My first week (or day) in Haryana

13 June 2011

I realize after I wrote some posts in Bangalore, only one of the posts really told the story about my experience in Bangalore. As a matter of fact, that post did not even describe my experience in details.

Now let me tell you my experience in Haryana.

Haryana is a different state from Delhi. Our group (me, Siok Xin, Jin Fu, and Shi Ming) used to be called “Delhi group” because our company used to be in Delhi, but they just shifted to Bahadurgarh, Haryana so now we are called “Haryana group”.

We flew from Bangalore to Delhi on 1st June. We reached Delhi in the afternoon, around lunch time. Initially Peng Kee wanted to bring us to Haldiram’s, a famous food court in Connaught Place, New Delhi, but the driver suggested that we go to a nice restaurant nearby. As we entered the restaurant, we quickly realized that the price would be expensive. It’s a high class restaurant with its “Singapore fried rice” costs us around Rs 200. Thanks to driver!! We suspected that the driver received commission from the restaurant.

From Delhi, we went straight to Bahadurgarh. It took us around 2 hours from the centre of Delhi to Bahadurgarh. We dropped our stuff in a guest house, called Ashirwad (same name with the retreat house in Bangalore), which means blessing, and the guest house was supposedly a temporary place for us until we found a new house. The owner of the guest house is a colonel. It turned out that we can stay here for 2 months. Each room costs Rs 700 per night and 2 people share one room, so it’s around SGD 300 per month. We decided to check other houses first, but we actually already felt comfortable in the guest house. It is clean and the colonel and his wife have servants that we can ask for help to order food or even to clean our room. It is also safe. I mean, it’s a colonel’s house, we can even feel the colonel’s aura when he’s 100 meters far from us. Hehehe.

Then we went to visit our company, Conserve HRP. HRP stands for Handmade Recycle Plastic, their innovation in upcycling plastic bag. Peng Kee (oh btw, Peng Kee is the NOC India senior manager, the one based in India) introduced us to Mr. Gaurav, the production director. He is very friendly and we really felt a friendly atmosphere in the company. He brought us around the factory (construction is still going on) and we were all excited and looking forward to working. Ms Anita and her husband were the founders of the company, but when we came to the company, Ms Anita was busy because there was a media coverage and they were shooting video.

Anyway, after we visited the company, we checked other “houses” which turned out to be another guest houses. The nearest housing complex is 1.5-2hours away from Bahadurgarh and it is in another suburb. We entered this particular guest house, around Rs 600 per day. With only Rs 50 difference per night (which equals to SGD 30 difference per month), we quickly preferred Ashirwad to this particular guest house. There’s no attached bathroom, it is small, and it does not look safe. We also did not bother to check the house in Noida and Dwarka that we found through internet in Singapore because after experiencing 1.5 hours in the bus for 1 week from retreat house to another company in Bangalore, we could not imagine ourselves doing it (again) for 2 months. My other friend in Bangalore lost their laptop in the bus on the way to work, just one day before we left Bangalore, and by the time we reached ‘home’ during that 1-week project, it was almost 9pm. Honestly, when we saw the main road in Bahadurgarh (there was only one main road: Rohtak Road) with one nice restaurant called Polka, I told myself, I would never ever walk at night alone, not only alone, but even with my friend. There were not any other foreigners here, unlike in Bangalore. When people look at you, it can be quite funny because they walk-look back to look at you-walk again-and look back again as in thinking in their mind “Did I see correctly?” We were kind of alien here. However, I would not say that it is because it is India. It’s just that we are different and naturally you look at different people differently. I recall my memories in Dumpit, in my hometown, the slum area that inspired me to come to India and learn about NGO. Even as an Indonesian, when I walked in the road, similar situation with Bahadurgarh, people stared at me differently, as if they were asking, “What are you doing here? Your place is not here...” Then, when I started knowing the children there, they really welcomed me and my friends. So I just tried to feel confident and comfortable here and tried not to attract much attention by not-talking so much on the street and not-taking photos too obviously. Hehehe.

Oh no...it was only my first day in Haryana!!! How am I going to write the whole week experience??? Hahahaha. Let me change the title and I’ll tell my stories in other posts.