British intern Natasha Hoban writes about her first visit to Bangalore
British intern Natasha Hoban writes about her first visit to Bangalore
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Call it luck or contingency, I met another girl on the flight who happened to be staying in the same guesthouse as me. She was another Brit in search of something new and a few rungs outside her comfort zone. An awful self-help book provided me with some pioneering advice for my trip in India, which I had read a week before.
Supposedly, it is doing things outside of our comfort zones, which make us grow as people, making us more likely to become successful. So, I thought, on the plus side the more uncomfortable I feel on the trip, the better it would be in the long run. Or something to that effect.
In the early hours we were taken to the guesthouse, already very different from what we are used to at home.
The place had everything we needed, bed, shower, TV, toilet, fridge, stove but it was like going into a time warp. The house reminded me of my grandma's house in the hills of Istria, Croatia with its stone floors and unavoidable bugs crawling everywhere and plenty of buckets around. On showing us around the lady who owned the property said, "And if you need to get some light into the room this is what you must do". She gathered the curtains in a bunch with her hand and held up a ribbon in the other and said, "You tie it up".
Wow, as if it were some kind of revolutionary idea for getting light into the room. A Newton's discovery!
As we sat on our beds wondering what we had let ourselves in for a noise went off similar to that of an air-raid siren. We just burst into hysterics. Nervous laughter? Perhaps. But it was a good feeling all the same. There was plenty more to come. As we attempted conversations with new people a cow would walk across the pavement in the background and the words 'Cosmopolitan city', would flash through my head, while I imagined going back home and giving that nurse a good piece of my mind. Repressing laughter became a virtue I had to learn quickly.
After the first four days however, Bangalore quickly became home and I was no longer shocked or surprised by anything, just intrigued by how diverse a society can be all in one area. London has both its posh parts and its scummy parts but in completely different distant apart areas. Bangalore has it all together. A pleasant stroll alongside the grand seven-star hotel Leela Palace is not an option one must consider, unless tripping over an open pothole or a tripping over in a pit on the road just outside can be seen as a good thing. But that's part of Bangalore's charm. Now going home to find my handkerchief, stained with the city pollution has become a regular affair and I'm already looking forward to heading back home. Home sweet home!
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