Weekday Fun

On Monday morning, Anees (office driver) picked us up from our flat in a shiny Toyota SUV, and dropped us off here. The MPUSP office is in the New Bhopal area, 5 minutes away from where I live.

The MPUSP program is essentially a team of consultants in various areas including urban development, where I've been given the opportunity to lend a hand in the State capital. Everyone works off their own laptops and cell phones. Almost everyone is on to Google technologies and collaborate over the Internet.

Awesome.

My office space is down the hall.

I noticed that there was water, tea or coffee waiting on every desk. Throughout the course of the day, my glass was constantly being refilled by very nice attendants (I guess that's what I'd call them?) who floated around the building. I realized that theses young men took orders, picked up take-out, and laid out clean cutlery for lunch everyday. On top of this, they were responsible for making copies, fetching prints and whatever else you asked of them.

I guess if most middle class households have servants, government affiliated offices would naturally have an office version too? Anyway, I felt very inadequate.

I also found that most of the consultants weren't addressing the attendants with "thank-you"s or "excuse me"s. It seemed to me most Indians did not practice the same kind of excessive etiquette as we did, not much was superficial, if you were really thankful, then you said it.

I probably said "thank-you" 50 times on my first day.

I also had 4 cups of delicious chai.