Incredible India

Well, it’s been a while since I managed to find the time to write anything, with full working days during the week, it does not give me a lot of time for other things. And then the last thing that I feel like doing is actually writing for my blog because there are so many stories that build up. But here goes, here’s an account of some of the new things that have happened up until now.

Sick

They say that everybody gets sick in India and so the first reaction that I got at work when explaining that my stomach was “Welcome to India”. Funnily I have actually met people that claim never to have been sick at all, the trick is avoid all meat and non-bottled water. I broke this rule by having a kebab and have been peeing like a girl for over a week now. You’d think that I’d learnt my lesson, but stubborn old me was convinced that I was just unlucky and happily had my second the non-veg meal 2 days after (probably why I’m still suffering now).

My solution to the problem? Just act like nothing is wrong and hope one day my bathroom habits will go back to normal. In the meantime, however, I decided that I would start eating non-indian lunches. Having two large meals a day is just waaayyy too much for me, so I’ve started ordering either tosti’s or a huge plate of fruit for lunch. It’s not like there is nothing on my plate, these fruit plates are filled to the top, and a tosti, well that also fills. Still, every time I sit down for lunch, the same two things get asked of me… “oh, you’re skipping lunch?” or “Are you on a diet?”. The first couple of times this comment came as a shock to me, I mean, my plate was filled to the top with fruit… but nowadays I’m used to it, and it almost feels like I’m not sitting with any Indian people when I don’t get a comment.

Goodbye Rene

During my second week at the office it was time to start doing things on my own. Rene was still in Pune, but spending his time shopping, and doing last minute things before leaving the city. Since Rene had made a lot of friends at the office in the 5 months that he was there, all of them wanted some kind of goodbye with him. The lunch with the office had already happened in the week before, as Sanna (from Sweden) had left then too. Next there was a dinner with the L&T football team, who now want me to replace Rene (if only they knew what they were getting themselves into) which unfortunately I had to miss because of the early stages of my sickness.

Next came the surprise dinner by a few others sitting around us at the office, which surprised my plans more than it did Rene. I was meant to go to the movies at 11, we left the office at 7:30 to find Rene, and have his surprise dinner. All through (and before) dinner I kept saying.. I have to go to the movies at 11. No problem was the constant answer I got, “it’s ok, no problem”. As things don’t always go that quickly here in India (for an extreme example read the TV story below ) the nearer 11 came, the more I mentioned it. When finally it was 10:40 and we were still eating, I told them I had to go, and then the first reaction was “When?”, “Now”, “When is your movie” I had already said “11”, “11???!!!!???”, “YES, 11” and so it was decided that I would not make it on time with a rickshaw, so I was brought by one of them on his motorcycle, speeding through the Pune streets, and making it just on time to catch the postponement of the start of the movie by half an hour. Welcome to India.

The last activity for Rene was a dinner with everybody from the house, other interns, and many colleagues. When I see how many people Rene had to say goodbye to, I really hope I manage to be as fortunate as he was. Although sad to say goodbye, it’s nice to see how many people he really met here in Pune, it took a whole week of goodbyes to get it all done.

Fort Logar Trek

Every weekend that we are able, we try to do something interesting, whether it’s a trek, rafting, or even a party as is planned for the coming weekend. Last weekend it was a trek in the area of Lonavla, halfway between Pune and Mumbai.

To go to the area of Lonavla we decided to take a local train, as it is said that everybody should experience this at some point. The local trains really are an experience, jam packed we left the station, I was standing near the door, which did not close while the train left, or ever for that matter. So we were warned to stay a little away from the doors when at a station, because when new people enter, they push hard, and you could get pushed right out the other side. This of course did not happen at all, and I even got the chance to hang out of the train, like the locals do, for some 10 minutes, which was really fun to do, but I held on so tight for fear of slipping, that my hands were pretty cramped after those 10 minutes.

Once in the area from which we were going to walk, we discovered that the caves that we initially were going to visit were really not that far away, and we would be back within 2 hours which is wasn’t exactly going to fill our day. So in the end we looked up to the high mountain in the distance, and decided we wanted to climb to the top. Some did not agree with the decision and unfortunately were left behind.

