The Online Home of Peter Claridge

March 17th, 2008

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There are many ways to tell you are in India. One way is to go up a local and ask where you are. If they say 300 Rupees, you know you are in India. But what if you find yourself suddenly geographically challenged and can’t find a handy local to determine your whereabouts?

This is where my handy little guide will come in handy, titled…You Know You Are India When…

1. A Honda or Skoda is considered a premium luxury brand
2. The tuk-tuk driver demands Rs 150 for a trip that you know should cost Rs 70. But you end up taking anyway because you just spent the last ten minutes trying to explain where you want to go to and haven’t the energy to do it all over again
3. Over-taking on a blind bend is considered a skill rather than reckless driving
4. They drive a bus through a gap in the traffic you wouldn’t even take a bike through
5. The correct lane to be in for turning left or right is where ever your car is at the time
6. It is the job of people behind you to get out of the way when reversing and you absolutely should not look out the back window when going backwards (for this reason every vehicle is fitted with some tacky tune that plays whenever it reverses :D)
7. Traffic rules are merely polite suggestions
8. Every other question is about food
9. You’ve put on 10kg of weight since coming out to India and fitting comfortably in to your size 34″ waist jeans is but a distant memory, and someone remarks that you are looking too lean
10. You are laughed at because the girl you happen to think is pretty and attractive is considered to not be fat enough
11. Every successful film is about finding true love and following your heart, but in real life ‘love’ is not enough to justify a marriage
12. Arranged marriages actually start to make some sense as the whole boy meets girl thing is taken care of for you and you can get on with the rest of your life (doesn’t mean you agree with it though!)
13. You can accurately guess the plot of every Indian movie that’s ever been, currently popular and will ever be made simply by stating “boy meets girl and there’s a wedding at the end”
14. You look out the window and it’s day time, you look out the same window five minutes later and it’s pitch black
15. You can make artistic pictures by joining up dot-to-dot style all your mosquito bites
16. Hanging on to the outside of a bus doing 30 MPH mere inches from the massive tyres with one hand and chatting on your cell-phone with the other is considered an acceptable form of commuting to and from work
17. Seat belts are for weenies
18. Motor-cycle helmets are for weenies
19. They simply don’t believe you that the biggest actors and actresses in India are unheard of in the UK outside the Indian community
20. Ditto for the films
21. Cricket actually starts to make some sense!
22. Rice and curry for breakfast isn’t in the least bit unusual
23. It takes 4 guards with whistles to help you reverse out of a parking space
24. It hasn’t rained for 4.6 billion years, but when it does, mother nature attempts to dump the entire Indian ocean in just 2 hours
25. You see another white person in the pub and they suddenly become your best friend
26. Every Indian that you meet in the pub is in the film industry
27. Any Indian reading this light hearted and tongue in cheek article is offended and angry that I should write such a thing

Got anything else to add?! Let me know! I’ve promised the guys in the office we’ll do a “You Know You’re in England When…” post if they can come up with enough funny suggestions!

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Posted in India |

March 7th, 2008

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Thought I might write about a typical day for me in India. Could be incredibly boring for some, could provide useful information for others…who knows?!

My day usually starts around 9:30 - 10am when the maid comes in and starts cleaning the apartment. You don’t have hot water on demand, so you have to turn the heater on and wait 15 minutes or so before it’s hot enough to have a shower.

When I was in India last time, breakfast consisted of rice and curry (the sauce is called ‘gravy’ in India). But now I have my own place, I’m embracing traditional Western values by having muesli or cereal with fresh orange juice for breakfast I plan to start making tea in the morning too, but I haven’t gotten around to buying a kettle yet…

I get to work between 11am and 12 noon, getting there either by car if Aravind stayed over or tuk-tuk if I’m on my own. Trying to get a tuk-tuk is always an experience. The office is located in an area called Nungumbakkam, but thanks to my wonderful British accent, the tuk-tuk drivers simply can’t understand me when I tell them where I want to go.

Getting a tuk-tuk would cost a local about 70-80 rupees, being white, it’s extremely rare for me to get 80 rupees, it’s usually 80-100. For reference, 100 rupees is about £1.25 or $2.50.

I take lunch around 3pm. Sometimes I bring a packed lunch with cheese sandwiches and an apple, or I’ll go down to the sandwich shop below our office (think: Greggs, if anyone is reading this in the UK). If I buy lunch it’s around 60 rupees (£0.75).

Work generally finishes around 8pm and depending on the plan, I’ll either go out to a nice restaurant for dinner or go home and cook some pasta. Going out to a restaurant at a 4/5 star hotel costs about £15 for three people - not too bad!

If I have to make my own way home then the fun and games start all over again with the tuk-tuk drivers. I live in an area called Mandavelli, but once again, I say this word and a look of confused incohesion crosses the drivers face. It’s always an adventure to find out where you’ll wind up at the end of the journey…

…Since I live near Mandavelli station I use that as a local landmark when explaining where I want to get to, but it’s still incredible how many drivers have no idea where it is. This evening for example, I was taken to Mandavelli bus station.

