Growing a Beard

After finishing my breakfast which consisted of nearly everything available at the buffet, I finally finished the layout of this blog and later in the afternoon I went on a long walk to the Hi-Tech City where the Google office, among others, is located.

Because I landed yesterday at night, I wasn’t able to actually see anything of the surroundings, and boy I was up for a surprise. After leaving the hotel, where a short walk to the elevator includes at least five employees bowing and calling me Sir and most guests looking like diplomats (hence the bomb check of entering cars), the first shock wasn’t far away. Right over the road from the hotel lays a slum neighbourhood, and I’m talking about a real one with the whole package of naked children, stray dogs and accommodation made of whatever available. I must say stepping out of a luxury hotel, it’s a funny feeling to face the poverty and the real life of millions of people.

After walking for 15 minutes I felt like I’d walked the wrong way since I didn’t meet anyone, but two minutes later I realised the reason for the lack of people and traffic. The hotel is apparently surrounded by an extremely protected area where not everyone is permitted entrance (the slum is closed off by a fence). Twenty minutes later I passed the office and then went on to the village centre. All labourers have the day off on Sundays and that’s when they all go to the town centre for shopping for the coming week. Streets where full of people and everything was on sale, plastic shoes, meat, fruits and greens etc. It doesn’t take long to be surrounded by curious people when a camera comes out, as if being white and looking generally lost doesn’t attract enough attention. Everybody was looking at me with a curious but friendly look and they didn’t seem to mind being photographed and were happily posing.

On my way back I met the driver from last night, who drives me around whenever I need a ride for free, and he gave me a funny look when I told him I had walked into town.

“Why didn’t you call!?” he said. “Didn’t know we were goin’ out” I said.

He gave me a ride back to the hotel and now we have a date for tomorrow morning at 8:15, to the G office of course. Time for ordering some food, think i’ll go for Paneer Butter Masala….

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 15th, 2006 at 20:42 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.