Diving the wave of India

"Initially you're overwhelmed. But gradually you realise it's like a wave. Resist, and you'll be knocked over. Dive into it, and you'll swim out the other side." The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 

The character of Evelyin was describing India with this comment and it got me thinking that it feels very close to reality. So here I am. Trying to listen. Trying to dive in and not resist. Trying to adjust.

Though, as I read back the last few post, I realise I sound like somebody resisting, knocking and getting knocked all along the way. So today, I want you guys to dive in with me to the mesmerising sides of this town. I might have failed to tell you about the things that captivate me, but there are many. Here just a few that I can think about right now.

Extraordinary people. Definitively that's the first thing one ought to mention from this place. And the very main thing that drove me to come all the way here in the first place: its people. There is not one person since I arrived that has not offered their help, and so many have already managed to help in one way or another. Even some already living in faraway lands that have been contacted by common friends. Or others that I haven't yet met, but have already managed to indirectly help improve my experience here. Arriving as a family of 1 to a new place is a lonely experience, but these people have made me feel instantly a part of their family and have made me feel we share a common understanding of how important and valuable family is. I might even dare to say that spanish families and indian ones have loads in common. I'm sure there will be much more to follow on this subject in future.

Intoxicating explosion of colours. May I say more on the subject? Lets put it this way, I was living in a place that was mostly grey in the sky and green in the land. I was born in a landscape that is in its entirety ochre (brown yellowish kind of colour). I worked in offices where black and white are considered the most appropriate range of colours for a formal serious hard working attire. So coming to a place where orange mixed with blue and red mixed with green and magenta mixed with golden are within the most normal clothing office colours one can encounter, well... I just can't find words to explain how suggestive and impacting all of this is to my everyday life. It's kind of a constant discovery and amazement to the surroundings and a cheer up sensation of being part of something funny and bright. Honestly, how can one feel down in a place with so much light and colour? (jajaja, I know I might sound I am exaggerating a bit but if you have seen any of the movies, I'm sure you can understand that colours have a great impact here).

Enveloping nature. Certainly, nature was easily accessible outside the door of my old house, back in Ireland. One does not need to go to a farm to see cows and there are horses calmly passing down the street together with the cars. Just as it happened in Ireland. The unique side of things here is that trees have the diameter of the old Ka car that I once drove (to my own personal shame) and not just one or two, but most of the trees around actually are older than the whole of US history. People's holiday trips are full of shots of wild elephants and tigers (unlike the donkeys back home) And anytime I look at the sky, like while having a lovely sweet chai tea in the terrace of my office during a break, I easily can spot big majestic eagles. Animals that I never placed in an urban area before and that invariably remind me of my father and the long summer afternoons watching documentaries of wildlife.

Exotic fruits and sweets. Ok, that one is totally bias as I am absolutely certain that locals don't find their fruits and sweets exotic. But I would imagine if I offered them eating a churro, they would surely find that exotic too. Jack fruit has been a wonderful discovery of sweet and soft. Not so easy to find, unfortunately. And in nature it comes in a huge cone shaped cover that its pretty difficult to peal in oder to get to the sweet fruit inside. So I am on the hunt for the freshest jack fruits in town, and I hope to find them around my new neighbourhood soon. Gulab Jamun is my pick for favourite local dessert: balls of dough bathing in sweet crystal syrup made, in between others, out of rose water and cardamon (hhmmmm!) And then the sweet nibbles made out of cashew nut paste, like marzipan really but I do actually like this ones. Plus they come in many varieties, mixed with other nuts and dried fruit pieces. Totally yummy, I swear.

Expats. Bangalore is one of the most attractive towns for expats in India (I read that somewhere) and therefore a town where I have already had the pleasure to meet interesting people from all around the world. People with a greater sense of adventure than mine and a deep understanding of the difficulties of being new in town and to this culture. Just perfect friend material for me. One of them, a sweet young italian girl has even asked me to share a house with her: Simona. Italians I can count them between some of my very best friends and bets and I get a sense that this one is going to be another sweet experience of roommate craze.

So... there it goes. And now is past midnight and its time for this Cinderella to go to sleep. Tomorrow is a Sunday that I hope to enjoy in the gardens of the old Royal Palace and I might discover some new wonderful things that will help me dive and swim India.

Missing you all!!

One of the biggest trees I've seen so far

200 years old only and part of a beautiful big park in town called Lalbagh

 View of morning traffic in one main artery of my new neighborhood (nature is all around :))

House Hunting Hell

Finding a new home is never easy. Coming into a new empty space trying to imagine how would your new Saturday breakfast look like or where the dinner parties will best be placed. I am certainly not too good at seeing the potential on the spaces to make the best out of them. Hence, visiting empty houses it is very hard for me to make out exactly how comfy or practical use I can make of an space. With that in mind, this was far from being the pick of my worries when searching for homes in my new hometown: Bangalore.

