There was no real mystery as to why the passport wallah at Bombay airport was so perplexed.

It was one o’clock in the morning in a stifling hot arrivals hall with wires hanging from the ceiling, his hands were covered in ink from the countless stamps he’d punched through that night. It may have been the end of his shift and he was thinking happy thoughts of getting the feck out of there.

Now he had been handed a document stating that the smiling airline passenger in front of him was a “Person of Indian Origin”.

The problem was not so much that this passenger was a happy soul getting off an intercontinental flight – being bumped up to business class and plied with top-shelf alcohol for nine hours would make any airline passenger smile. The problem was that I was whiter than a Reykjavik Christmas and most clearly not of “Indian origin”.

Calling over a colleague, the two conferred for some time; switching their gazes between passport, PIO card and the smiling, pasty face, while pointing and tutting in hushed tones (with wry smiles thrown in as they contemplated the situation).

There wold have been no problem if my wife – she who is actually of Indian origin – had bothered to stay with me, but she had skipped ahead in the queue, had her passport stamped and then disappeared to the small duty-free section. I needed her there to show that my PIO status was, indeed, pukka.

At this point the heroic quantities of bubbly I’d downed were beginning to wear off, while the gin and tonics were only just staring to make their presence felt.

The business class smile was fast-disappearing and all thoughts of having my feet up for nine hours while being waited on began to slip away like so much pouilly fume. All I could imagine now was nine hours – at least – stuck in the immigration interrogation room I could see behind the passport desk.

I was almost certain there would be no clipped RP accents proffering a selection of breads to go with my cheese course; and I could pretty much guarantee that the rather stern looking officials currently questioning some poor soul would not be keen to fluff my pillow and check to see that my chair was at a comfortable angle. Nor would I be watching the end of Wall-e.

Luckily, it was at this point that my wife – fresh from checking out the cheap perfumes and alcohol – bounded up and asked: “Everything all right?” One look at her and my immigration chap had all the answers he needed: “Wife” muttered his colleague before wandering off while my passport was duly stamped, smearing a little more green ink over my friend’s hands.