Since we travelled towards Mumbai, we were expecting a lot of rain, so with all our heavy rain gear in the bag (it wasn’t raining) we started the hike up, going through lots of small bush bush “short cuts” Actually there was a nice road going up, snaking its way up the mountain, and the shortcut constantly crossed this road, going straight up. The hike was wonderful, with some nice mangoes, lime water, and other mountain delicacies, and lots of picture moments. One thing though… no rain! And without rain the weather is so extremely humid and warm that it made the hike twice as difficult as it could have been.

Well, a new trip requires a new blog and so yet again I’ll use THIS blog to keep you all up to date on everything that happens here in India. My contact details will be added separately, for those of you that feel the need to call, write or sms me, feel free to

They say that in the first week when you get somewhere you should document as many feelings and sights as you can, before they (as abnormal as they might be) become a normal part of your daily life. In the past whenever I experienced something new, I wrote it down straight away, but that is the difference between backpacking and working abroad…. Time.

I’ll try to start from the beginning. I got on the airplane in Brussels, and I have to admit that the Jet Air planes are much nicer than the Transamerica or KLM planes in every way. Even the stewardesses look the way that I expect stewardesses to look, and not like, well.. for those of you traveling with KLM, I guess you know what I mean :).

Mumbai Airport - the Transfer Hall

Getting to Mumbai was the easy part, then I had my first experience with Indian chaos. I arrived in Mumbai at 12:00 midnight and my transfer was at 9:30 in the morning. All I needed to do was get from the international airport side to the domestic flights and try to get some sleep there. This requires a 20 minute bus ride from one to the other. Enthusiastically (I had passed immigration without a problem, which was what I was told would be the worst part) and went to the transfer area. This was a temporary room, tiny, humid and claustrophobic and all I had to do was get a ticket with a number on it, and then wait for my number to get called, sounds easy enough.
After half an hour of talking to various other foreigners in the transfer desk, and walking up and down to the bus guy to figure out when I could leave, they started calling up the first people, they let EVERYBODY on except for a few people, one of whom was me. The answer they gave: “You’re flight is only at 9:30, you have plenty of time, sit down”. Great, this sounded vaguely familiar to a week earlier when applying for my visa, when they wanted an extra document that I did not have, and was really not required, and I got the answer “You only fly in a week, there’s plenty of time to arrange it”.
After 2 or 3 busses left, and 3 hours had gone by, one of the other guys that waited longer too, was allowed on, but later when boarding the bus, called back again. The guy flipped, calling the guy an idiot, asshole etc. in front of the whole transfer desk. This was the first realization that this was not similar to china for instance, because I had never seen people make a scene there. This scene worked to my advantage though, since after that they let everybody on the busses (a bit more crowded, but hey, this is India). The rest of the trip went fine, I was picked up nicely by AIESEC, taken for breakfast at Mc. Donalds and then taken to what will be my home for the next 5 months; Cycle Society 16B in Camp.

Cycle Society 16B

The house here is absolutely great compared to what I expected. There are 2 floors, 4 bedrooms (for 8 AIESECers) each with their own bathroom, we have a living room, kitchen, terrace and bar. Everything is extremely spacious and with a few quirks here and there, quite a reasonably place. People staying here at the moment come from Holland (2 of us), Germany, Canada, Brazil and China and often in the weekends or for dinner we spend time together.

The location of the house is said to be quite ideal, although I haven’t quite been able to figure out where everything is so I can’t confirm it yet. Cycle Society is meant to be the 2^nd best place in Pune to live, and so the richer people live here. You can tell by the many cars and bikes parked outside all the buildings. We live right in between two shopping centers of Pune and for me it’s only 20 minutes max. to get to work.

Since arriving here I have been busy non-stop with activities, initiated either by people from the house here, or by people from work (L&T) or both, as some of the nicer colleagues from work get along with the entire house here. These activities include trips (I’ll write more about them later), lunches, dinners, watching football and more, so in general I don’t expect to get bored all too quickly here.

