The VIP Feeling

Earlier, I had described that since I arrived in India, I can comprehend how celeb's must feel when paparazzi hunt them for a picture. To prove that I'm not exaggerating I'm showing you two pictures of mine in the newspaper! Both of them were taken in my first 3 weeks in Baroda.

First, a picture of some of the interns at a concert on page 3 of the India Times was shown.

„let’s dance“

About 1,5 weeks later I attended the anniversary of a local newspaper and even though the picture doesn’t really make the impression that this party was a success, my shot landed up in the report about it. I mean, look at my bored expression! It must be a huge thing to have a foreigner attend a party that such a picture is printed.

Oh yes, and I got the offer to be on TV as well. Actually already twice: once to be in a Bollywood movie (many young tourist roaming in Colaba, Mumbai must have been asked that question but if you look at those absolutely untalented white peeps dancing in the background of some Bollywood movies... you really don’t want to be associated with that!) and once in a report about foreigners enjoying the Indian Navratri festival. But i declined these "honours". After some weeks in India, I guess no additional attention is required.

A festive week in Baroda

Since last weekend India is in Diwali fever. It's the most important festival in India and linked to the story in the Ramayana epic where Lord Rama comes back to India after defeating Ravana in Lanka (Sri Lanka). Basically, it is the festival of lights: every house is decorated with colourful lamps and candles are lit around the house every evening during one week. Families also decorate their homes with flowers and rangoli (sand paintings). On saturday evening crackers, fireworks, "bombs", volcanos are lit and fill the streets with life... and noise. This actually happenes three days before and three days after as well. People get very excited about it. In addition the state of Gujarat was celebrating New Year on Monday, so you can imagine how fantastic the mood is over here at the moment. :)

Piece of art made of sand at a rangoli exhibition

In our office we celebrated this event last Friday: from Thursday evening on, everybody was buzzing around, putting up flowers, ribbons, painting rangoli on the floor to turn the whole office into an absolutely faboulous place. No wall, no window, no desk was left out. We can't even imagine anything similar to this. Unfortunately security restrictions in our office prohibit pictures to be taken otherwise I would have been able to share this with you. All these efforts were done for the purpose of ecorating the place beautifully together, not to have it decorated. It's really the process which is important. Because on Friday evening everything was over. For this event everyone was wearing traditional dresses: men would come in kurta and women all wore a saari.... including me. Everybody was absolutely thrilled about it, much more than I was myself. And I even got a special award for it in the internal Diwali competition. :)

My friend Raj and me wearing the traditional Indian dress for office celebration.

Settling and adapting the Indian lifestyle...

These last weeks I have been able to really settle here in Baroda and I'm getting used to my life in India. This includes adapting to the busy and work oriented lifestyle…

My TCS project has started its activities and keeps me quite occupied. In addition, the working hours here are a bit different: usually people start around 9 and finish at 7 in the evening. It’s basically the same for me. But because my project involves people from different locations and different shift timings (they work in the evening/night) I often come a bit later, at 10, and also stay longer. So usually I reach home around 8.30 or 9. This week, I even left office twice after 11 and once after midnight. It was very tiring... but worth it. The launching of my project went off very well. But the consequence is that I caught I cold and I'm fighting against it on my valuable weekend! :(

Some weeks back, I finally found a very nice apartment here in Baroda, which I am sharing with other people. As for now Robert, a guy from Croatia who works with a software developing company and his polish girlfriend Anna live with me. One friend of the Janus batch (my TCS induction group) was supposed to move in here as well, but his plans were changed a bit. In general, a guy and a girl living together is something not at all normal here in India… people stay with their parents until they get married and in case they go for work to another city, a girl would never live with a guy. That’s an absolute no go because it implies that there could be something going on between them. I could tell very quickly from the surprised faces from the people I talked to, that this is a fact I shouldn’t mention too often from now on. our apartment, is a very nice three bedroom apartment with a big living room and in one of the fanciest neighbourhoods of Baroda. For this jewel we pay “a fortune” for local standards: 12’500Rupees or about 180Euros, for all of us together! J But once you look at the salaries and the costs of living here, you’ll understand how much this money is actually worth.

Three weeks back, I attended a wedding in Delhi.I was so excited to go there, I bought a beautiful Saree to wear and went there with on of my best friends here in India, Sreejith, who was the best man for the wedding.The wedding was “unfortunately” a bit sophisticated and simple so that the whole dancing and colourful traditions were left out. On the same day Sreejith’s sister got engaged (arranged marriage, i'll dedicate a post to this soon as well) and the ceremony for this was quite vivid and exciting. Generally the brides wear very traditional, colourful and rich dresses and lots of jewellery, which just looks amazing.

During that trip, I also took the chance and visited Delhi a bit. ...and I really fell in love with that city. It has a lot of the Mogul architecture and a large Moslem community. Two factors which give the city a very special and different character.

The dancing hall at Red Fort

Even though i was wearing a well covering shirt, long trousers and had a scarf to cover neck and shoulders, they insisted that I have to rent a "full cover" (ugly, sweaty pink overdress) to go inside the Jama Masjid (Mosque) ...a trick to make some money?

The busy streetlife in the old city / muslim area.

Feel like having chicken?