India Expat Life Chapter 3: 

New apartment, Language, Pollution, the W-curve

In my first blog post from India, I wrote that we were trying to hold our expectations lightly. I think we have been mostly successful in that effort. Because as I’m writing this today, we are approaching the three-month mark and I’m starting to feel like India is our own personal paradise. There are numerous delights and unexpected happy surprises that we have encountered in our short time here already. And it may be precisely because we held our expectations loosely that we are able to enjoy such feelings of gratitude now. That isn’t to say that we didn’t acutely feel the W-curve, however. Long-time readers of this blog may recall a cultural immersion phenomenon, coined the W-curve by my grad school professor, that I wrote about from South Africa. (Here’s a link back to that post.) Moving to another country is challenging, but the way I’m feeling today, persevering through the challenges grants untold rewards on the other side. So first, a few of our challenges. Then, some of the rewards we’ve been able to enjoy so far.

Air pollution is bad in Delhi

Very early on, Stephen started to experience something that we weren’t expecting so soon: the air pollution was making him sick. He has asthma and is therefore more sensitive to air pollutants than I am. Keep in mind, we both wear masks whenever we leave the apartment. After just a few weeks here, he sneezed and wheezed all weekend long. His eyes were itchy and watery. At work, he has an air filter right at his desk, but at home we didn’t have anything to purify the air. It became a top priority to purchase not one, but two air filters. First Stephen bought a Dyson on his way home from work.

Then on the weekend, we found a shopping mall and there Stephen purchased a Philips air purifier.

The air purifiers helped but Stephen was still wheezing and felt a heaviness in his chest. While riding in an auto-rickshaw to work, he noticed sheets hanging on lines drying in the wind. And it occurred to him that the dust from the air was embedding itself into the fibers of the cloth. Sleeping on pillowcases that had dried outside meant breathing in the dust trapped between the fibers. At the time, we were living in a “serviced apartment”. It’s similar to a hotel in that daily cleaning services are provided. Which means that, among other things, they change the bedding. Though we didn’t see where the sheets were dried, we assume they were dried outside. So, I started to search for a place to purchase our own pillowcases and pillows. In every country, things are packaged differently. The brands are all different. Though we do see familiar brands here and there, most things we’ve never seen before. What I finally found was a package that contained one flat sheet and two pillow cases. Flat sheets are much more common internationally. Fitted sheets are harder to find. We had purchased pillows at a furniture store but they had to be ordered and then delivered. While we waited for the pillows to arrive, I started replacing the pillowcases provided by the apartment complex with the ones I purchased, washed with my own washer, and dried indoors. Incidentally, we don’t have a dryer. We have a drying rack instead.

Though dryers are ubiquitous in the US, they are rare in the countries we’ve moved to. The drying rack is better anyway right now because the air is so hot and dry, a load of laundry dries in a few hours. And we save the electricity needed to power an electric dryer.

In addition to buying air filters and putting our own pillowcases on the pillows, Stephen went to a WHO doctor. The doctor examined him and told him he had some obstruction (he’s never smoked in his life) that was reversible and prescribed medicine to be delivered through an inhaler. For three weeks he used the inhaler twice a day. Now he only needs medicine once a day and is feeling much better.

Stephen’s WHO work

We had been living in Delhi for less than a month when Stephen developed symptoms. Stephen and I already wear N95 masks nearly all the time outside our apartment. And still we needed to implement all these additional measures to mitigate his breathing problem. Which makes me think about the other 30 million people in this city. Many do not have the money to buy air filters. Drying clothes and bedding outside is often the only option. I see people wearing masks or covering their faces with scarves or bandanas. They know or feel how unhealthy the air is. And that is exactly why we are here. That is why Stephen has taken a job with WHO, sacrificing a more lucrative job, career path, and long-term personal benefits. We don’t want anyone to suffer, particularly from preventable diseases and illnesses. We very much hope that Stephen’s work with the WHO will allow him to alleviate some of the suffering people are already experiencing and also prevent future suffering.

Hindi Language Study

While Stephen was busy learning his new job, I was trying to learn the Hindi language. I came to India with the expectation that English would suffice for daily life and that learning Hindi was almost like a side project for my own pleasure or amusement. However, while Stephen and I are able to hobble along, our communication can be very limited. I have experienced some extremely frustrating situations because I couldn’t speak Hindi and the other person couldn’t speak English well enough.

I started studying Hindi from the very first day. It was my plan while we were still in the US that I would begin, immediately upon arrival, studying the most common language of India. Language study has been on my goal list for a number of years now. This time I’m determined to become bilingual and Hindi will be my second language. I thought it might benefit me to do a little research to see how other people become fluent in a language not their mother tongue. YouTube suggested to me a Ted talk about polyglots, people who speak multiple languages. The main message that the speaker delivered was that there is no one right way to learn a new language. When she interviewed other polyglots, she is one herself, each one had a different approach. Her take away, and the advice she wanted to pass along to others was 1. find a way to enjoy learning a new language and 2. develop a system that weaves language learning into your life. As with almost everything else I do in life, I’m using my creativity and artistic skills. I bought metallic brush pens, sparkly watercolor and black paper to practice writing the quite artistic Hindi script. 

