A day at the consulate

I had been to Chennai with my wife on the 22nd to get my visa stamped. We were booked for a 1:30-1:45 slot but reached the consulate a good 30 minutes in advance. On reaching the consulate we was surprised to find a long queue at the entrance that was growing by the minute. Like the good FIFO's that we were we too joined the fag end of the snaking queue. The heat was oppressive and within minutes I started sweating profusely. The minutes ticked on and soon it was a good 1.5 hours past my scheduled appointment. After another 15 minutes of waiting we finally got to go inside at 3:15 pm. To tell you the truth, I was slightly apalled because I always felt that Americans laid a lot of stress on optimising processes. So technically speaking, I shouldnt have had to wait for more than 45 minutes.
After 2 rounds of metal detectors and two rounds of screening, we finally made it to the PA area. Now unlike the rest of the consulate, this area is completely manned by the Americans except for a few Indian ushers, who are mainly there for crowd control. The lobby was jam-packed with people of all ages. There were retired people, students, techies and businessmen. There were about 10-12 counters where the actual interviews were taking place. I took our token number and we sat down to wait for our turn. While we were waiting we listened in on the other interviews that were taking place. There was an American consular officer at one of the counters who was harassing the people a lot. She was asking all kinds of baseless questions that were in no way relevant to the purpose of the interview. I saw her rejecting quite a number of applications. I was in particular offended by the way in which she rejected the application of an old retiree who wanted to go to the US to visit his son. She was very rude to him without any immediately visible cause and after harassing him for 15 minutes she finally rejected his visa application. I felt sorry for the old man and the way in which he was treated. The other consular officers were very well mannered and were treating the people in an even handed manner. Strange how one rotten apple spoils the bunch. National pride aside, I felt that her behaviour was very un-professional. There is a reason for which the PA process exists. It is not an elimination round where they try and eliminate the greatest number of people that they can. It is just a process by which the officer verifies whether the applicant is actually a genuine one and not a phoney.
At about 5:10 we were asked to approach the counter. The lady manning the counter was a very sweet and professional lady. She greeted us, verified our credentials and asked me some questions pertaining to the category of Visa I has applied for. She then asked my wife a couple of questions to establish whether we were truly married or not. The entire process took at most 5 minutes.
America doesnt look like the land of the free to me. It looks more like the land of the scared. The consulate here was the closest thing to a fort. 10 inch thick walls, security details, bullet proof glass and metal detectors gave me a feeling of being in a war zone. I value my privacy a lot and felt uneasy about being fingerprinted at the consulate. After all my fingerprints are my identity and I dont want them lying in some American data center where they may be used in any manner that the Americans see as fit. Will an American citizen take to it kindly if he/she was fingerprinted at the port of entry in India? Well what can I say except that, we need to travel THERE more than they need to travel HERE. Thats the price one pays to enter the Land of the Free.