Alone in the city.

On 15th Oct 2010 I left for Gurgaon, with a feeling of excitement and nervousness. I know its not a big deal, but for me it was, I was going all alone, to a city unknown. When I told people I was coming here, the only thing they had to say about it was how unsafe it was, especially for girls. Well that didn’t do any good to my nervous system, but then what could I do. I hoped for the best and just left.

My family and friends were most worried about me, and they calling me all the time, everyday, made me feel a lot less alone.  :)
 When I reached this place, it hit me bang on. Everything about this place is so different from back home. And one word that hits my head straight when I talk about this place is “HUGE”. The place is majestic (not in a royal kind of way, but just humongous, well, at least when you compare it with Chennai).

I got lost the night I reached here, the cabbie didn’t know the way to my guest house, so that scared the shit out of me.

Alone. Girl. With Cabbie. Deserted place. You don’t really know where you have to go. You don’t really know where this cabbie is taking you. – Recipe for making a me a complete nervous wreck.

At this point in time, all you can do is pray and hope for the best. And ofcourse call the guesthouse for directions, which I did, and then the cabbie found out that he’d been driving in circles all the way around to go to a place which was on the main road. Its funny how you miss these things. Well another thing about the wonderful place I was living at was, there was no name plate to tell you where the place exactly was. So someone had to actually come out and pick us up, so we wouldn’t like go into the wrong building or something. I reached the guest house, thus ended first adventure ride. Alone. (I managed pretty well though)

Inside, the place was again different, the only thing familiar was “TATA SKY”, yes, that totally made my day. That totally made me feel a lot better and a lot less homesick! It was like I was literally singing, “Tata sky laga dala, toh life jinga lala.”

And then I slept.

The next day, took me out, and well, I need to mention this, it was a Saturday morning and I was going to work. I wanted to do something else, like explore the city, like they show on TLC. But that was clearly expecting too much. I had come here for work, and work was all I would do. (While we are on this, my dream job would be a travel show host for TLC(minus the tasting of weird food)).

Well work was fine, but a lot different than back home again. First of all, it was clearly a new domain for me, not something I had done before, so obviously it took time for me to settle in. But then it was all cool. Also another thing about the work culture here is that, its all in hindi! I mean yes, I know hindi and stuff but, numbers in hindi, that’s something I’m not comfortable with at all. It was weird to ask my seniors to repeat the numbers they had just said, in English. Well they looked at me in a weird me and well, all I could get was madrarsi north Indians also don’t know a lot of hindi! (So on your face to all the people who come from the north to work in Chennai and say that they don’t feel comfortable because the clan in South India is so within itself that they forget there is someone else there, well atleast we don’t throw numbers to you in Tamil!!) (Well another elaborate article coming up on that!)

Otherwise also the people are different, from back here. People are like very much on the face types. I mean not that it’s a bad thing, but its just different. Like even your cab driver will talk to you with an attitude, an attitude of owning like half the roads in Delhi, and well, being a busier man than Mr. Manmohan Singh himself.

The buildings here are all larger than life and make you wonder how many people one building alone can hold. Also they exteriors of the buildings are weird, over the top types. I mean the building at which I work, is red and white on the outside, in the day, it looks gaudy, at night, when the put the lights on, it looks a lot better. The building next to the one I am working in is also huge, but it has some weird colored lights on it, which come on and off, you could call them cheap disco lights.

Well, I dint get a chance to go around the city and shop and stuff, which I really wanted to, but such is life, when you are on work, all you gotta do is work.

Well, I don’t really know how the days past, it was time for me to leave.

There was a big confusion before I got to the airport, with me getting out a little late from office, to the cab driver leaving me and going off to pick someone else while I was stranded at office. That was a moment that got me real tense. I called every possible person and just yelled. That was because I really didn’t wanna miss the flight. The customer who the cab driver had left me and gone to pick, was in the cab with me, on the way back to the guest house. I was all panicky and screaming and he was just there listening. After a while, when I got out of my paranoia, he introduced himself, he was a sergeant form the Navy. It was a laughter roll for him watching me get so tense and jittery. Well, now I know that people from the Army/Navy can really keep it cool at any situation. And why wouldn’t he be cool at this almost flight missing experience, he was at the Kargil and survived that too!!

Then battling with traffic I reach the airport, just in time. I check in, get my boarding pass and call my mom. Tell her I’m finally gonna come home. I hear an awesome sigh of relief.

Standing in line, a gentleman strikes a conversation with me. He asked me what I had studied. I told him, and threw the same question back at him. Well he is a Doctor, and an M Tech from IIT. I was in awe, but then I thought maybe he just wanted to show off what a nerd he was. (By the way, in my books, nerd people are good.) He told me he works at a company with R&D for medical equipments; I tell him I don’t like these medical equipments. I mean, the last time I got an Ultrasound, an MRI, an Endoscopy or an X-Ray, I so did not like it. Infact I hated every bit of it. He told me, they would have to cut my stomach open to see what was wrong if there was no endoscopy machine. I was like yeaaa, that’s a another perspective of it. But the thing is, its not the equipments that are intimidating, it’s the hospital. If they had these machines at say theaters or video game parlors, they would be like fun machines, where we would happily go get our check up’s done. Not practical because of the germs and stuff. And not practical also because of the theory which says that everything has a place and time and blah and blah. But if you think about it, it’s a really nice idea. Then we got onto the flight. We are at different seats. We bid goodbye and exchanged cards. (This was one of the times in my working life that I felt like a proper career woman. Felt good.)

The seat next to mine was empty. I was hoping some hot guy comes and sits next to me. And we talk and fall in love and live happily ever after. Okay. Well I took it too far. I was just hoping to have someone who could decent conversation with me while the flight takes off and then let me sleep in peace.

Well since that din’t happen I took out my Cosmo(yes, I am a Cosmo girl, so?) and read that for a while. Food came, I ate, I had gotten bored with my Cosmo, so I took out another book I am reading, Malacom Gladwels, ‘Outliers’ and read that for a while. (it’s a good read btw) And then I slept. I got up when we landed.

While I was getting out of the plane, I thought about the whole trip and how it had made me grow. Made me learn. Made me realize that I am already the independent women I always wanted to be.

And most of all, it has cleared off my writers block. It had given me something I could write about, again. So all in all, an awesome experience.