India, love and hate relationship

Last night I was checking the Facebook updates and I found Alexandra Birladeanu’s post: India and I, which inspire me to write this reply post.

My Indian experience is over since 3-4 weeks already, I lost the count long time back.

It’s been more than a year in which lots of things happened: legislation, hospitals, police, borders, new holidays, traditions, rules, new friends, old friends, babies, weddings, love stories, life stories, dirt, rats, pollution, monsoon, heat, beaches, faith, love, fights. Some of them can happen being at home as well, some of them are normal for an internship abroad, but after reading Alex and Romeo’s blogs, I think there are things which can be lived only in India.

We all come to India with lots of enthusiasm and adventure spirit. We expect it to be harsh; we expect the bugs, heat, monsoon, illnesses, uncomfortable bed, crowd, mosquitoes to be there; and we come with enough open heart to go beyond this, or at least that’s what we think. Therefore at the beginning, we are fascinated about the traditions, festivals, cloths, jewelleries, relationships, myths. We really love India. I did it! I was happy there. I was excited to play Holi, draw rangoli, decorate the house for Diwali, eat sweets, wear a salvar kameez, saari and so on and so forth. But somehow something happens on the way.

It’s like passionate love, or a love at a very young age: you live it too intensely and it consumes faster. If you don’t learn to live it with the right persons and in the right way, it goes away or even worse, it’s becoming suffocating and you start hating it. We experience too many extreme things that we’d never done in our countries: living in a very bad neighbourhood, travelling with “Personalul” (slow train, cheap and unsafe for girls in the night) from Iasi to Bucharest to save money (I don’t think anyone of us ever thought about it), or eat from unhygienic places; just to give some few examples. And after living a couple of months like this, and adding some new elements as heat, pollution, climate, friends who are far away, one doesn’t have the same open mind to bear with bureaucracy, crowd, new people, and even worse, starts being rude in situations in which normally is not.

And we want to live everything. At least I did: I wanted to see everything was to be seen travel all across India without caring how – I was sure, I will not be back to this land soon. But after being everywhere I wanted to, after doing everything I wanted to, eating, trying everything crossed my mind in a year, living in cheap rooms with bed bugs, getting allergy, I think I learn to listen and understand why my colleagues in office were always telling me: “we don’t do that, we don’t travel like this”. Every country will have good and bad things, beautiful and ugly places, and if we want to love a place, live there (for a year internship one needs his/her own Indian home) and enjoy it, it has to be a nice one, and now, I found it unfair to blame Indians for the frustrations we get due to the way we decide to live.

I also think we are too young, immature and ignorant when we come to India. After I came back from my South-East Asia trip I think we should do that before living in India. We should have a live preparation about Asia culture and lifestyle of a month or so, and afterwards going to Incredible India. Most of the times we have no idea how different can be this continent, or that Europe is a pink and wonderful world, but the only one and it is just a very small part of the world. Therefore me and others to don’t say all of us (those who stay for a year especially), come to India and when we get tired, start blaming India for a lot of things. Don’t know if higher salary is the solution, guess a better and more open AIESEC India will mean less frustration too.

All in all, I haven’t heard stories so intensely lived as in India. As Indians like to say: “India has everything!”, and it can’t be just love, it is love – hate relationship.

3 Months in Mumbai!!! Wrap-up time!

Big day on Sunday! It was Marcela’s Birthday We had fun, karaoke, brunch, cake. She did some sweets special made for us. They were delicious!!!

But, also on Sunday was a special day for me. I did 3 months in Mumbai!!!! Big day, isn’t it?

So, let’s see the list of things I did in 3 months:

• registration? done – 1,5 months
• bank account? done – 3 months, but I have it! Today I got it!!!
• sim card? done – 3 weeks
  
• Hindi level: basic, basic
• orientation inside the city? intermediate, but I’m not getting lost any more
• transportation? no more problems with trains/buses/rickshaws
  
• adjusting to monsoons? in process
• I have a twin sister!! New roommate? on the way