India – My first Impression

Before I go any further in explaining what I’ve done I’d like to explain what my first impression is of the Indians here, which could be really interesting to compare with the way I feel later, at the end of my internship.
The first thing that I noticed about the Indians already at the airport is their extreme politeness. This can be seen everywhere, from the lines, in which people don’t really push (although this is not always the case) like they do in China. The politeness can be found in their direct interaction with you, and each other with constant acknowledgement of each other. This politeness seems go together with their outspokenness where they will really speak their mind at any point, even the fact that my belly sticks out has been pointed out to me, as if just to remind me, just in case I’d not noticed.

Some say that India is a land of contradictions, with the example that superficially all people treat each other nicely and politely, but at the same time this extends to people who hate each other sitting together with huge smiles on their faces as if nothing is wrong. A more vivid example of course would be the poverty issues here.

What I found interesting are relations between the sexes. Here a lot of things happen opposite to the west. Instead of women holding hands on the street as a sign of friendship, it is the men here. Instead of the women taking the dance floor to show off, it is the men here who show off. There are other things, just can’t remember them now

Trips and Food so far

My first moment out of the house together with my housemates started almost a full hour after arriving at the house. It was basically drop my stuff, say hi to everybody, and leave for Vikram’s birthday lunch at “Not just Jazz by the way” salad bar. Vikram was one of my colleagues to be, that also gets along with the AIESECers not working at L&T. The lunch was a western one, with an Indian twist. Being pushed right from the beginning made it easy to get to know everybody from the house and already get to know a few of my future colleagues. During this period it was already decided that Sunday (the next day) we would go to Mahabaleshwar for trekking and shopping. In the evening, I was already quite tired, due to my short night at Mumbai airport, but managed to drag myself along to “The Ship” a restaurant where we had dinner, watched Switzerland’s first football match, and made plans to leave the next day.

Mahabaleshwar

Early in the morning the next day those of us that did not go out partying (I was too tired…) got up and got in one of the two cars that would take us to Mahabaleshwar. Now before I go on, I have to mention one extremely interesting fact, because of the extreme heat that precedes the monsoons, Indian people LOVE the rain and so, contrary to in Holland where we do everything to avoid the rain, people do all they can to travel TO the rain. Mahabaleshwar is one of these places where it rains a lot, and so we were not the only ones on the road heading in that direction. The attraction comes not only from the rain, but this place is also one of the few evergreen forests of the world, and a pilgrimage site for Hindus with lots of nice temples. On the way to Mahabaleshwar we drove past a few temples, where I got to see my first Ganesh statue and a few Hindu temples. Also interesting were the stops that we made with the views over the valleys and forests. We hiked to a few viewpoints and took lots of pictures in the monsoon rains. On one of these viewpoints there was such a strong wind that when you threw things down one side of the cliff, soon after it would come shooting back up and fly over to the other side of the mountain. Cool….. and thank god the other side was covered by a constant fog, because who knows what kind of rubbish pile must have collected there over the years.
The final destination of this trip was the Mahabaleshwar market. I had been warned that going with such a large group of girls (at the moment girls are in the majority in the house) would be deadly in a market where shoes cost around 7 Euros max. and even as low as 1.5 Euros but I guess I needed to figure this out for myself. Contrary to the 6 hours that Rene had to suffer last time, this time I only had to endure 1.5 so it seems that when necessary, women CAN stop shopping, even if every now and then it required a little blocking of their view with our umbrella’s. This severe time restriction didn’t put a limit to the quantity of things purchased though, one of them even managed to find 5 new shoes in this timeframe.

