Incredibly Indian

From giving missed calls, throwing a hanky to secure a seat in a bus, to paying for coffee or bus ride, Indian’s have a unique way to bond and display their friendship. I always felt difficult to verbalize Indian friendships to westerners and this is probably the reason why I find it difficult to replicate Indian friendships in other countries and with other nationalities.

 

When one of my colleagues knew that I was soon going to be back in Chennai, he reserved a seat beside him. He became so protective that he never let anyone sit in that seat even for a day. He even informed other colleagues, who I hadn’t met before, about my arrival. Only in India, friendships arrive ahead of friends!

 

While the West finds gate crashing intrusive and shocking, it is a unique identity of Indian culture. Being warm and spontaneous walking into homes without prior notice or preparation is the foundation of Indian friendships. The same colleague who reserved a seat next to him took me to his home without giving prior notice to his family. His wife and mother were welcoming and plied me with coffee and snacks.

 

Bonding over food is the grammar of our friendship. One afternoon in the cafeteria two of my colleagues ordered food, while the rest of us jumped into each other’s plates without feeling awkward or using the word let’s go Dutch when the bill arrived. Though I’ve lived in the West for a long time, I understand letting them pay for a coffee or a meal is a way to let them express our friendship.

 

This is the season for submitting income tax proofs at work and the other day I found my colleagues sharing Revenue Stamps and signing indiscriminately on each other’s Rent Receipt. Though this is punishable by law, Indians consider denying help to friends more sinful - indelibly Indian!

 

Finally, when I had to leave work, a colleague offered to drop me at the nearest train station. Though I tried to convince him that the station was out of his way, he didn’t mind making a small detour to build a conversation and strengethen our friendship without any ulterior motives. 

 

Every Indian who is living outside of India will confess their longing for this kind of friendship that breaks many of the western rules and etiquettes. It is true that you can take an Indian out of India, but never Indianness out of an Indian. At the end of the first week at work, I found my Indianness still alive. If you are a westerner reading this, give yourself an opportunity to experience an Indian friendship. It may sound crazy, but it won’t hurt you. Break the rules!

Is life a breeze in this metro?

I began the year with a challenge and multiple shocks rather than a long list of resolutions. Yes, getting back to work after a 5 month sabbatical can be a challenge, and moving back to Chennai after a 2.5 year stint in Paris can set off a series of comparisons giving rise to cultural shocks. Are you ready to read my rambling?

In the last 2.5 years, I left home at 7.45 am every day and boarded Ligne 5 at Oberkampf Metro. I changed lines at the historic Bastille Metro and travelled in the first bogie of the ever crowded Ligne 1 for 20 minutes before I got off at Charles de Gaulle Etoile. Door-to-door travel time was 25 minutes during which I found people living up to the Parisian label.

On the first day enroute to work, I texted my dear friend, “It feels like my life has been waiting for me and I‘ve eased into this lifestyle without much brouhaha”. I had to replace Oberkampf metro with Mandaveli MRTS and Bastille with Thiruvanmiyur, while everything else pretty much remained the same except a few vending machines dispensing unhealthy snacks and a clock that displayed the arrival time of the next train.

Unlike Paris where most of them where either reading a book or listening to music, people here were starring out of the window or at each other. The friendly faces in the bogie smelled of hair oil, talcum powder and foreheads anointed with ash, sandal, or kumkum.

If Paris commute was a monoathlon, Chennai commute is a triathlon race. As I got off the train at Thiruvanmiyur I didn’t have anyone handing out a morning newspaper like Metro News, etc. I raced ahead for the last leg of my journey to secure a seat in a shared auto service. With floods damaging the traffic lights, the traffic policeman took to the old way of managing traffic, while the impatient IT crowd forged ahead reminding me of Masaimara migration in Africa.

As I got comfortable in the seat on the last row of a shared auto, I realized the adaptive and accommodative nature of Indians. That little chamber (25 sqft) seated 10 people, four in the front row, 3 in the back row, while two more flanked the driver in the front. And sometimes, we had to rearrange amongst ourselves to make women feel safe and comfortable. Back in Paris, if there is one species that I was allergic to, it was super thin women with super-sized handbags. These fashion queens corner you with their large handbags and remain unapologetic about it. This made me secretly hope that RATP should have ladies only coaches and also ladies only trains during peak hours. My colleague, Houria will tell you my love/hate relationship especially with women sporting handbags and my revengeful tactics including sticking used bubblegum on their LV bags. But this wasn’t the case with Indian women, who are usually larger than their handbags.

20 minutes later after passing by big IT brands and a toll gate, I reach the entrance of 11 story building, where I am welcomed by three security guards. The momentary pride vanishes when the first one visually scans the lagniappe and an ID card, the second one asks me to display my laptop, while the third one ensures that my ID card works and that I don’t tailgate. Do we need to be managed and kept under such intense scrutiny and surveillance like suspects?  

Though six elevators are ready to ferry you to your respective floors, but to get one to stop and find a spot in it can be challenging at peak hours (9.30am-10.30 am; 1.00pm-2.30pm; 5:30pm-7.00pm). Thank god there is no ladies special service. Trekking 11 floors was much faster during the peak hours than waiting for an elevator, which can take anywhere from 10-15 minutes. While companies strictly make your clock 9.5 hours every day, inclusive of lunch break, they fail to realize the productivity loss from waiting for the elevator.

Pennywise, pound foolish goes the English proverb. In all, I spend 12 hours on an average to get back home, while I ended up saving 90 mins in Paris. But then if I decided to leave office during non-peak hours and log in from home,  I needed to schmooze the manager to regularize my working hours (we are required to physically in office for  47.5 hours a week). If only our roads and company policies were as friendly as our people, life would be a breeze in this hot metro.