Today i applied for my 5th indian visa in 3 years or so. Apart form having to pay a €50 fee you also have to include 2 recent passport pictures with each application. That means that the G.O.I now has no less than 10 passport photos of mine, which makes me wonder what the hell they are doing with them.

Do they all keep them in one file and some clerk occasionally checks how i am developing (like the notary i had to visit today to confirm ‘that the photograph [in my passport] is a reasonable likeness’ of mine who remarked that i had gotten ‘fatter’)? Do they just throw them away? and what do they need them for anyway? to identify my remains in case i become a victim of a tsunami/erthquake/train bombing?

As i can’t come up with a plausible use/storage scenario myself feel free to enlighten me in case you have a clue…