Prajakta’s place

After my first day at work, (day 3 in India) I had yet another activity planned for me. Dinner at Prajakta’s place. Prajakta works at L&T, speaks fluent german and know soo much about Pune and this area of Maharashtra (the province) that when I need to know anything my first thought already now would be to ask her. It is Prajakta that has offered to try to teach me Hindi and in return she wants to learn Dutch. My dinner cooked my prajakta’s mother would be my first proper Indian meal, to be eaten with the hands.
On arrival it was already noticeable how hospitable this family was, the whole AIESEC house was already there, and had apparently been there often enough to feel at home, the name “my second mom” also came up with Prajakta’s mom, who gave us some great food. There is one thing to be said about the Indian hospitality though, watch out about when you tell them that you are full because you will be asked to eat at least 2 – 3 more servings of food before you really stop eating. I have never been as full as on this evening, but at the same time there was the satisfaction of having eaten a great meal.
The evening was finished by a performance by Sanna (Swedish intern who left now) who showed us the traditional Indian dance that she had learned from Prajakta over the last months, and finally we left, and I know I’ll be back there soon again :).

Holland - Italy

After leaving prajakta’s, all the guys took a rickshaw and went to another colleague’s place to watch the football. Having known that we would watch the match for quite some time already, I prepared by taking all kinds of Dutch t-shirts with me so that we could support in true dutch fashion…. In ORANGE. We watched the match in a small living room, together with 3 Dutch guys, 1 Nigerian and 2 Indian guys, all wearing bright orange and the Dutch flag and of course plenty of beer! The results of the match most of you will know, but while it happened we couldn’t believe what we were seeing, and of course this was matched by quite a lot of cheering in the middle of the night. This resulted in a guy coming to our door at halftime, threatening to call the police (quite understandable, it was 1:00 a.m.) and so the whole second half we had to mime all of our cheers, but this didn’t ruin the mood at all. The outcome was worth it all.

More Food

Throughout the rest of the week we ended up going out to lunch/dinner quite some times, and I don’t actually feel all that uncomfortable eating with my hands anymore. Actually, on one of these dinners I even got an explanation of the three benefits of eating with your hands: Your body is energized, so touching food with your hands energizes that too, when mixing food with your hands you have more control over what you mix, and finally when you touch hot food, your body feels the temperature through the fingers, and so prepares your entire mouth and digestive system that there is hot food coming. There lies the answer to people in the US suing people for burning their mouths, give them metal cups so that they realize that they shouldn’t consume hot coffee.

Laxmi Road - Protistutes

By the time the end of the week approached, we had to start preparing for yet another trip, also organized by Vikram, the water rafting at Kundalika. Since none of us had all the clothes needed for camping and water rafting, we ended up going to Laxmi road, a place for cheap cheap stuff, but at the same time also filled with markets, shirt stores (for cheap but good shirts) among other things. After buying the necessary rain gear, we got our first glimpse of Budhwar Peth, the red-light district of Pune. It is crazy what you see there, more women than you could ever picture being in one road, some of them uniks, which I didn’t notice, but then again in a street like that you don’t know where to look. The shabby looking windows filling the entire building, in which you imagine rat infested, disgusting rooms, but then again I guess I’ll never know. Although it was interesting to have seen this area, it is not meant to be a very safe place to be (esp. the uniks can get quite aggressive if without a client too long), so other than maybe going to see how one of the housemates who works there (to help young traumatized victims of the area) works, I doubt I’ll be in that area again.

Kundalika

So.. after a long week at work, and some interesting experiences in the evenings, finally the time had come to go on a camping trip out in the middle of nowhere. The plan was to leave at 10pm, so that we would arrive at Kundalika at 1am, sleep, then spend the day survivalling. The way there was extremely interesting, as somewhere half way some of the L&T guys stood up and started singing, then all of a sudden they stopped, and the singing came from the back. Before we knew it there was a singing battle going on all around us. The idea of the battle was, one group sings a song and stops somewhere halfway, the last letter sung by the one group has to be the first letter sung by the new group, and if they cant think of anything within 10 seconds, the game is over. Sounds great, until after about an hour you realize that they know SOOOO many songs that they were able to sing for 3 hours straight!!