One night while Stephen was on his weekly international call that he does at home, I slowly painted sentences in Hindi. It was meditative and relaxing. 

Duolingo App

My language study this time is a multi-step plan. The first step is using the free language app Duolingo. I’ve been using Duolingo every day since we arrived. It wasn’t until I had a 15-day studying streak that I discovered the game aspects of this app. The app ranks learners by points and puts them in “leagues”. I started in the Bronze League. (I’m now in the Diamond League, the highest.) There are 25 or 30 learners in each league and the top 5 or 10 or 15 (depending on the league) move on to another league. When I decided to “play” I was maybe 9^th in the Bronze League. Since I was in the top 15, I moved up to the Silver League at the end of the week. Since I was enjoying myself so much, I ended up spending a lot more time on the app in the second week and ended up with a lot more points. I made it to the top three by midweek. Well, this ranking system brought forward my competitive nature. In high school, I didn’t only want to get A’s, I wanted to be the top in every class. And I graduated Valedictorian. High school was quite a while ago. People who meet me now might not suspect I used to be quite competitive. But one Duolingo learner discovered that I most certainly can recall that side of myself, given the right circumstances. On that particular week, I had moved into the top spot, toppling the current leader.  Since I had been studying for maybe an hour already that afternoon, I stopped there and closed the app. Duolingo notified me soon after that this other learner had regained their spot. I waited until the next day and then I spent a lot of time earning tons of points to give myself a sizable lead. The other player seemed resigned and left their points the same for a day or more. I had a suspicion this might be a tactic. And it turned out I was right. With only an hour left until the top three medals were awarded for the week, I received notification that this learner had once again seized the top position. Well! I opened the app and started going through lesson after lesson in the “lightening” round. It took maybe 20 minutes of intense focus but I again regained my lead. But this other learner was playing just as fast and we were switching between 1^st and 2^nd for another 15 minutes. Finally, I started to pull ahead. I set my timer on my phone for 35 minutes and I kept playing. When I had a 1000pt lead, I stopped going through lessons and just sat with the app open watching the leaderboard. There is a green dot next to your name that lets you and others know who is online at any given time. This other learner had closed the app. I think hoping to lull me into thinking I was safe again. But I wasn’t going to fall for that ploy a second time. And sure enough, with 1 minute left on the clock, this learner came back online. There was no way they could overtake me at this point and I finished the week in 1^st place! 

I’ve been studying Hindi for 85 days straight now.  85 days, never missing a single day. Which checks the box for the 2^nd recommendation from the Ted speaker: develop a system that weaves language learning into your life. The Duolingo app itself makes daily study pretty easy. But I am also highly motivated: almost every day I encounter a situation that makes me wish I were fluent in Hindi. So, lots of motivation plus a good language program with manageable lessons are proving to be a good combination for me. I’m starting to recognize words in YouTube commercials and I’ve started to practice with the security guards and our gardener. Though I’m sure my pronunciation and grammar are awkward to their ears, they smile at my attempts. Hindi proves useful on the street as well when someone is being particularly pushy with their sales pitch. I can say “No thank you” a dozen times and they will persist, undeterred. But if I say the Hindi word for no, “Nayhee”, I see a flicker of understanding in their eyes and they stop abruptly.

Apartment hunting: finding a long-term place to live

As I wrote a couple posts back, we moved out of The Park hotel after a week. The Park was a wonderful place to land upon first entering the country. The staff were amazing. It was rated a “5-star” hotel and so we were expecting premium accommodations. It was only after we’d been here awhile that Stephen learned that India has its own rating system. They have 7-star hotels! Where 5-star is the highest rating in the US, in India, a 5-star hotel is just a good hotel. But in my view, the staff were US standard 5-star. Though, truth be told, I’m not sure you could find such amazing service anywhere in the US, no matter how expensive the rooms might be.

From The Park we moved to some serviced apartments Stephen learned about from a work associate. The WHO is a UN organization and as such has strict security standards. These serviced apartments had already passed the security clearance, since another WHO employee was currently living there, so that made the move quick and easy.

We had a serviced apartment in Laos. And though it sounds great to have someone else clean for you, it’s just not for me. My artistic introverted personality makes me prize a quiet uninterrupted space. I would prefer to do the work of cleaning myself, just so I can have more control over my space. When I’m working on an acrylic painting for example, it’s a lot of set up and clean up on either side of the actual painting. Arranging for cleaning means organizing my time and my errands around someone else’s schedule. Of course, it all can be done, but for me it’s an added complication I prefer not to have in my life.

So almost immediately, I contacted a real estate agent and started looking. I wanted to know what the range of possibilities were so I wanted to see as many different places as I could. We had a place to stay, had paid for a couple of months, so there was no rush. But real estate agents want to get deals done quickly. I understand their perspective: the faster a deal closes the sooner they get paid and can move onto the next client and closed deal. But I’ve lived in 5 foreign countries already and I wanted a lovely place in India where I could settle in for a while, if that was possible. And in the first two days of looking, I discovered Delhi has good options, that we can afford, so I wanted to take my time to find just the right place for us.

