My first week in India! What can I say? It’s definitely a big change from Sweden, but I guess that’s the point of my coming here – to experience something completely different! My host-family, consisting of Ammini (wife) and Ram (husband) is really great, and provided me with a very warm welcome. Ammini makes great, delicious food and she never let’s me go hungry, while Ram is a big talker that can entertain you with stories (about the most varied subjects) for hours on end…!
On Monday the local GapGuru-coordinator Hema and her husband took me to meet the editor of the newspaper I’d be interning at. It turned out he was stuck in a meeting, so instead I got the meet the assistant editor who was really nice and welcomed me to the editorial office. Tuesday hence became my first day at the Daily News and Analysis (DNA). I get to work at a daily BILAGA to the newspaper which is called Afterhrs which deals with topics such as fashion, art, movies, interior decorating and food. So on my first day I got to interview an artist about a local arts exhibition, and the following day I got to go and cover the launching (i.e. try it out – for free) of a new buffet at the luxury mall called UB City. Not bad for the second day, I reckoned.
I share a room with Will, who is from Farnborough and interns at a local orphanage with Lizzie (from Liverpool). Lizzie lives nearby with my host-family’s son’s family. On the Friday the three of us had decided to go to Pondycherry, an ex-French colony in Tamil Nadu. So we took the overnight train to Pondy, as it is called, and I was immediately struck by the heat. I realized that the comfortable, and sometimes even cool, climate of Bangalore is not something to take for granted when spending time in the south of India. Anyway, in Pondy we were all lucky enough to get blessed by an elephant outside of a Ganesh-temple and concluded the day by going to Paradise beach a few kilometres out of Pondy. I didn’t really bring swim-trunks, which left me stranded on the beach – but that was all right. At least I got the dip my toes in the Bay of Bengal. We then returned to Pondy to have dinner at a restaurant with an ocean-view, which was not a bad day to end the day. On our way back to the train station Will found a place for mini-bowling which we tried out just before leaving for the train.
On Sunday morning we were back in Bangalore (we almost missed the station because I was sleeping…), which was thankfully cooler than Tamil Nadu, and had breakfast at Ram and Ammini’s. Looking through the Sunday newspaper, Will found I had gotten my first article published! So, all in all, it was a good first week in India. A lot of new things to take in, and a lot of exciting experiences – just the way it should be.