One year in India... and?

India is quite reported about on European papers and TV news at the moment. Biggest democracy in the world, one of the highest growth rates in the world, record salary increases in the middle class, booming consumption…BUT more than 50% of the population is very poor, the economy is still very much dependant on agriculture, lack of infrastructures… Getting the external point of views, and being here, is a pretty interesting experience. The image one has in head of India is something like never ending kitschy Bollywood movies, with thousands of people dancing and singing around, chicken curry, colors everywhere, turban on the head of each and every man, Taj Mahal, dusty landscapes and poverty. Well this is also what I had in mind, and this also what India actually is … amongst other (however I have to say it right now: not every man has a turban on the head – only Sikhs!).

Living and working here gives us a real view of how life is in … Nasik, and most importantly in the middle and high class of the society. We have very few direct contacts with less well-off and very poor people (uneducated people as the “other” Indians often say), because, just as anywhere else, we don’t live with them, and we don’t have/take time to go and meet them. We actually see them live, as they live in the street. One of them main differences with Europeans cities is that Indian cities are always crowded, with thousands of people walking, riding a bicycle, a bike, a chariot pulled by 2 cows, and more and more driving a car. We actually do have short contacts every day, on the street, while driving our car to go to work and come back from work, and when we go shopping… Most of the time we see smiling faces, happy to see someone who looks like the characters of some American movie they might have seen if they have ever seen a white person. Very happy to hear us say something in Hindi because they don’t speak English. And to see us shake the head just as they do to say yes, hello, or show that they agree or are fine (those who have not come over here will most probably not know that, you shake the head from the left to the right, trying to form an eight with your face. Anyway, this part of the society is still a mystery to us after all those months. When we were on a trek in the Himalaya for one week last August, with no shower, no toilets, no ready to use gas facility, I thought a lot about “how do they make it”?

Working in India is also a very enriching experience. I have at work a lot of contacts with Germany, France and Turkey, while sitting at a Indian desk, with Indian conditions, Indians colleagues with Indian habits, and the many different ways of working are sometimes tough to deal with at the same time. Not that I want to fall into the “cliché” trap, but the Indian flexibility and ability to fire fight come in contrast with the sometimes very German “let’s stick to the process” kind of working, which sometimes makes things happen slower over there. I wouldn’t say that Indians are fast worker, but they always find a way to come out of critical situations, most of the times in the last moment. Incredible India! Whereas other cultures are more likely to anticipate problems and have a B plan in case the A plan has not worked (however the B plan is not always the good one… and no C plan is there!), Indian are the kings of improvisation. We Europeans sometimes go crazy when we see that this or that thing is not ready 1 day before an event for instance, but is ready 1 or 2 hours before it is happening. To this extent, you have to have good nerves here. Things also seems very chaotic to a “standard” European person. I also think they are, to some extent. But we cope with it every day, and the results are there: it is working. Business goes on, turnover and benefits are made, growth is happening.

One thing is for sure: it would help a lot if I could speak fluently not even Hindi, but Marathi. This is the language which is spoken here, and I am sure that I am missing so much information, just because I don’t understand informal discussions around me at work. And it would also help in some departments of the company and at some suppliers’ where some people don’t speak that much English. In such cases I tell a couple of words in Hindi and things go smoother, not because they understand what I just said, which is not significant for daily business, but because people are happy that I am taking a couple of steps towards their culture. But then they start telling things which sound very complicated to me – actually just a normal sentence, and I am lost!

Otherwise, we are getting quite used to living here. A couple of things are missing, our families and friends of course, but the rest, only to a certain extent. Non-Indian restaurants, for instance…Movies at the cinema in a language we really understand, “occidental” shopping and bars are not present in Nasik, but somehow we get used to it. We can’t go out that much. But we work so much that we don’t get time to really miss those things.

One of the good sides of Nashik is the weather: nice to very nice most of the year. Ok, the monsoon gets on your nerves for a couple of months, and April and May are extremely hot, but it is nice to hang around in summer clothes 80% of the year. This is now the best time of the year: 25-30° over the day, cool mornings and evenings, mosquitos are still hidden somewhere… but will come to us soon. Another good side is that the city is not too big. Ok, over 1 mio people might sound he for Europe, but in India it is a city with a human dimension. Of course we don’t live in very busy areas, and we are lucky enough to live 5 minutes away from work, this is a real luxury.

The first question of each and every Indian we meet for the first time is “what is your country?”, and then “do you like Indian food?”. So I want to tell them all: YES we like Indian food. Very much. We even try and cook it. And we also like the Indian food we cook! But it is “less spicy” as they say in restaurants: too spicy is killing the taste for us. Actually spicy means with chilly. I like very much the spices which you can find in Indian dishes, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, cumin, turmeric (curcuma)… not that much red or green chilly. Deserts are very sweet, sometimes too sweet, thanks god there is always time and space for a good old chocolate cake or mousse, or whatever we can bake or make provided we have all ingredients. We have even got a bread machine for Christmas (thanks, Mum!), and the first trials were quite successful.

Of course in this past year we have had the chance to travel quite a bit. You can see it below, around Nasik, Mumbai, Goa, Himalaya & Dehli, but also Tamil Nadu (South East) with Mamallapuram & Pondicherry (pictures to come!), and also Bangalore. We will travel this March to Kerala and Karnataka. And this is only a small bit! Hopefully we will make it up to Rajasthan this year, and we have to see Agra, Varanasi, Assam, Andaman islands… Too many things to see! All of those regions and areas are very different from one another. The food, language, architecture, history, legends, faith, each and every place is unique.

So what do I want to achieve in the coming year, really? Fluent Hindi, notions of Marathi, experienced Indian cooking, visit even more places, and get to know India better on sociological and political point of views. The challenge has just started! You’ll tell me this is an ambitious plan. Let’s see!