bottom down

1. AC is not necessarily a luxury – it can damn well be a necessity

2. Eating alone in restaurants is not the horrific thing I once thought it was.  Its actually one of the things I now enjoy doing most.

3. Drivers are homicidal freaks who WILL run you over so stop playing chicken with them on the roads

4. People think its weird to eat bandakka with rice – so my maid refuses to make it for me

5. Waiters and shopkeepers are so used to being treated with disdain and aggression that a smiling please and thank you can work wonders

6. Auto drivers are not all unscrupulous ass holes. Just most of them.

7. Halloween is bound to catch on in a big way – the “look at me” culture here can only foster it

…. more later

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So I got my visa. Almost two months since I handed in my application for a work visa at the Indian High Commission. Ah – how innocent I was then! Little did I realise the trauma of what would follow. First complication: my application had to be sent to Delhi for verification by the Ministry of External Affairs. ”Should be just a formality” said the visa processing officer smiling at me. I have one word for him. LIAR!

 Start weeks of uncertanity, hoping, waiting, frustration, boredom, borderline depression… in fact pick the mental illness of your choice: I was bordering on it.

First: no news. “call back in two weeks…” “Call back in one week”. It became mechanical.

 Second: partial news. “They can’t find your file”.

Third and last of all: “There is an objection on your visa. They are not convinced that your job cannot be done by an Indian” The Proverbial bombshell.

Now will someone please explain to me, how India can proceed considering employment visa applications on that basis when:

a) it has a population of 1.2 billion.
Statistically speaking then, practically EVERY job in the WORLD has an Indian in India who is qualiified to do it. In which case dispense with the employment visa altogether.

b) To me at least it stinks of hypocrisy – considering how MANY Indians are working overseas including in Sri Lanka and I’m not even talking about all the outsourced jobs they get…

c) How the HELL am I supposed to convince the ministry? My judgement of my abilities are subjective. As is your assesment of the same.

So I gave up. And then unexpectedly it arrived. The clearance from Delhi. God knows what they were told… how they were convinced. But either way I have the (dubious?) distinction of being identified as someone doing a job that an Indian cannot. In India. Delhi to be precise. It’s ridiculous, it’s hilarious, it’s outrageous and it’s funny. It’s a contradiction.

But then again, so is India. 

( I await Delhi with interest. )

40 degree sweltering heat. Curse inducing humidity. Urine stenched pavements. Unscrupulous auto drivers. konjum munnadi ponga! 
Electric trains. Dazzling gold jewellery. Multi coloured saris. bright yellow sambar. 
Running for stories. Editing till midnight. Hyperlinking till squint.
Peach ice tea at Kodambakkam. Spontaneous drives to Mahabalipuaram. Chatting till midnight. Stealing from Mocha. Weekends at 6B. Some of the best friends I ever had. 
Dreading the end. Accepting the end. Missing the best ten months of my life.

This is from when Sanjay came to visit me in Chennai. We had gone to Mahabalipuram which is kinda like Hikka.. the video details how we got beer.. even though it was Gandhi Jayanti and officially a dry day…

This is a test podcast done in collaboration with James Hardy, Murtaza Wardak and Jessica Irani. Its about music sharing and whether or not it is ethical.

No prizes for guessing where a bunch of avid (but poor) music fans like ourselves take this debate!

Click here to get your own player.

Some are born great and some have greatness thrust upon them – or so the saying goes. Taking that one step further I guess we can assume that some people are born to write blogs while others have blogs thrust upon them – I fall into the latter category. Its not like I haven’t been MEANNG to write a blog – I’ve been meaning to start up a blog documenting my time in India ever since I got here, which was like erm.. 7 months ago? So I guess this classroom excercise is a pretty good thing, because now I can kill two birds with one stone. That is… I fulfil the requirements for this workshop and I finally get my blog off the ground.

Ofcourse there is the usual drawback. Where do I start? How do I condense seven months worth of experience into one blog post, sitting in lab 3 of the Asian College of Journalism? It’s been an intense time – friends have been made – some for life (or at least I’d love to think so), friend circles have changed with little or no regret, transitions have happened, there have been tense times bordering on the ugly, there is all that I have learned, there is all that I’m learning… there is what I will learn… both in class and out of it (such as how to eat pani poori and bargain with unscrupulous auto drivers in Tamil) and now I’m beginning to wish I had done this seven months ago.

But to use another cliche and hackneyed term – Better late than never… What we need here is a structure. So I will not attempt to recap – because that bores me and my notorious memory always lets me down. SO what i will do is blog in the present and resort to flashbacks as, when and IF they occur to me.

But I will give you an idea of who I am and what and where I am right now. (through pictures – because apparently they’re worth a 1000 words apiece)

Thats ME

And these are my FRIENDS: