I’m getting more and more bugged as the weeks have gone by about Westerners in India. For some strange, unknown reason, they are all insisting on immersing themselves into what they believe the culture of India is by wearing traditional Indian clothes.

By that, I mean the guys wear a kind of wrap-around fabric – like a sarong – and a long sleeved garment that comes down to around your knees and sandels to top it off. The women wear sari’s (badly) or baggy trousers with the same long sleeved garment. Rat tail hair also features prominently.

The thing that bugs me the most is that, yes, at one point these were traditional Indian clothes, but now you are more likely to see (particularly amongst the growing middle-classes) Indians wearing jeans or trousers with a t-shirt or shirt. So if India’s dressing style is changing with the times, why do the Westerners in India insist on wearing old fashioned clothes?!

I know it’s a small and irrational thing to get bugged about, but hey, it bugs me. I wonder if the locals find it offensive or if they just smile in an understanding way and think how odd foreigners must be.

There are many other things that bug me about how Westerners act in India, but if I air them all, I’m in danger of turning this in to an anti-west blog!

India is a place of unexpected surprises. In order to survive, you must come to expect the unexpected and not let it phase you. Driving the wrong way down the street, no problem. The tuk-tuk driver is facing you rather than the road, furgetaboutit.

However, there needs to be a new qualification to the phrase “expect the unexpected” and that is “expect the unexpected, particularly when you are not expecting it”.

This happened to me this very morning when the ringing doorbell slowly filtered in to my mind at 6.30 in the morning. It took a minute or two for it to actually sink in that it was the doorbell that was going, so I thought hey-ho, let’s go and answer it.

The person ringing the doorbell was a guy from work, and he had another guy with him, apparently someone from the Bangalore office, who was coming to stay.

Expect the unexpected.

Someone knocks at your door and announces that they are coming to stay. You’ve had no indication or forwarning of this visitor, it’s completely unexpected.

Particularly when you are not expecting it.

OK, someone knocking at your door and announcing they are staying at yours is just about bareable, but when it’s at 6.30am and you’re awoken from a deep sleep, it just goes to show that in India, the unexpected can happen at any time!

Mosquito Bite Count: 19

I was invited round to a pancake party (erm, because it’s pancake day) being thrown by some other Brits here in Chennai. They’ve come over to work for HeyMath.com for a year. I’ve never actually met them before, but hooked up with one of them through a friend of a friend of a friend (you get the idea).

To get to their house involved taking the plunge and finally taking a solo tuk-tuk ride. We started off well until we began homing in on the apartment where the party was being held. At that point things fell apart pretty rapidly as the tuk-tuk driver drove up and down the road looking for the apartment – all the while complaining that I was wasting his time.

In the end he pulled over to use a public phone to ring them to find out where the hell the apartment was – annoyingly my phone battery had chosen that very moment to give up on life so I was unable to call them myself.

Armed with new information on the whereabouts of this apartment, we drove back up the road. Did a U turn. And drove all the way back again. Grr!

There is a happy ending to this little story though because eventually we found the apartment and I got my pancakes!

Fortunately I got my phone working again so the trip home wasn’t quite so eventful, I simply flagged down a tuk-tuk, phoned Aravind and he gave the driver the ‘rules’ (ie. don’t you dare over charge this naive white man!).

Mosquito Bite Count: 24 (yay! many bites are beginning to clear up now)

I was talking to the lawyer today that joined us and was asking about law practice in India. He showed us the court house where he practiced law. The building was actually built in the late 19th century by the British.

He told me that as a lawyer, there are only three ways to win a legal case in India…

– Convince
– Confuse
– Corrupt

It’s known as the 3 C’s in legal circles. Depending on the strength of your case, it determines which method you go with.

Another little bit of information I gleaned today is that Prakesh and YYY were all fairly adament that Mohandas Ghandi (the guy that peaceful revolted against British imperialism) was the worst thing that happened to India.

