“India is a land of contrasts, of some very rich and many very poor people, of modernism and medievalism . . . India is not a poor country. She is abundantly supplied with everything that makes a country rich, yet her people are very poor.” - Jawaharlal Nehru
Here is a LONG description of my time in India so far…
AIRPORT
I arrived on Sunday morning around 1:30am. The Bangalore airport is quite small and the line to get through immigration was very long with a lot of other people similar to me, people working for a high-tech company coming to meet some of their co-workers or direct reports in India for the first time. After 45 minutes to an hour, and some interesting conversations with individuals from Oracle and other companies, I made it through customs only to find a long line of “drivers” with white sheets of paper with people’s names on them. Additionally there were a plethora of people wanting to help me with my bags who I was trying to politely decline their help since I already had a nice cart with everything on it.
I was in search of Anand, my friend Shekar’s driver, who was scheduled to pick me up at the airport. He had a picture of me and it had all been arranged, so I was sure to find my name on a paper. I slowly walked past probably 50 people with papers. The ones looking for women clients were particularly helpful calling “Jill?”, “Bethany?”, “Gail”, etc. At the end of the line, I was outside of the airport and had not found my name. I tried not to look scared and calmly turned around and started walking against the traffic, back into the airport. Meanwhile a guy had been following me the entire way wanting to “help with my bags.” I continued to decline.
Back inside the airport, a more official looking helper asked where I was staying and if he could get me a car. Since I had forgot my notebook with that information on my dining room table in Boise AND also because I was not about to get in the car with an unidentified driver after some of the stories I had heard, I said that surely my driver was here, but I just could not find him. I felt like one of those poor children in the movies whose parents are never around and they are always making excuses for them.
I told him that I just needed to make a phone call to a friend to find out where the driver was. The nice gentleman let me borrow his cell phone and I called Shekar. His wife, bless her heart, answered the phone. It was now past 2am. She explained that Shekar’s flight from China had been canceled so he was not back in the country. She also said that Anand was there and promised to find him for me via cell phone. The kind gentleman who lent me the cell phone also went looking for the driver and asked me to wait there. Less than 10 minutes later, the gentleman came back with my picture which the driver had had and took me to the driver. Come to find out, the person who helped me was a representative from the Windsor Sheridan Hotel, so please give them your business if you ever come to Bangalore. I have heard it is the best place to stay for the money, as well.
My driver apologized and gave me some excuse that I could not really understand, but I found out later that he had been in an accident earlier that day and I believe had fallen asleep and was resting at the moment I was looking for him. He felt horrible, but it really had not been a bad experience at all.
SETTLING IN
We took off in the car and I was immediately struck that I was in India. It seemed similar to Mexico yet completely different at the same time. I assumed that the driver was taking a short cut when he made a sharp left turn through a derelict, poor area of town. The shacks were so small I immediately was amazed that people could live in such poverty. We passed through that part of town and were back on a main street. Being that it was 2am, there was very little traffic on the streets.
We arrived at the St. John’s Wood apartment complex, where Shekar and his family live, a little while later. The driver helped me carry my bags in. We came to a reception area in my building where the gentleman called someone to let me into my apartment. A young, 20 something boy groggily came to my service (“Madam”) and took me too my new, temporary home.
Srini, I soon found out, was my new “house boy” who services the apartment. He cooks, cleans and basically takes care of everything. After he showed me around the place, I thanked him and waited for him to leave the apartment. He did not. I said probably three times, “Well, this is great. Thanks.” In that tone that clearly means, please leave now. He was still there. Although I, in no way felt threatened or scared, I thought to myself, I am in a new country at 2am in a locked apartment with a person I met 10 minutes ago….not very smart, but it worked out. I finally said, “Srini, I am going to go to sleep now” and he finally left.
I had lied, I did not go to sleep. Despite the fact that it was now past 3am, I was wide awake. Welcome to jet-lag. I wrote an email home saying that I had made it okay and then unpacked all of my clothes and did my needed nesting then got ready for bed. Luckily, I had saved a little bit of water from the plane because I needed some to brush my teeth since I had clearly been warned to “Not Drink the Water” (to answer your question Matt.) I believe I finally found slumber around 4:30am and then awoke sprightly at 7:30am feeling very awake. I had probably had a total of six hours of sleep since Thursday night (and this was now Sunday).
