Lianne, 10 November 2010
India , Adampur 30°

A day in my life

Somebody asked me to write about my daily life here and what a normal working day looks like for me, so here you go:

I wake up around 8.15am. This depends on how noisy the house owners are though. They always do construction work in the morning (or something that sounds like it), talk loudly on the phone, etc. Actually we're going to move out because of them, by the 15th of December we should live in a new house somewhere in Adampur. Anyway, back to my daily life: I have breakfast (white bread with jam with completely artificial flavor; I miss my dark bread and real jam from home haha) and get ready to go to work at around 9.15am. We walk to work, which is about 2km from here. We have to walk next to the main road between Hoshiarpur and Jalandhar, which is pretty unpleasant since there’s a lot of heavy traffic with buses and trucks. There are also no sidewalks in India, so you need to walk on the road really close to the traffic. On the way, we get an orange juice from the ‘juice guy’ and have some small talk with him. Then we arrive at work around 9.45am and start working. At work, I work pretty independently and do my own thing. I’m completely in charge of international intern/volunteer recruitment, so I answer emails, make strategic plans, put advertisements online and write reports about human resources. In between, Jagga, me and the other interns usually just joke around. We usually make fun of each other and tease each other about our English language skills or the different accents we have, our countries, languages (when they hear me speak Dutch on Skype, I usually get shocked responses), etc.

We usually have lunch at 2pm (I’m always starving by that time) and we basically eat the same thing every day: rice and chapatti’s with really spicy vegetables (usually green pepper, beans, chick peas with potatoes) and a salad that exists only of a green chili and raw onion (yuck). After lunch, I continue working and usually have a couple of meetings with Mr. B. about random things. He usually calls for meetings everyday (he can’t get enough meetings). Usually they’re not even about important things. He only discusses the important things the moment we stand up to go home, around 7pm and makes us stay at least one hour more. We usually also wait until everybody is ready to go home, so none of us has to walk home alone in the dark (that’s when the scary people come out, they’re like vampires as an Indian student in Denmark rightfully explained to me before I left).

When we get home at 8.30 we cook dinner. We usually eat Western food for dinner. Everyone has their specialty: mine is mashed potatoes, some others are really good at noodles or soups. When we’re lazy we usually get a burger on the way. About these burgers: they’re obviously not hamburgers, since nobody eats beef here. They’re made with fried potato and noodles! (yes, really..) The first time I ate it I thought it was the weirdest combination possible, but I started to really love these burgers. They’re made with noodles, potato burger, cucumber, tomato, paneer, chili sauce and ketchup. At night I watch a movie or tv show with the others that we download while at work, since we don’t have internet access at home or just read a book.


On the weekends, we either go on weekend trips or hang out with the interns who work in the other centers. Last Friday was Diwali, the celebration of light. It’s a holiday, so we didn’t have to work. Therefore, two of the local girls who teach English and computer classes at our center organized a diwali pre-party on Thursday. We actually also had our monthly board meeting with all the project managers that day, but went on a break halfway to join the diwali celebrations in the classrooms. The girls, Sandeep and Gurjit, had decorated the classrooms and bought sweets (and Indian sweets are extremely sweet!), cake and samosa’s for everybody. After eating, we were taken to another classroom to dance to Punjabi music with the girls. It was nice to see all the students go crazy at 12pm and showing off their dance moves. According to one of the Indian girls, that was because that was one of the few occasions that they could have a party without their family around, so they were enjoying that freedom. After 1,5 hours, I was dragged back to a meeting about finances and budgeting though..

On Friday, we had the real celebration. At night, we went to Sotla to meet all the interns and had dinner on the rooftop together while watching the fireworks. We really had a lot of fun hanging out. On Saturday, we went to Jalandhar with a few of our social coordinators. Maybe a small explanation about them: we have social coordinators in each center. They are local volunteers who help us with (almost) everything we ask them. They translate things for us, they show us where to go for certain things, etc. They’re all local Indian boys of in between 18 and 28 and also outside of work we hang out with them a lot. In Adampur we have one social coordinator, Jagga. He’s really helpful and I usually have a lot of fun together with him and the other interns. This weekend, he and his brother (the social coordinator of one of the other centers) took us to Jalandhar to play pool and go bowling in one of the more fancy parts of the city. It’s weird to see how the rich Indians who were there are completely different than everyone you see in daily life.

One of the obvious differences is that they wear Western clothes rather than the traditional Punjabi suits, but I also noticed that the men seemed to pay more attention to their children. As I see so often, men don’t spend any time on their kids. They don’t even take them on their lap on the bus (I was on a full bus and wanted to sit, asked a man to take his two-year old kid on his lap and he refused. Another man asked him in Punjabi and still didn’t let anyone sit there. Quite frustrating to see..). But these men were even playing with them and enjoying it. In any case, we had a lot of fun that day. I made a big fool of myself playing pool (my second time ever), ate some good thali at a restaurant, hung out in an almost empty mall at night and do funny photoshoots and go crazy to the Punjabi music we listened to in the car. VERY GOOD DAY! On Sunday, Alice and I were home alone (everybody else was traveling) and we went shopping for more Punjabi suits. I have one now and wanted one more. The one I have is red with turquoise and I bought a new one in dark blue with pink. And another red with gold one (they’re very addictive! I keep wanting to buy more!) I went to the tailor and they’ll be ready on Friday. Can’t wait to see them, also because I might go to an Indian wedding on Saturday and I’ll need to wear something fancy (my new Punjabi suit!).

Ah, and I’ve finally made my plans for Christmas and New Year’s Eve: on Christmas eve I’ll be on my way to the South of India and celebrate Christmas on the beach in Goa. I’m so excited to have a tropical Christmas, though I might actually miss the cold and darkness as well. Let’s see. I’m really looking forward to my last trip before coming back home in two months from now.

xx


Pictures of Halloween last week http://picasaweb.google.com/106842145939595482856/Halloween?authkey=Gv1sRgCMnKm7nI2KeBpwE#

Diwali at the office
http://picasaweb.google.com/106842145939595482856/Diwali?authkey=Gv1sRgCK_rwoLW6dDKvgE#