I don’t like complaining about a country or culture in my blog posts. My research topic is depressing enough without focusing on all the little day-to-day annoyances that come with living abroad anywhere. Plus I love it here and don’t want to taint anyone’s image of Bombay. Still, it’s important to give you folks at home the full picture. The ups and the downs. Yesterday an American friend who has been living here for a little over a month called to tell me he had reached his breaking point. He had been stood up for a meeting… again. “People are never non-committal in this country, but they never mean what they say. If you don’t know, then just say so!” I’ve dealt with similar obstacles while trying to conduct my research, or even just go about my day. Time is expressed in finite terms, but a word like “immediately” can mean anything from five minutes to hours.
The first month here was an absolute nightmare just getting my cell phone up and running. Everyone kept telling me it would be working in half an hour, in a couple of hours, by tomorrow, in ten days. You need a recent electricity bill. This SIM card doesn’t work. Airtel’s system is down. We have to send the documents to Reliance. The messenger hasn’t come. You have to go to the other store. The office lost your documents. I finally I lost my temper with the Reliance lady who told me that a photo copy of Jacques’ passport (with proof of Indian residency) wasn’t a valid form of ID. I caused such a scene. I demanded to see a list of approved documents, pointing out that foreign passports are definitely on it, thus proving my point without getting my way. Frustrated, I insinuated that her manager, the person responsible for denying the documents, is racist against white people and stormed out. It was absurd. (It also didn’t help that trying to go to a local Sikh restaurant that night I faced yet another roadblock. The sign on the door read: “We are closed. It is the birthday of Our Ninth Guru Sri Tegh Bahadur Sahib Ji.” Looking it up, I can’t tell if it really was his birthday or his “Martyrdom Day.” All I know is that I couldn’t get my vegetable curry and was ticked.)
All good things come to those who wait. Or switch tactics. In India it usually takes a combination of both. Eventually, after giving up with Jacques’ documents and using Kanakdeep’s, my phone came back to life. With it returned some of my mental stability, and more importantly, the freedom to continue my research which often involves going alone to some questionable parts of the city.
But I hit my breaking point again right before leaving for Bangkok. I was buying nail polish from a small shop in the mall, being perfectly nice to the shop lady, and then with a big fake smile on her face she called me a gori to her coworker. I reacted automatically (my jaw dropped and I recoiled, then gave her the stink eye) and she immediately scrambled to ask, “Oh! You speak Hindi??”
“Haan, thora thora. Meh Hindi seekh rahi hoon.” Yes, a little. I am learning Hindi. Or in other words, watch what you say! Despite the fact that my vocabulary is probably only 100 words, it’s enough to follow typical everyday conversations. And no I don’t want to buy any shampoo from you. Udyar phiz, yeah right.
Another thing that can start to wear is the fact that everyone is in everyone else’s business. It’s rarely malicious, but it can definitely border on judgmental. For example, I used to read the newspaper over breakfast on our second floor balcony every morning. Then Kanakdeep told me I’d better stop because it’s “not nice” to eat outdoors; I could be making “hungry people passing by on the street feel bad.”
Yesterday the maids Susha and Mala asked me if I was planning on “going to a disco” for New Years. When I said I had plans to go to a nearby bar with Kanakdeep, they both giggled and ignored my pleas of “Just as friends! For safety!” It’s not the first time our friendship has been confused with something more. One night we stopped at a panwallah near Just Around The Corner and bought a single clove cigarette for 6 rupees. (I forgot how much I missed them.) But we had to be careful about smoking on the balcony, not because smoking isn’t allowed, but because our hanging out has already raised a few eyebrows in the building. The security guards were saying that I’m K’deep’s girlfriend. Someone was even trying to extract a bribe for keeping “the relationship” quiet from the landlord. Jacques had to diffuse the situation by saying (correctly) that I’m his cousin and just visiting.
