First weekend in Gurgaon

I landed in Delhi on Friday 11th October 2012, and fully expected to be overwhelmed by the madness of it all: this was, after all, what I had been led to believe by the guidebooks and general chat I had received prior to travelling.  Navigating the airport itself was a breeze, and the only hiccup I encountered was entirely of my own doing: in my haste when leaving the UK, I hadn’t got round to telling my bank I was relocating to India for 6 months. So, after one successful ATM transaction (giving me about £40-worth of rupees), my card was subsequently declined and blocked!  Clever me.

The journey into Gurgaon (south-west Delhi) conformed a little more to my expectations…I can’t say whether I was travelling on a motorway, but the 4 or 5 lanes of fast-moving traffic was much more in keeping with my preconceptions.  All manner of vehicle occupied the road: cars, trucks, mopeds, rickshaws, farm vehicles, pedestrians, cows!  There are no rules of the road, and road markings are irrelevant.  Vehicles just swerve and hoot, overtake and undertake, ‘straddle the white line’ (as my Granny Mary liked to do, but this was in a Honda Civic in rural Scotland, not a main thoroughfare in urban India!).  Many of the motorbikes appeared to carry entire families: dad, wearing the only helmet, in the driving seat, with a toddler sitting on his lap; mum (sar-clad) riding side-saddle behind him, and an older child hanging onto the back.  Apparently there are 5 road deaths per DAY in Delhi.  Hmmm.

Eventually we arrived at my new home for the next few months: Central Park in Gurgaon.  This is effectively a residential complex, with about 11 or 12 towers, each around 12 stories high.  I was pleasantly surprised with my 7th floor spacious apartment, but found it hard (after a long flight) to concentrate on checking the inventory with Ram, the nice bloke from the flat agency.  Ram wanted to go through every single item on the inventory (we’re talking cups and saucers here as well as beds and chairs).  I think he sensed my exasperation after a while and let me off as we approached the teaspoons.

The next welcome visitor was Monika, a lovely girl who arranged the flat for me – she’s from Poland but has lived in Gurgaon for about 10 months, so understands what newbie visitors need to know. For a girl, that means: ‘where can I get my hair cut without disaster?’ and ‘do any salons do Shellac nails out here?’.  OK, there was a more serious conversation about general safety, tipping, customs, healthcare, monkeys, business attire and so on.  Monika also kindly arranged for her personal driver to work for me for the next 2 weeks while she heads off to Singapore.  It seems that everyone out here has a personal car & driver to ferry them about to work, shops or play – I had naively thought that there would be at least some form of public transport (or walking option) but apparently not!  So, I have my very own chauffeur for a little while, and he calls me “Mrs Mo” – not sure how much I like that, but it’s sort of sweet.  Well, it would be if he didn’t burp constantly as he drives me around – I thought my family was bad, but he really doesn’t seem to care at all!

My first excursion was to the Galleria Market nearby – a cluster of small shops and market stalls on two levels – offering a wide range of goods and foods.  And ATMs – hurrah!  Having sorted out my mistake with Santander, they unblocked my card and I was ready to spend (I was hungry, besides anything else – no food for practically a day).  I thought I had pretty much familiarised myself with the exchange rate (100 rupees = about £1.20), but evidently I need some practise, as I initially tried to withdraw about £100 but realised, after several unsuccessful attempts, that 100,000 rupees is actually £1,200.  Thank god the ATM couldn’t dispense that amount, as I would have needed a wheelbarrow to get the notes home.

Off to the market, and I decided to buy a pile of fruit and veg and just do a ‘Ready Steady Cook’ job on it when I got home.  This involved picking up basketfuls of everything in the wee market shop – some of it recognisable (tomatoes, mangos, ladyfingers, pomegranates, potatoes, chillis, ginger, garlic) and some of it completely new to me (oranges which are green, things which look like courgettes but aren’t, weird lumpy fruit which looks like Patrick McGoohan in Braveheart).  A lovely touch by the market-holder is to cut a huge handful of coriander and an equally huge bunch of mint, and add it to the bag after payment.  Nice!  I’ll be going back there.

Wasn’t brave enough to try the meat shops just yet…I’ll work on that once I’m veggied out (i.e. in about 3 days’ time I think).  I did, however, find a tiny booze shop which delivers to my area – hurrah!  Have 6 bottles of the local, reasonably palatable, Indian wine – it’s called Sula and everyone swears by it – so am all set.

