Saturday, October 17, 2009

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?

1 comment:

chicken on ice said...

oepis hani no wela loswerda: es erdbeeri isch keis beeri, sondern a nuss. de einzig unterschied isch de, dass bim erdbeeri de kern sozaega dussa isch im gaegasatz zuda nuss. kuss.