No, señor, it's impossible to give you a visa in less than 40 days."

The unyielding denial from the Mexican embassy official ended my hopes of spending the spring break -- a 10-day vacation that is the highlight of second semester students in America -- exploring the cultural and historical highlights of Mexico.

Frankly, I was irritated. It borders on the ridiculous that they need 40 days to grant a tourist visa for a period lasting just over a week. This, from a country that allows the citizens of 45 nations, including Iceland, Andorra, Liechtenstein and San Marino, to enter its borders without a visa.

But citizens of India do not have that privilege. I didn't have 40 days. In 40 days, I'd be sweating over the senior thesis I was fleeing to Mexico from.

The same thing had happened when I wanted to study in Australia for five months. I was made to jump through all kinds of hoops before finally getting permission. Since then, I've heard that the requirements for an Australian visa have become even more stringent for Indians.

Why are Indians given such a hard time? Growing up in India, getting a visa for travel never struck me as odd. It was just a fact of life. It's only after coming to the States, and seeing the comparative ease with which the rest of the world travels, that I've begun to feel annoyed.

Americans and Europeans need visas for just a handful of countries, India being one of them. A Malaysian friend once expressed surprise that I needed a visa to get into England. Apparently, citizens of most countries of the Commonwealth can travel freely within the Commonwealth. India, of course, is one of the exceptions.

People always ask me if I would return to India after I graduate. What they really mean is: Are you going to stay in the States and become a US citizen? The answer is, I don't really care. I'm not especially keen to live in America, for all its virtues and easy lifestyle. What I really want is to travel; for, as the cliché goes, there is such a lot of world to see. And whatever career I end up choosing, I know it will have an international focus.

I'm proud of my Indian roots and heritage and I sometimes feel the only reason I would give it up would be for easier access to travel. In these moments of frustration at being chained by my Indian citizenship, I swear I will somehow change nationalities.

Yet, that's the very problem, isn't it? So many of us emigrate, change citizenship and assimilate into other societies that most countries are wary of giving us permission to enter.

It's like that old joke: if all the Indians living broad come back, India will sink into the Indian Ocean. This Catch-22 situation drives me crazy. I want to be free to travel. But doing that would perpetuate the notion of the brain-draining emigrating Indian.

YES, I'm Indian. But more than that I am a citizen of the world. I grew up in Bangalore, but have lived in the States and Australia before my 22nd birthday. Like so many South Indians, English is my first language because that's what was always spoken at home.

Yet, even in Bangalore, I feel a stranger. Every time I go back, never for more than a few weeks at a time, more people have left and Bangalore has changed. I like to joke that home is where I put my feet at night, and in many ways that is true. I don't feel 'at home' anywhere, yet I've done enough travelling to feel comfortable almost everywhere.

Arundhati Roy wrote, "I am a citizen of the earth. I own no territory. I have no flag." Reading that, I realised that I was not the only person to possess a certain sensation of no place really being home.

Funnily enough, I met two people in successive days last week who both used the very same phrase: citizen of the world. The first was an American who graduated from my college in the 1960s, but has lived in Brazil, Costa Rica, India and France. He said he is very conscious of the fact that he is a global citizen and even now, after spending some time in the States, he feels restless to be on the move again.

The second was a Kenyan, who has lived in England and is now working at my university. This wonderful person told me he plans to bring up his toddler son in such a way that the boy develops a global consciousness and a global citizenship, so to speak.

That, then, is my solace. Call it globalisation or call it advances in transportation. Either way, whenever my travel ambitions are stymied by visa hassles, I take comfort in the hope that the world is slowly moving towards a place where people feel like they are not citizens of one particular place, but of the Earth as a whole.

Then, perhaps, travel will become easier for Indians.

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