 2013!). It stopped us from having our papers (many, many papers) processed yesterday and we haven't heard back today if things have been processed.

The thing is, as I wrote in my previous post, as a gay couple (or single father, as the Indians like to call it, making it sound less discriminatory) we need a special permit to take our children home, which is humbug at best.

The Indian surrogacy law clearly states that the child begotten through surrogacy with a foreign national is a citizen of said country. It says so in every paper I have. And it makes sense because the egg donor is anonymous, no one knows her nationality, so the only “known” is the father's nationality, mine, which makes Sascha a Swedish-Swiss double citizen. (I haven't even approached the Swiss authorities yet. I leave that for a sunny day when we're safely back home.)

So why would India care about a foreign national leaving the country?

Needless to say, I would do anything to protect my son.

Knowing this, we're easy targets for extortion...

Simple: money & politics. General elections are up this fall, and the Hindu nationalists under BJP seem to be leading the polls after Congress failed miserably to stave off corruption in the past ten years of its rule.

Government officials want to look good and powerful, taking
action
to stave off human trafficking (as if my son were trafficked?). Yet, at the same time,
female infanticide
is nowhere in the news and women are treated worse than ever before. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of orphans who would be happily adopted by foreigners if Indian politicians had a heart instead of prejudice. I would hope the incoming government, whatever creed, will deal with the dirt on its own doorstep before bullying and extorting money out of foreigners who are desperate to protect their children.

Imagine you're on vacation in a beautiful country and upon leaving, the local police refuses to allow you to take along your children unless you fill in a form. If this were to happen to any different-sexed couple, the papers would be all over this, but a same sex couple being harassed, who gives a toss?

My consulate representative looked at me and said “good luck” and gave some under the table advice for dealing with bribes.

So we pay roughly USD 1,000 more than a different-sexed couple does. We have to wait for a week (instead of 2 hours), adding more hotel bills to the aforementioned cost. But, oh well, having grown up discriminated against by my parents, my family, my teachers, my school, my employers, my government, etc., why wouldn't a foreign government do the same?

What really saddens me is that we haven't come farther, that love isn't equal love, no matter who it is you love. At least things are slowly but surely improving, and hopefully, by this time next week, we'll be - if not back home - on our way home…

I heard from two couples that still - after a week - hadn't heard back from Delhi. If you don't bribe, the process could take 30 working days. Whatever you do, don't give up, keep your heads up, be proud, because I know for a fact that most Indians don't care and don't mind us becoming parents. They are as embarrassed as anyone about how their own system is vile and soiled (re Anna Hazare, etc.) but it takes time to change things in a country larger than the US and Europe combined. If you need help, or someone to talk to,
contact us
. We'd be happy to give you pointers we can't share publicly.

Congratulations New Zealand on your great victory today. For every great nation that bows their head to human rights, our cause is strengthened, and while the queen both India and NZ share doesn't seem capable of even uttering the word “gay”, the commonwealth and the United Nations are supporting our struggle for equality. One day, we'll get there!

We are back home! Our five-week trek to India is over and Sascha is sound asleep in his bed, already protected by our youngest cat who watches over him in his sleep. Who'd have thought they'd bond this quickly?

The last few days in Mumbai went by real quick. After a first visit to FRRO on Tuesday (see latest
post
), we spent Wednesday and Thursday chasing more paperwork for our legal battles (custody and adoption) in Sweden, saying our goodbyes (for this time?) to our friends at
SurrogacyIndia
, thanking them symbolically with heaps of cake from our hotel bakery, and lazing some more in the Indian summer sun.

On Thursday night, we got a call that our MHA approval letter had already reached Mumbai (record 24 hours, our guy is good and knows who to pay off in all the right places) and we had a date to pick up Sascha's exit visa for Saturday morning 9 am. I called my travel agency and postponed our flight by 24 hours.

It was almost like a scene from James Bond as my hotel car approached the FRRO office in South Mumbai. My “guy,” seated in the front of the car, told me, “Now, get out, sign in and go to the third floor, where XYZ [one of the guys on the "pay roll"] will take care of you!”

