First Impressions

I am sitting at the back row of the training room I will be working out of for the rest of my time here in Hyderabad. The facility is a bit underwhelming. Hyderabad’s Hi-Tech city has brand new, modern buildings hosting office spaces for the world’s largest companies - Google, Intel, etc. We are in a fairly new building built to look like a desert fort. I guess someone thought it would be cool to have a low-lying, ancient-seeming structure housing relatively lo-tech office spaces. The surprise is that my company, which usually spares no expense to impress, has picked this particular facility. Oh well. At least the room is kept cool and mosquito-free, there are bottles of mineral water on every desk, and there is a small coffee machine outside. Not quite like our normal office space, but it will have to do.

I managed to get 4 hours of sleep or so, and everyone is telling me I look and sound tired. Luckily, I don’t have to do much this week in terms of training at the podium as the students are working on projects until late Friday. One cute thing happened this morning as they all filed in to the class. One of the students made a short speech thanking George (the current trainer I am taking over from) and myself for our work, and all the students started clapping. Answering my bemused, yet perplexed look, a nearby student explained that today is national Teacher Appreciation Day in India. How lucky!

I am trying hard to avoid soaking in the fact that I am back in India. That’s why I am not mentioning anything about the all-too-familiar smells everywhere I go, the chaotic and honk-happy driving style, and the women using medieval implements of brooming to sweep the roads (George made a comment about Kansas and the futility of it all this morning; I just found out about the Dust Bowl). I guess we dust off roads in NYC, but we use sweeping vehicles. It’s more striking seeing a group of old, decrepit women in beautiful saris bending over asphalt with these sweepers. Thankfully, inside the classroom I am in, I can sort of pretend I am not here (even though there is a woman just outside the door hunched over a so-called broom sweeping the open-air hallway. Again...).