I walked around the apartment and surveyed the surroundings. It is a three-bedroom “serviced” apartment where there is a common kitchen and living room and then three separate bedrooms with bathrooms. Srini had not given me a key so I could basically not leave until he came and I had told him to come at 9am incorrectly thinking I might be sleeping that long. I began to get thirsty. I walked out onto the balcony noticing that the very nice apartment complex is right in the middle of the town with poor shanty-town areas very near by. I noticed a cow grazing on some garbage in an empty lot next door. (see attached picture)
I took a shower and apparently took too long since after about 5 minutes the water turned cold. I made a mental note to shower quicker next time.
Srini arrived a little before 9 and asked, “What would you like to eat, Madam?” I replied, “Anything.” He made me some white toast and an omelet which was did not have any fillings, just egg. He instructed me to put ketchup on it. Nimi called and apologized for the mix up at the airport and told me where I could get groceries and some ideas about where I could buy an adapter plug since the travel ones I had bought in Boise were not the right adapters. She said if I needed her to go with me she could, but that she would call me a driver. The driver was scheduled to come at noon so Srini and I passed the time watching cricket on TV. The game makes no sense to me, so I kept asking Srini questions and he would try to explain. It still made no sense, but I did understand that India and Pakistan were playing a “test match” over multiple days and that it was a big deal.
FIRST ADVENTURE
The driver came on time and upon entering the car asked me where I would like to go. I said “The Forum” because that is where I had been told I could find most of the things I was looking for. The Forum is one of Bangalore’s newest malls and from those of you who have been to Guadalajara, Mexico, it is almost identical to Centro Magno with the round shape with stores on the outside and a theatre on the top floor. I There were many American stores including an Apple store, United Colors of Benetton, etc., but there were also plenty of other stores that I had never seen with sari’s (traditional dress of Indian women) and other things.
After walking into a few stores, I realized I had absolutely no idea what the prices meant. I had no clue whether the shoes I was looking at were $100 or $2. I walked around the mall looking for a bank only to find that the newly constructed money exchange counter does not open until next week. I walked back out to the car in the parking garage and woke the driver up (the driver just waits for you while you do your thing). I asked him if he knew how many rupees equaled a dollar. He promptly told me ($1 = 44 rupees) and I was merrily on my way trying to figure out how much the cute shoes I had just seen cost. I went back to the shoe store and had about 10 guys (in a small store) shouting in a different language about where the shoes I had just asked for were in the store, in my size.
I walked around some more and looked for the plugs and could not find them. After a little more time, I left the mall and asked the driver to take me to the grocery store. We went to a large grocery store, which is probably the size of the grocery store in Grand View, Idaho, about seven aisles. I love wandering around grocery stores in other countries to see what they have. Here, they have a lot of different fruits that we do not have in Boise. The bananas are the small, plantain-ish looking ones. There was not much prepared food (like boxed dinners) which I was looking for in case I did not want to deal with going out one night. I found some boxed Campbell’s soup, which come to find out, was about the most expensive thing I purchased and most of the other stuff I was looking for. I also bought three huge 2L bottles of water so I would not be trapped in my home again in thirst.
I dropped the groceries off in the car and then saw an ATM across the street and told the driver to wait a little longer (this is not in any means rude here, all drivers do is wait….when I go to work, he drops me off and then waits all day while I work.) I immediately realized that my casual “I will just cross the street” was going to, in no means, be an easy task. The streets are absolutely packed with PEOPLE, MOTORCYCLES, auto-rickshaws (see attached pictures), buses and cars. And the driving is the definition of organized chaos. I wisely found a couple of guys also trying to cross the street and vowed to myself to follow in their footsteps literally. I made it across, got my money and passed by a little mini-outdoor market with a few stands and then was ready to cross the street once again. I thought there was a clear opening and took about two steps forward, when a motorcycle came out of nowhere, flying towards me. I immediately took two steps back to the side of the road and stood there for a few moments with my heart pounding so hard I could literally feel it in my chest. I regrouped and found another girl crossing the street. We made it half way across where we had to wait awhile before the traffic on the other side finally subsided long enough to cross. I got into the car and asked the driver for some of my water since my near death experience had worked up a sweat. I couldn’t help but think that I must have looked just like the little frog in the old computer game, Frogger.
Next, we stopped and found a place that had the correct plug adapter and then went back to the apartment to drop off the groceries. By this point, I was starving so I asked the driver to take me to a restaurant. I found an Atlanta-based restaurant that served Indian food that was on the second floor of a building, so I basically just sat there in a jet-lagged haze people watching for about an hour and a half while I ate. All of the MANY people who walked by seemed like they were out enjoying their Sunday. Many were with other people and I was very surprised to see how affectionate people were with one another even to the point of (straight) men holding hands just to show bonding as if it were no big deal. After my lunch, the driver took me home where I hung out for the remainder of the day. Shekar stopped by when he arrived from China and asked if I wanted to go to the airport to pick up, my coworker, Keith who was arriving that night. Keith is here for three weeks right now but will be living here for 10 months beginning in March. It has been nice to have a friend to share these experiences with.