I’ve also just discovered that apparently the way I pronounce ‘Mandavelli’, it sounds like I’m saying ‘head hurting’ in Tamil. That caused a lot of amusement in the office…grrr.

Anyhow, back to dinner and food…

Pasta is rediculously cheap, this evening I went and bought 2 packets of pasta, 2L bottle of coke, some milk and some juice and it came to 110 rupees - about £1.30.

Since they also have Pizza Hut and Dominos Pizza here, we’ll occasionally order a pizza, this is a bit more expensive, costing around £4.50 ($9.00) for a medium pizza, 4 slices garlic bread and a bottle of Pepsi. The pizza’s are all made from the same ingredients, so they taste exactly the same over here as they do in England (surprise?!).

In the evenings I’ll kick back and watch TV, I’ve got a nice 32″ widescreen flatscreen TV mounted on the wall with cinema surround sound - it’s all good

Umm, so there you have it, a short ‘day in the life of’ someone living in Chennai. Not all that exciting really, except maybe second guessing where you’ll end up when you climb in to a tuk-tuk!

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Posted in Personal, India |

March 6th, 2008

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I was inadvertantly playing Cilla Black the other day at the office, let me set the background if I may…

Anand, the CEO of Agriya, the company that I work for has decided that it’s time to get married. Or rather, his parents have decided that it’s time for him to get married - this being India afterall. A hunt up and down the state of Tamil Nadu has uncovered several likely candidates for the marriage.

One of the candidates parents were not keen on the proposed marriage because Anand was the CEO of a ’small’ company, and to them that meant high risk. They wanted someone who worked for a ‘big’ company like Infosys for their daughter, under the belief that this would provide a more ’secure’ income.

Keen to prove the daughters parents wrong, Anands parents asked them to come and visit the office and see for themselves that this was a medium sized business that was going strong. They agreed and visited the office the other day.

Unfortunately for Anand, the initial impressions were not good, they saw the downstairs office and were not completely impressed. Then they came upstairs to my office and they did a complete U-turn in their opinion.

The reason?

Agriya has two Westerners working at the office

As soon as they saw me and one other European guy in the office, they changed their mind and said “Agriya must be a big company if white people are working for them”. So after that, it was Game On for the marriage!

See, not only am I doing a wonderful job, I’m also helping office staff to get hitched. I think that deserves a payrise…

Update: Game Off! Cancel everything, the sky is falling, the marriage has been cancelled! Rumours, hearsay and theories abound.

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Posted in Personal, India |

February 27th, 2008

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I had my first proper experience of being mobbed by Indian children the other day! I’m used to the staring you get as a white person living in Chennai - in a city of over 6 million people I would be surprised if there were more than 1,000 Westerners living here. With those kind of percentages, if you have white skin, people will stare - not even in a subtle way, but full on staring as they watch you go by.

The staring doesn’t bother me at all - my ego even gets carried away to think that I might be the first white person they’ve seen - but very unlikely in Chennai. The staring isn’t done in a rude or offensive way, and there’s certainly nothing aggressive about it, it’s just curiosity to see this odd person with white skin.

Anywho, the other day I had just popped down the road to the supermarket (think small shop that sells a variety of different products - they are still very much in to the “one shop, one product type” over here, fruit from the fruit store, vegetables from the vegetable store, bread from the bread store etc.) and as I came back with a weeks worth of shopping in each hand, I passed what could politely be described as a slum.

A group of scrawny looking kids wearing no shoes (did I really have to say that?!) were playing in an old car wreck when they saw me and then ran over shouting in Tamil. Naturally I didn’t have a clue what they were saying and then one of them pulled out a Motorola Razr phone (no shoes, but they have the latest cell phones?!) and they all crowded round to get their picture taken with me.

It was pretty surreal as I stood there with shopping bags, posing for photos with the kids, grinning like a fool and desperately working out how I was going to get out of the situation. Umm, but I did get out of it eventually.

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February 24th, 2008

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Anyone that knows me will probably know my opinions on spiritual and alternative therapy stuff quite well. Suffice to say that I’m a complete non-believer in that sort of thing.

So when I had the chance to have my palm read on Saturday, I jumped at the chance

The entire conversation took place in Tamil, but I’ve got the translated version here…

You have a nice hand, you will get lots of money, but you will spend lavishly - but you have a good chance to have more wealth than you can spend. You are very intelligent, you look timid, but deep down you are not. When it comes to work, and you know you are very correct, you will not let it go.

You have a lucky hand, whatever you start, you will do well.

You are coming to India with a mission, you rely on your friends from other countries to help you. You have the opportunity to marry only one girl and she will probably be from another country. You have the opportunity to have five children.

Nice and vauge, I hope you will agree. It could probably be applied to any foreigner coming to India

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Posted in Personal, India |