Once we arrived at 2am, we got info on Holland’s score, and so started the camp nicely. In total 50 people came with us, among which were Indians we didn’t know, L&T guys, the AIESEC house and two other Dutch girls. We three Dutch guys grouped together with the Dutch girls to form the Dutch tent. After a quick walk through the forest, we went to bed, while most of the Indian guys stayed up screaming and singing through the whole night (I still don’t understand how these guys do with so little sleep). The next day we rafted for a few hours through the rain, and while the rapids were not that exciting, we rafted, swam, tipped the boat, there were even some rescue missions performed by Katherine and Manzi since not all Indians can swim.

The day went great, and by the time we were finished, we were all extremely tired, but then a snack of spicy soup and rice came by which gave everybody the strength go on until lunch. Some people were given a little too much strength since when the bus driver told us that there were too many people for one bus, and some people should sit on the roof, half the bus STORMED out of the bus to get on top. I was not energetic enough to get out on time. So off we went, back to camp, with beautiful weather, when suddenly a storm broke out and we were nowhere near camp. For a moment my envy of the guys up top turned into relief that I was not up there, until all of a sudden cheerful cheering and singing came from the roof, these Indians just cannot be broken.

Upon arrival at camp the idea was that we spend another couple of hours walking on ropes, playing volleyball, etc, but the western guys all chickened out of the rain and slept in the tents, while the Indian guys went on playing as if the rain didn’t even exist.

On the way home we stopped once for a nice picture moment with waterfalls, fog and beautiful forest, then went off home, home sweet home (with a shower).

L&T

Now that I have given you all an idea of what it is like living here, I had better describe Larsen & Toubro InfoTech a little bit since they are the whole reason why I am here. At the moment I am the 4^th Dutch intern to do a placement and L&T InfoTech (an IT company focused on outsourcing) but only the second to join since they started specifically targeting the Dutch market. Rene started the Dutch Interest Group which tries to focus on the Dutch companies in the healthcare and insurance markets and this is what I will be taking over from him.

On arrival at L&T the task of meeting my new colleagues and remembering their names was the first challenge. A lot of people are enthusiastic about the Dutch market and so it’s easy to talk to people there (well… the fact that Rene was there probably helped… a lot). The working atmosphere is really quite nice at the company, with facilities such as a canteen (we only have breakfast and lunch here), a gym, a bedroom (L&T is operational 24 hours a day) pool tables, ping pong tables and probably more that I don’t yet know about. The younger people all want to hang out, and so try plan loads of lunches and evening activities with you (I’ve even been invited to join their football team) and in general the Indian people are very social and so every second that you are not busy, there are people talking to you.

One system that they have in the company is IP messenger, which is a messenger program used internally to quickly share files, explain to people where you are, or even ask for help. This IPM is used actively for both professional purposes and social purposes. The social purpose that is most popular is the concept called “sweets at my desk”. Basically people think of all kinds of reasons (often birthday, engagement, marriage or special visits) to bring Indian sweets to work and offer them to their colleagues. Then at a certain time they send an IPM to everybody in the office that there are sweets at their desk and that’s when you see everybody go running to get some of the sweets. Daily you will see this happen at least 3 or 4 times around you. (good exercise and healthy Indian sweets)

One other interesting thing that I was able to witness this week was a power cut at the office. While in India it is common to have power cuts, and due to power shortage, Thursday is normally the day that everybody gets power cuts due to the electrical companies switching it off to save power, most companies have their own backup generators for this day and so dutch L&T. But on this Thursday afternoon, for the first time ever L&T had a full building power outage. One of the powerlines had fallen the day before, and the generators weren’t able to cope for the long amount of time that they were providing power. First the airco went, then the computers, and then suddenly people sprinted for the security doors to open them before the power went, so we wouldn’t suffocate. So, for hours without power, one minute people say that this is really bad, but soon realize there’s not much we can do without a computer, so “wanna go get some chai?” and we were off. People went to the movies, out to lunch, or stayed indoors like us with music from mobile phones and just filled the time with chit chat and ‘sweets at my desk’ through verbal communication. This may all seem quite normal for some of you, but it is really amusing to see how a company, fully focused on IT, with heavy deadlines, copes with the stress when the job cannot be done…. C’est la vie.