Customs

I’ve just landed and barely 30 seconds after clearing immigration, a customs official comes up to me and offers to “help” me go through customs quickly. My response – thanks, but no thanks. I should have asked for his name and badge, but I didn't really want to take that on after a 14 hr flight. To begin with, I didn’t really need help going through customs because I was under the Rs. 25,000 limit, and I also think that corruption is eating away at India and we all need to take a stand wherever possible.

Not sure if I had the work “bakra” (goat) on my forehead, but because I was carrying the wii and the wii fit, the customs official makes me open all my luggage cause he thinks I am carrying goods excess of the limit. Once I convince him that the wii fit is not an additional wii, but just an accessory and that I paid $450 in total for the game, he then insists I have to pay for my camera (digital SLR = $1500), my 300GB harddrive ($300) and the 2 perfume bottles(~$100) he found. Accept for the perfumes, everything else is more than 1 ½ years old and purely for personal use. No way was I going to pay duty on these other items. A senior officer comes over and starts to ask me why I need a hard drive and why my laptop is not enough for me. And why do I need to bring big SLR camera, they have small pocket cameras that customs doesn’t object to. This was going nowhere. They suggest I leave the camera at customs and pick it up when I am leaving India. What the hell are these guys smoking? I had now spent around an hour arguing. As much as I hated it, I had to end up giving them $30 just so that I could get out of there. And naïve me, takes the dollars out of my wallet; immediately they tell me to put it back in my pocket. I end is in a back room “customs” office where I pay a police constable. And because I only have 20’s he takes $40 because he doesn’t have change (apparently 10 is his cut).

After taking a stand, I had to eat crow and just pay my way out of this. I was tired and I didn’t have the stomach for continuing the drama. And my parents were waiting outside, and at 1:30 am it was getting ridiculous.

I wonder what my options are here. I don’t know the officers name and don’t really have any records of paying the 40 bucks. A disappointing start. :(