I had the boarding pass & had completed baggage check-in. It was a long flight ahead and I was glad things had gone pretty much as per schedule. Only the emigration check was pending. I was pretty confident I could breeze through without much hassle because my office had taken care of all the paperwork.
I was not allowed to pass through Emigration because my passport apparently did not have an ECNR stamping. Until that point in time, I did not even know what that meant.
The moment the emigration guy discovered this deficiency in my passport, he referred me to one of his superiors. From then on, I was a criminal. This man sized me up with a dirty look on his face and asked me to stand aside. He was not doing anything in particular but did not initiate any conversation with me either. I stood there for almost 15 - 20 minutes without knowing what the hassle was all about. Then I gathered all my courage and asked him what the issue was.
He said I could not travel because my passport did not have an ECNR stamping. I dared ask him what that meant and he retorted it was not his job to explain that. I stood there for another 15 minutes and asked him again if there was any chance of allowing me to pass through. ( offering him a bribe had not crossed my mind and I learnt later that that’s all I had to do). Then I asked him if I could go back. He just asked me to wait. I stood there for half an hour. Then I realised that my flight was scheduled to leave in an hour and my baggage was already checked in.
So I went up again to this man and requested him to allow me to the airline counter and call back my baggage from the aircraft before it took off. His reaction was absolutely shocking. Instead of responding to my request, he called two armed security guards and asked them to watch over me. I got shit-scared and thought I am gonna end up in some jail that night. All my co-passengers were staring at me as if I was a smuggler caught red-handed. Another 15 minutes passed.
It was then that this lady from Alitalia who had done my baggage check-in and boarding formalities happened to pass by. She recognized me as an Alitalia passenger and walked up to me to tell me that I should proceed to the boarding gate immediately. When I informed her why I was standing there, she spoke to the Emigration Official and got me "released" if I may say so. She then arranged for my baggage to be retrieved from the aircraft.
She also explained to me what ECNR Stamping meant and how I could get it done. She changed my booking to the next day on the same flight so that I could try and get the ECNR Stamping done and come back.
I realised that I was not a criminal after all. I could have been treated better by the emigration officials. Whatever the airline person explained to me, should have been done by the Emigration.
There was no need for them to keep me standing there like a criminal for almost 2 hours without even telling me why. Rather than making a passenger comfortable in a stressful situation, they add to one’s misery. Wish these so called "Public Servants" are a trifle more civilized and humane !!!