Working in India

The year was 2000 and I was in India for 5 days - specifically visiting Chennai, Kancheepuram, and Mahabalipuram. I was but a naive student traveling with friends and living life fully. I thought I'd learned something about the culture, but not nearly as much as I know now.

The year is now 2011. 11 years of education, work and cultural awareness later and I'm back in India. This time I'm in Hyderabad for 10 days to work.

The experiences are vastly different - because I'm different, the country's different, and I'm visiting different areas.

In the past 11 years I've tried a lot of (bastardized in the US) Indian food from many regions of India, and grown to love much of it. I've worked with and become friends with Indians from India and Indians from America which has led to random conversations about norms, holidays, traditions, culture and the country. I've become more confident and outspoken too. So I'm looking at a different part of this huge country with different eyes.

I still see some things I remember - traffic that would make a New Yorker cry, COLOR everywhere, and many contrasts of life. The smiling little girl I met in 2000 outside Mahabalipuram is reflected outside my posh-apartment window in the happiness that is a community of metal huts.

I'm staying right next to the offices in a corporate apartment that's massive. It's the 4 bed, 4 bath penthouse apartment with a view. The living room alone is bigger than my first Seattle apartment. It really makes me want to throw a party and have my friends over and watch Ceri slide around on the stone floors. The apartment comes with service beyond your wildest dreams - a book to write down food requests to be filled the next day, daily linen service, laundry service, a driver whenever I want, and a cook for breakfast and dinner.

Yet looking outside my window, I see the contrast - that of finished beautiful office buildings mixed with vacant lots and half finished apartment buildings. The road I walk on to work would be a 4 lane road in the US, but here it's 4 lanes of chaos where most people go in the proper direction if it's convenient and it's filled with pedestrians, bikes, rickshaws and cars.

Embracing the contrasts is part of the culture shock. The security guard was shocked that I'd walked to the office eventhough it was a mere 2 blocks from the apartment - only because I walked in traffic like everyone else. My coworkers are shocked by my love of spice, eventhough I can't take it as hot as some of them.

And this is why I love to travel, to visit and see things that are so different and so mundane... like the head bobble that replaces the nod, the direct eye contact without shame of staring at the blonde girl with red skin on the road, and the shock of being genuinely thanked with a smile for providing me with service.