Impressions of home, as an outsider

I have for a long time felt very connected to India even if I have stayed abroad. I did not want to put myself into the ‘NRI’ category, surely I was as Indian as it gets? But things do change.. I spent a month in Delhi (Gurgaon to be specific) recently. And ended up looking at a lot of things as an outsider. Being surprised sometimes, sometimes frustrated and plain amused at other times. Just putting down some of my experiences which made me feel far away from my own country..



I applied for an Aadhar card when in India, and wanted to give my parents’ address as my permanent address. Apparently if you are a married woman, you cannot give your parents’ address as yours. It is possible only if you are staying there on rent but you cannot be just staying at your parentss place. I did not check but my guess would be, no such rule exists for men. Married men can stay with their parents, but not married women!

I was at the Gurgaon railway station, and saw many people sitting on the tracks, patiently (rather than on the platform). Only to learn later, that they were waiting for the passenger train; given the crowds on the platform, its easier to get onto them from the other side! Safety can go to hell! I can’t explain how shocked I was to see this..



I had to get my address changed in 2 banks - a private and a public one. The private one happened in 5 minutes after I gave all the address proofs. For SBI, the process was so complicated that I have given up! Also, address proofs are such a big thing in India, I have till date never had a sound-proof address proof as we kept changing our addresses every couple of years. Now that finally in my life I have a permanent address proof, I cannot even begin to explain how big a sense of satisfaction I get when I dont feel fear when someone mentions  - ‘we need an address proof’! (In my years of living in London and NY, it has never even been an issue, but in my own country, its always been tough to prove I stay where I stay!!)

MTNL shop in Gurgaon

My father got a new iPhone and we needed a nanosim. Since his phone was an MTNL one (unlike an Airtel or Vodafone one which takes 5 mins to get one), we spent 6 hours one evening trying to get a nanosim from MTNL (to clarify it is a government controlled telecom entity). I really need to explain the experience. After trips to two other offices, we finally stumbled on the right shop to go to (there is only one in the whole of Gurgaon where you can get the nanosim). This shop is in a terrible location, away from the main road and in an area full of car repair shops!

We enter the shop and there are three aunties (aged about 50 or more) sitting around a table and chatting. They are pretty surprised that someone even made it to their shop! We ask them for the nanosim, they show us a normal and a microsim saying thats all they have. When I mention that we would need a nanosim for the iPhone, they say we should go and check with a phone shop if the microsim can be converted to a nanosim or not.

The MTNL shop

We leave the shop, try looking for a phone shop, but come back after 15 mins to take what they have anyways and figure out later what to do. By that time all the aunties have opened their tiffin boxes and are eating their lunches. After 30 mins, they finish and give us the microsim, with one aunty casually mentioned that she does have a cutter with her which was given to her to convert the microsim to a nanosim. Though she never uses it and will not take any responsibility. She takes out the cutter, takes 15 seconds to cut the sim and it works!

My question is this - in this age of 3G and 4G and iPhones, how can MTNL hope to run a business when their only shop in Gurgaon has employees who do not say - ‘here is the micro sim, we will cut it into nanosim and give to you’, but make you spend 2 hours running all around, finally doing the same for you, showing no interest in the one customer who has come your way and have no notions at all of customer service! My answer would be, MTNL does not care either way whether its business runs or stops. And that’s sad!



Its so cold in Delhi! I complained for 2 weeks how cold it was, woke up late because of the cold, got into the blanket at 6, refused to get out after 6pm, and was terribly lazy. I had forgotten how pampered we are in the western world with central heating. And that's what I loved most about coming back to London - its central heating!!! It actually felt that London is less cold than Delhi, for only that reason!



Why do highways in India have flyovers? Isn’t it logical to have the roads crossing the highways to have flyovers. It has many benefits that way - less cost of building a small flyover for the small criss-crossing road - less fuel usage as the highway traffic does not need to go up and down the flyover - less repairs required as the criss-cross smaller roads will have less traffic and will require less repairs - repairing would be easier as it wouldn’t need the highway to be closed down. I can’t see any reason why it should be the other way around - all the trips that our leaders and IAS officers make abroad on taxpayers' money, do they not learn this one basic thing? Highways don’t need these flyovers. (Or maybe bigger the project, more the commision and it doesn’t matter!)



Traffic - I cannot even begin to explain how I feel about it. There are no rules, you have a road and you just drive wherever you see space. There is no respect for first right, no lanes exist, its just chaos. I think patience is the first thing that people driving on the roads need to learn.



Getting anything done in India requires you to take a day off, go through mindless traffic, give multiple documents, shout at people to get them to move, and come back to realise that what they did was wrong, and you will need to make another trip! It is an exaggeration, but not too much!