They even went as far as saying that all the good things Britain did for India far outweighed the bad things, and are certain that if it wasn’t for Britain, India would be even more of a 3rd world country (or countries) than now.

On the way back to Chennai, we stopped off at another temple which was a virtual replica of the first one. This second temple was built by the brother of the guy that built the first temple in what can only be logically described as an act of sibling rivalry.

We stopped off in Pondicherry again to stock up on some more booze. Technically it’s illegal to buy alcohol in Pondicherry and bring it in to Chennai. There are a dozen or so check points. But as the guys cheerfully pointed out, give the police a little bribe and they didn’t see anything.

Mosquito Bite Count: 31

Thanjuvar is an old Indian town that has an even older temple, 1,500 years at the last estimate. It is said to be a wonder of ancient architecture, but more on that later.

The journey itself was due to take around 6-7 hours because the place was 300 KM away. Aravind told me I would be picked up around 5am and he would come over at 4.30am to wake me up.

Foolishly, or possibly just a case of absent mindedness, I forgot that this was India, so while I got up for 4.30am to leave by 5am, what they actually meant was “we’ll say we’ll leave at 5am, but actually it will be more like 6.30”.

The three guys I went with were called Prakshy, Udi and Raj.

The main purpose of the trip was for Udi to covertly go and meet his new Fiance, a girl that he’d only met once before, briefly, at an engagement ceremony at a temple in Chennai.

I say covertly because within his family there is a tradition that once you are engaged to a girl, you don’t see them again until the wedding day. In Udi’s case, this wasn’t to be until the end of May.

The first stop on the journey was a place called Pondicherry, an old French colony that still has strong ties to France. The purpose of the stop over here was not to experience and take in the culture and admire the French influence on the architecture and city lay out, it was simply because you can buy cheap booze here.

Stocked up on booze, we proceeded down to Thanjuvar which meant taking winding country roads where the farmers were out in the padi fields and workers were piling up the harvested rice by the side of the road.

The method by which you separate the rice ‘seed’ from the rest of the plant is quite simple in india. You spread out all the stalks across the road and let the cars, lorries, bikes, tractors and tuk-tuks drive across it all, therby separating the rice from the plant.

Several boozy hours later (and it should be noted that this included the driver, an otherwise respected and successful MD in Chennai) we arrived at the hotel which was very nice indeed!

Udi met up with his fiance, and the rest of us (which now included a lawyer from Thanjuvar) headed off to the ancient temple.

I finally realised a lifelong dream and went face to face with an elephant (as in, it was free to go about anywhere). I did the traditionl of giving it a rupee coin in it’s trunk, which it passes on to it’s master and then pats you on the head with it’s trunk to ‘bless’ you.

All very cool.

There are actually three temples within the main walls and I went in all of them to be blessed by the Gods. This involves doing something with a candle (who knows what? I just copied everyone else) and then having the priest put some chalk on your head.

To be honest, I did feel a little bit uncomfortable because although I was there as a tourist and gawping at the sights, most people were there to worship their Gods.

The temple done, we went back to the hotel, had a few more beers, bribed one of the workers to let us go out in the roof top swimming pool before calling it a night.

Mosquito Bite Count: 26

It sounds like it could be the start of a bad joke, but no, today it actually happened. The hilarity of the situation is going to be lost a fair bit but here’s what happened.

One of the rooms in my apartment has been locked since I arrived due to a faulty door handle. This morning it was eventually opened by the manager of the apartment block. To prove that the door handle was working again, he demonstrated several times that the lock was going in and out as normal.

Then, for reasons unknown, the manager, the watchman and Aravind’s father went in to the room, shut the door behind them and attempted to open it again from the other side. The door handle broke.

For about 15 minutes there was a lot of shouting on the other side of the door and the door handle was turning furiously as they tried to escape. I was on the other side powerless to help, but creased up laughing at the absurdity of the situation.

