Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

“Madam. You are coming to India every year for business?”

The nice officer at the eVisa desk at Delhi Airport was confused about all the India stamps in my passport. No, I explained, Madam just likes the place. As my friend Jaya told me, people in India are very kind.

The officer gave a skeptical look toward the people waiting in line behind me. We’d all poured off our respective international flights and into the immigration hall with its brand new—and, for India, remarkably optimistic if woefully inadequate—serpentine queuing lanes. A bald man with long saffron robes and a New Jersey accent politely reminded the couple who had shoved in front of me that the end of the queue was behind us. When they just stared, he repeated it in French, then Italian, and finally German. Defeated, they moved back.

Everyone was grumbling about the disorganization and the wait, when…