I am currently preparing for what I like to call my Stay Permit trap, this foreseeable yet unideal time frame when the credit-card-sized document that lets me live and work in Italy as a spouse to a EU citizen will have expired and the renewal process will still be underway. It is a moment of limbo, because I am usually given a renewal date that is in the somewhat distant future, either three months or possibly even six months from my date of reapplication. During this time, I cannot leave Italy. I can return to my home country, but then coming back here in time for the date I am given would prove difficult, considering how impossible it currently is for anyone in India to get an appointment for a Schengen visa. My best bet is to stay put.

It affects everything, this bureaucracy, because I, as an art critic, can no longer travel even to neighbouring Austria to cover an exhibition or an event, or to Germany, where I would have been able to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibition, currently on display at Gropius Bau. This trap time will be activated around the end of this month, and as I ready the reapplication documents, I am already living the suspense of not knowing how long it will take, and playing out the hope that this time around, because I should have more documents, and a child, I will be given a five-year permit.