Once again, I was under no illusion that the task at hand was going to be a piece of cake (no task is such thing in here). However, I must admit that the tag of "Silicon Valley of India" this town proudly holds had given me the delusion that finding a "modern" home was going to be feasible in just a few weeks. After all, I was only asking for a small cosy place, with no luxury, maybe a balcony and just about a furnished kitchen and a shower plate. Something that back home is considered a common, modest, middle class apartment or studio for 1 or 2. I need no luxury, I thought.

Moreover, my very good friend and colleague: Rachel, was helping me determine the options I had on terms of security and safety. Being a foreigner, she made me feel, I could be a target for many in more disadvantageous positions and could be perceived as richer than I truly am. So there were areas and home types that she instantly asked me to discard. I was to look for an apartment preferably, certainly only in gated and guarded areas and ideally in neighborhoods within the richest parts of town. She was going to be there all along the way to help me understand the standards here (10 moths deposit was the hardest to believe, but indeed is the norm) and the steps in the process. How hard could it be?

First thing I discovered is that a modular kitchen meant that you have drawers and cupboards, even if they look like coming out of the kitchen my grandma had when I was 6. Ikea would be considered extreme luxe, if indeed the place existed here (still under construction and expected end of 2015). Fully furnished kitchen means there is only furniture, so the fridge, cooking plates, washing machine, oven or even a chimney, are not to be expected in a semi-furnished home (I visited a few furnished homes before deciding that I definitively will need to buy/rent my own furniture if i wanted to feel comfortable at home) 

Even if most apartments I have visited had as many bathrooms as bedrooms (seems to be considered a basic need here) very few think that it is important to separate the splash of water from the shower from everything else, hence the shower head is placed often between the WC and the sink, sometimes even in front of the door. 

The cherry on the cake is when looking at a place that I will normally describe as unsanitary, the landlord is actually preoccupied to have a single woman as a tenant (God knows what a strange creature like woman that is not married and still works after 30 will do with their precious house) or even better, wants to know what kind of food I eat in order to accept me (for many here vegetarians should never habit a place where meat has ever been cooked before, hence the trouble, as many don't want meat eaters living in their homes: It might discourage good Hindi families from moving in afterwards!)

Lets add to all this a little bit of history. As you might know, Bangalore has been "the fastest-growing Indian metropolis after New Delhi between 1991–2001" and its still growing at a vertiginous pace. Take also into account that the estimated population is now over the 10 million mark and entire areas that are now in the heart of the city were only 30-20 years ago a bunch of bungalows in the middle of the jungle. One of those such places, I have chosen as the area where my new home ought to be: the "in" and lively area of Koramangala. 

Was I going to make a big fuss just because the kitchen didn't have a chimney or the toilet didn't have a shower plate? No, I was not. Instead, however, the existence of a shower head and the emplacement of such a shower head within a bathroom became one of the main critical points for me to choose if indeed I liked a house or not. Generally, I reasoned, if they had bother to think that a shower in the middle was not too practical, the same thought would be applied to the building of the rest of the house. And viceversa. 

:) I must laugh now at my innocence of mind or my disconnect with the realities of the place I have moved in to live. After all, as I was reminded by a very good friend during the middle of my search, many places in India do not have home water yet, many have to go to ponds, lakes, rivers or fountains to get a shower or wash their hands and they make use of the local government reservoirs for their needs of water to drink and cook with. Even in many of the most "cosmopolitan" towns in India, families do not have access to a toilet and just about a bucket and a hole in the floor of a patio do for the needs of the full family. I was told, many apartment complex in the "middle" class metropolitan areas only have common toilets for all the neighbors of the x floor building to use. 

Luckily, after visiting places that made me shiver before coming in just at looking at the jail looking like installations in front of the door (protective measures that made me wonder how safe the place could be), or apartments located just besides a water flow that smelled like something was dead inside for the past decade, my expectations and basic demands have shifted to a more realistic approach. I am still looking for somewhere that will feel home. Nonetheless, suddenly I feel I can make a home of places that previously I would have disliked on superficial notes as the view from the windows, the state of the elevators or the cleanness of the common gym (if there is one at all).

I am still looking for a house. I was very discouraged and frustrated when after finding a place that exceeded my expectations and that I could afford, the landlord decided he didn't trust a foreigner to live in the place. However, I have been lucky to find a 26 year old, sweet, Italian girl that has asked to search for homes with me, so we can afford a better place and have someone to live with. We are now 2 on the search, and we hope we will find a beautiful home soon.

  

A classified for "Christians only" add found in the news papers and one of the best toilets visited during my search (with the wrong placement of the shower head, unfortunately)


PS: Not only I don't yet have a house, as part of the fun ride I'm getting, I have as of yet been unable too of getting either a bank account, a social security number or even a phone number. Long bureaucratic procedures, extreme security measures and other perks to be blamed