SERVICED APARTMENT / WIPRO
It has been very interesting living in a “serviced” apartment. What that basically means is that there is this guy who comes and cleans and cooks and does stuff around the house. It sounds extremely helpful, and it is but it is also kind of strange because there is a lot less privacy than I am used to. AND, Srini, who is the “servicer” of the apartment, has his own way about how things should be, so for example, I open the curtains to let some light in and then he comes in and closes them. It is just taking getting used to, but the fact that he gets meals and cleans is GREAT!
I am working at Wipro while I am here. Wipro Technologies is the largest IT employer in India and employs more than 42,000 people. Wipro is a very nice site and it securely houses people doing contract work for hundreds of international businesses. The security is tight and I, for example, can only enter the HP ODC, and my swipe card will not work for other buildings.
I have very much enjoyed getting to know some of the engineers working on my project and have spent a lot of time with the manager trying to figure out ways to meet our projects desired completion date. I guess, to me, the most amazing thing about Wipro is how like HP-Boise it is. The people are just like you and I except with some cultural differences. I don’t know what I was expecting and why I thought it would be different, but it simply is not.
My drive to work has been anywhere from 20 minutes yesterdays long drive of an hour! My driver, Lokesh, is very nice and has told me that I am lucky to have a driver that does not rip me off. I asked him to buy a CD for me and gave him $15, figuring that is what it would cost in the US. That evening, he gave me the money back and told me that it would only cost about $2 and that another driver would have ripped me off. Then he proceeded to tell me about all of the US people who he had driven and how large of tips they had left them. Needless to say, I felt like I ended my day with a serious guilt trip.
MISCELLANEOUS
Since the message is now quite long, I will quickly summarize a couple of other things…
Yesterday Keith and I ordered 2 cappuccinos and we said we wanted to pay with an American Express card. The next thing we knew, we had ordered an Americano and we couldn’t figure out who ordered it. We had, on accident when we asked if we could pay with American Express. And since the three drinks (2 cappuccinos and 1 Americano) were $ .84, we quickly understood why they wouldn’t take AMEX. And Nazeer told us that that was an EXPENSIVE coffee shop.
The food is great! BUT VERY SPICY! Yesterday, it finally caught up with me and I have switched to bland foods for awhile. Apparently, along the way I must have eaten something that wasn’t good and today I am duking it out with some bacteria. I actually stayed home from work today and just took some more of the Indian version of Tylenol so I now feel good enough to finish up this message (it has been multi-days in writing.) I learned something new because of this experience. Did you know that there is no such thing as the 24-hour flu? This is the third time this year that I have had what I thought was the 24-hour flu, but Keith told me that in most cases the 24-hour flu is really food poisoning. http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/hospitalitynorth/fn-24flu.htm
There are a lot of languages spoken around here and it is impossible for me to tell Hindi from Kannada from Tamil. They all seem to have a nice soothing sound to them and Keith and I think at least one of them sound kind of like Spanish. We are not sure which one though.
Malaria pills make you nauseous if you haven’t eaten enough.
Be appreciative of your hot shower this morning. It is a given that we take for granted in the United States. And actually once I figured out that you have to turn a switch on to create the hot water, things have been much better, but you still only get about 5 minutes of hot water in the shower.
If you walk into a bathroom in India, there might just be a hole in the ground (although most of the places we have been have toilets) but more than likely there is a hose such as the one that you have in your sink to pull out and spray water on your dishes. The hose is used by some Indians instead of toilet paper.
Last night we went to meet some other HP folks who are staying at the Leela Palace. It was absolutely amazing with lush gardens and fountains. I would literally say that it was nicer than the Bellagio in Las Vegas…yet, another example of the stark contrast that exists everywhere in India.
I want to end with a description out of a book that Keith let me borrow, Culture Smart’s “India, a quick guide to customs & etiquette” that has a lot of interesting things about India. It describes SO WELL what this place is like. You really have to see it to understand and I hope that you all are able to one day, if you so desire.
It is impossible to be unmoved by India. “Visit India, and you will never be the same again” say all of the tourist brochures. It is true. The very name stirs the imagination, and a visit is an adventure. India will change you.
And it certainly has.
Cheers!
Alecia
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