On Saturday afternoon I decided to laze by the pool, and met Sue and Keith, an English couple who live within the complex.  It was 34C outside, beautifully sunny, and we were the only sunbed occupants!  Sue and Keith have lived here for about 2 years, and explained that the majority of Central Park residents are actually Indians (I thought there would be a lot more Europeans), who prefer to come to the pool in the evening when it’s cooler, hence the lack of company during the day.  They (Sue & Keith) filled me in on a few more snippets and tales of life in Gurgaon – apparently there are notices posted for residents advising of important information, for example.  The latest one advises all residents to keep all windows and doors locked at all times, to prevent any unwelcome thieving monkeys who are invading the complexes looking for food.  Living on the 7th floor, I thought I would be safe from this sort of monkey business, but apparently not (a resident on the 12th floor was robbed recently by one of them!).  When I was wee, all I ever wanted was a monkey, so maybe if I leave my balcony door open my wish will come true…although upon hearing Keith’s subsequent tale describing how he was bitten by a monkey last year, and had to get a load of painful rabies jabs, I think I will restrict my monkey-viewing to the zoo.  I could leave a banana out on the ledge….no!  Must resist!

Keith also delighted in telling me how he found a large black snake in the pool last winter, and how the security guards chased it round the pool for ages before finally capturing it.  Apparently it is against Hindu religion to kill snakes on certain days (and it was one of those days), so they just threw it over the fence into the next compound and hoped for the best.  Bet that foxed him.  There are animals everywhere round here – Keith once described to a Londoner-friend what Gurgaon was like, and he’s probably right:  he said, think of Canary Wharf, and fill it with animals.  The office buildings are shiny and high-rise all right, but everything surrounding them seems totally incongruous – dusty tracks and roads with hand-painted signs, street-sellers everywhere, shacks, animals, dirt…it’s quite a weird scene.  Not awful by any means, just different.

Another odd observation I have made since my arrival is the weird way in which Indians explain a negative situation.  I was aware that this is a very polite culture in which locals do not like to say ‘no’, so expect that ‘yes’ can very well mean ‘no’, and so on.  I get that.  I expected it.  But there were two occurrences this weekend which I thought quite strange:  firstly, I was speaking to the manager of Central Park’s sports club, asking him why the swimming pool must shut on Monday for the winter (nightmare for me!).  He said that it is Haryana (i.e regional) law that swimming pools much close between October and March.  He couldn’t explain why, but insisted this was the case!  Later today, I went to a large western shopping mall to get some essentials (chopping knives for my vegetables, large mugs to take more than a teaspoonful of tea, etc), and went in search of some bathroom scales.  Having scoured some bizarre bazaar-type shops, I found one which seemed to sell homeware.  Enquiring at the welcome-desk, the first assistant said ‘oh yes, just go to the back of the store and you will find them’, but this was quickly folllowed by his colleague saying, ‘I’m sorry ma’am, but Haryana law says we must have a licence for selling those, and it is changing just now, so we don’t have a licence’.  Eh???  A law specifying a special licence to sell bathroom scales?  That’s a new one! I asked again, to be sure I hadn’t misheard, but he pretty much repeated the same strange statement (and further questioning by me didn’t elicit any comprehensible explanation).  I went for a wee look anyway, and couldn’t find them, so either the law-enforcers have come down heavy on their illegal Salter sales, or they have just run out of stock.  I know what I believe.

On the plus side, I have been very impressed with the speed of service, in this apartment, certainly.  Again, I fully expected to wait days or weeks to get things done, but I am happy to report that I requested a Tata Sky TV box to be installed in the apartment:  I confirmed the order to the letting agent on Saturday morning at 11am, and the engineers came round at 5.00pm the same day to do the installation!  Finding some dodgy cabling, then didn’t hesitate in drilling new holes in the walls to thread through the necessary wires, asking occasionally ‘Mam, is this ok?’ – obviously I just shouted ‘Yes!  Just make English things come on my telly!’.  OK, I didn’t say that, but that’s what I was thinking. There is only so much Indian ‘What Not To Wear’ (all saris), cricket (get enough of that at the McCaskills’) and Bollywood films (soundtrack to all sounds like ‘jobby selector’) I can take.  So, beat that, UK Virgin and your so-called customer service – give my Mr Puran Singh from Tata any day.

So, at the end of my first weekend here, I feel pretty relaxed and quite at home!  I haven’t seen or been bitten by monkeys (yet), I have survived several trips on the crazy road system and now don’t even think twice about it (probably not good to be complacent though), and I haven’t managed to poison myself into a Runny Biggs situation.

The real work starts tomorrow, of course.  Off to the office for the first time, and probably not much time to add to this blog-thing.