I quickly exited the car about 50 ft from the front door, my guy obviously not wanting to be seen by the wrong people. I did as I was instructed and went upstairs, where XYZ told me to sit down in the waiting room. There, I met Ken from Australia and a couple from Israel. Ken, like me, was waiting for his visa, while the boys from Israel applied for their MHA letters (good luck, sadly I heard that Israelis aren't very popular with the FRRO, partially because of bad experiences in the past, but also because they seem a bit “aggressive”, which might be explained by the expectation of being treated badly, a vicious cycle to say the least…) I hope it works out well for them! :)

Waiting for our ferry to take us the last few miles to our house...

After 10, the first government officials and visitors started pouring into the office and by 11:30, the place was packed. By then, the commissioner of the FRRO (also on the 'pay roll') had appeared, the lady being the one to sign our visas and approve them officially. By 1 pm, I was finally out of there, with my visa stamp on Sascha's passport and two stamps for “fine paid” on mine and Sascha's passport.

Now the fine part is funny, because when I first applied for my visa last summer (June!), I applied for a medical visa and was issued a tourist visa, or at least the stamp says so, but my application clearly stated medical. It wasn't until July 1 that the Indian government decided to no longer issue medical visas to single parents (aka gay couples.) So, this January, when we applied for our re-entry visa to pick up Sascha, we knew we had to apply for a tourist visa, as the medical one was no longer available. And that is what I am being fined 1600 something Rupees for, quite a joke. Or, put differently, another way for the Indian government to extort money from us, punishing us for a “crime” we have to commit… *sigh*

Ready to celebrate Sascha's exit visa and our imminent

departure with local friends, the Hirschi Family

Back at the hotel, I paid off my “guy” (who tells me that of his 45,000 INR, on top of the six odd thousand I paid the government against receipt, most is paid as bribes “or I'd be rich by now, LOL”) we packed our bags, and spent an amazing evening with our friends from Mumbai at a hotel restaurant, having fun, talking, joking, listening to arias (no joke) and finally left the hotel shortly after midnight to make our flight to Europe. The flight itself was fine, and going through immigration was a breeze (not at all what I thought it might be), but truth be told, I wasn't 100% calm until the moment our Boeing 747-400 left the ground in India!

Sascha was the perfect flying kid, sleeping through most of the flight. I fed him twice and changed him a couple of times and even managed to squeeze a few hours of sleep out of the flight myself. Sascha even managed to charm an elderly gentlemen who was visibly upset over an infant in first class, but who had to admit before landing this morning, when curiosity got the better of him, that he hadn't heard a sound from Sascha all night, which is less than we could say from the guy in row three, who snored like a chain saw…

Immigration into Schengen was even easier, the guy barely looking at Sascha's passport, and after a short layover, we landed in Gothenburg at 2 pm, where we were greeted by a small welcoming committee of friends. We reached our house shortly after 4 pm and spent the past few hours unpacking, doing laundry (four machine cycles already completed), checking the mail, and getting settled/organized. It's funny, we're finally back home after five weeks (I've never been gone this long before) and it feels a bit odd, but the cats remembered us and our youngest, Albin, has already taken a protective posture over Sascha, while our female is still somewhat unconvinced of the strange sounds coming from that bundle in our bedroom.

This child is under MY protection...

As for Sascha, he celebrated his one month birthday, charming the pursers on our Lufthansa flight, the ground staff, our friends and neighbors completely, being the perfect 'gentleman' in all ways, and after a meal an hour ago, he's back in his crib, sleeping peacefully, with Albin at his feet, watching him.

Our family has landed, and we are tired (I think the emotions will hit us eventually, or not), and we'll probably hit our bed soon enough, because tomorrow we have the first day of our next legal battle, applying for a social security number for Sascha. Once that is achieved, I can get approval for my paternity (a formality really, but it can't be done until Sascha is officially a resident of Gothenburg, which the tax authority has to do when issuing him his social security number) and then I can apply for custody. (For now, that resides with the surrogate mother in India according to Swedish law, which for ethnocentric and racist (?) or at least chauvinistic reasons does not recognize Indian laws or their legal contracts, but oh well, we knew that going into the process…)