Eventually I saw a builder passing by my door (the apartment block still isn’t finished yet) and I managed to flag them down and explain the problem by means of some vigorous hand gestures.

The builder disappeared and came back with 4 of his mates and they set about trying to open the door.

After about 20 minutes the men were finally released from their inpromptu cell.

As I said, the humour is lost as I retell the story, definitely something you had to be there to get.

Mosquito Bite Count: 22

So I have decided to give up freelancing and forge a career in a ‘proper’ job where one works 9 till 5 (or to 6 in some of the meaner companies). One of the first questions potential employers ask (well, ok, the 4 billion or so recruitment agencies) is…WHY?!

Incase any potential employers are reading this, let me take a moment to explain why I want to move from freelancing to a ‘proper’ job. The answer is quite simple: financial stability.

Freelancing is fun, setting your own hours, working to your own rules, but at the end of the day, you still have no idea how much you are going to earn from one month to the next, you might go a couple of months with very little and the following month take a large order.

Sales was never my strongest point, I prefered to be given the work, beaver away on it and return a new shiney website that exceeded the clients’ expectations.

When you have a fixed income, it helps you to budget and plan ahead a lot better and removes a lot of the stress and worry on where the next paycheck is going to come from.

It’s a very simple reason to be honest with you, but there have been a few problems with making the transistion from freelancing to getting a full time job which I’ll talk about some other time.

Good bye India, I’m leaving you for a smaller, richer country 🙂 It’s certainly been fun while it lasted, and we’ve had some good times and we’ve had some bad times.

Remember the time I ate the dodgy food at the street seller and couldn’t leave the bathroom for three days? Stomach cramps, hot and cold sweats, unable to move. Yeah.

And let’s not deny, there’s been some bad times too…

So hello England, roll out the red carpet, break out the fine china and chill some bubbly, Peter is homeward bound!

Looking forward to all the Western vices, beer, football, more beer, pizza, burgers, more beer.

Gonna miss the healthy food of India, having food cooked, clothes washed and ironed, and maybe a few people too 🙂

Just kidding! I’m going to miss everyone I’ve met in India. It’s a really great country, the people are really friendly and welcoming and you can feel it’s (the country) about to explode and if there is ever a moment to be in the right place at the right time, then the time is now and the place is definitely India!

Damn, I hope the airline knows I changed my departure date…

So here I am in a predominantly Hindu and Muslim country and Christmas is coming (and the geese are apparently getting fat), so I thought it would be pretty cool to go around the local market and do my Christmas shopping.

I think the traders got forwarning that a naive white Englishman was coming to spend rupees and hiked their prices 200% 🙂

9000 Rupees (about £100 – yeah, I know, last of the big spenders!) and some extremely happy traders later and I was about done with the Christmas shopping.

In the car on the way home, the radio station was playing Christmas songs like Drummer Boy, Stop the Cavalry and All I Want For Christmas (Is You).

Feeling kinda Christmasy now…which is unusual!

I know it’s everyone’s life mission to learn to speak Tamil, a language spoken in the south eastern part of India, Sri Lanka and parts of Singapore and Malaysia.

Since everyone I know is wanting to learn this language (particularly Aravind!), I’ve created a quick cheat sheet on some of the most common words and phrases that I’ve picked up and are useful.

vanakkam – welcome

nandri – thanks

ama – yes

po – go

sikiram vanga – come soon

ponga – go (formal version)

toppie – tummy

pasi – hunger

pasikidu- i am hungry

naan sapida pooren ayya – I am going to eat, sir

thanni – water

aravind yendhiri – Aravind, Get Up!!!

vanga – Come

siri – smile,laugh

sapadu – Meals

kaalai(morining) vanakkam

Thappu – wrong

edhu thappu – this is wrong

kollathe – don’t kill me!

naan alugirean – Iam crying!

The words in bold are my most used phrases as I have to tell the freshers what’s going wrong and wake Aravind up in the morning.

Hope this helps you on your way to becoming fluent in Tamil like me 😀