I decided to take a pause with the first agent and work with another one. The second agent had quite the impressive operation. A large team and each team member had a very small focused part of the process. And at first, that seemed to be a good thing. But we ran into a snag right away. Maybe because there was a whole team to pay for, there was even more pressure to make a quick decision than with the first agent. After one day---one full day of looking at 8 different properties---the woman who showed them to me wanted me to make a final decision. But I insisted that I look again at a few of the properties I liked AND for Stephen to see them too. Finally, she arranged for Rohit to meet us on a Saturday. (Rohit is a common Indian name. I’ve met at least 5 so far. So I’m not revealing his identity actually, by using his name.) Rohit’s job was finding the properties. His English wasn’t as strong as the woman who showed me the apartment but he clearly understood what I wanted. He found an apartment I adored as soon as I walked into the main room. It wasn’t on the initial property list but something he found after spending time with me, listening to what I had to say as we went through the first few properties. Rohit is excellent at his job. It was fun looking at a couple of the properties with him again. If he had his own business, I suspect he would be quite successful. Maybe one day he will.

So, the deal was about to close. We had decided to go with the property Rohit found. All that was left was furniture selection. I had negotiated for the owners to provide the furnishings. I thought the meeting was going to be an opportunity for me to select from a few choices of furnishings. Not like buying our own furniture of course, but at least a few choices. It was just me again, the meeting was on a weekday, so Stephen was working. But then it turned out to be a meeting with 9 people including me. It seemed like a big production. In sharp contrast to my expectations, the owner’s furniture guy had pictures of the previous furnishings and was just showing them to me. No options, no input from me---an artist!--- about style or color or quantity or quality. It was super bizarre. I went into the meeting so happy, things seemed to be going so well, that I didn’t realize it was a kind of a slight of hand, until I got home. But my intuition, my body, knew what was going  on well before my brain could catch up: back in our serviced apartment, I had some of the worst heart palpitations I’ve ever had in my life! I knew something was terribly wrong but it took awhile for me to process. It was only after I tried to express my concerns about the furniture---I didn’t like any of it and I wanted to renegotiate for better quality things---that I found out why I had such a strong reaction. There was no willingness to accommodate my request but instead I got things like “let me explain to you how things work in India” and “this is ‘Indian’ furniture and you won’t find anything different anywhere else” from both the closing agent and the initial contact agent. Again, so bizarre. Even in just the properties this group had shown me, I saw different styles as well as a range of quality. Turns out the fancy SUVs with drivers and 10 different people doing 10 separate parts of a job isn’t really so great after all. My request was not unreasonable nor was it that complicated. But there was nothing but condescension and high-pressure tactics from them to just accept their deal as it was. And so, even though I loved the property, I called the whole deal off.

After I lamented the loss of what seemed like my dream property, I resolved to find something even better. I contacted the first agent again and we started a new search. I now had a clear idea of what Delhi has to offer and I wasn’t going to settle until I found our perfect home away from home. Now with the right focus, the agent and his right-hand man found a nice assortment of excellent properties for me to choose from. All of them had potential, but we ultimate decided on the one that seemed to meet nearly all the criteria we had, and then some! After my previous failed deal, I was tough as nails right through to the very end. I negotiated for everything we wanted and didn’t settle. And now I’m very pleased to report that I think we ended up with one of the best places in the city! We both love it! And the owners are amazing. People often say, “anything you need, just let us know” but when push comes to shove, their words are pretty hollow. Well, that is most definitely not the case here. Yesterday, I found I had a plumbing problem in the kitchen. I texted the owner and shared pictures of the issue. Less than 30 minutes later he showed up at my door with a plumber! That plumber looked under the sink and knew immediately how to fix it. He removed some of the pipe and then went to the market to buy the parts. He was back soon after and fixed everything beautifully. He also cleaned the whole under sink area too. 

From the time I contacted the owner, to the time the plumber finished, less than 2 hours had passed. 

The owners paid for the repair but I gave the plumber a tip for his fast efficient work. He bowed as he accepted the money. This is not the first time I have received this kind of a gesture. And it’s amazing. Never in my life have I received such graciousness from people as I have here in India. Being treated with dignity and respect is truly priceless.

The monsoons are coming to Delhi now. In other parts of India, the rains are already in full swing. We had our first really good rain yesterday and it was amazing. The rain made me so happy, I felt inspired to make a short video right then. 

This is my daily view. It’s where I write and paint. An artist’s/writer’s paradise.

And speaking of paradise, I’ll end with the videos I made of our rooftop terrace.

This space is exclusively ours, included with the apartment. The owners have put a lot of love into this space. They already had a gardener engaged and recommended him to us. We happily took their recommendation. I definitely have plans for a future garden, but there are too many other things to manage at the moment so I’m perfectly content to give our gardener a job. And just enjoy sitting among the plants and watching the parrots in the evening.