My first Diwali

It is already some weeks ago when I went with my roommates to an Indian family. One of the AIESECers invited us to his family to celebrate DIWALI with them. It was awesome!

But what is actually Diwali? Wikipedia say:

“Diwali […] known as the ‘festival of lights’, is an important five-day festival in Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism, occurring between mid-October and mid-November. For Hindus, Diwali is the most important festival of the year and is celebrated in families by performing traditional activities together in their homes. Deepavali is an official holiday in India, […].

The name ‘Diwali’ is a contraction of ‘Deepavali’ contraction […], which translates into "row of lamps". Diwali involves the lighting of small clay lamps […] filled with oil to signify the triumph of good over evil. During Diwali, all the celebrants wear new clothes and share sweets and snacks with family members and friends. […]

Diwali commemorates the return of Lord Rama, along with Sita and Lakshman, from his fourteen-year-long exile and vanquishing the demon-king Ravana. In joyous celebration of the return of their king, the people of Ayodhya, the Capital of Rama, illuminated the kingdom with earthen diyas (oil lamps) and burst firecrackers.”

For me it was like a mixture of Christmas and Sylvester. First we went to Bhavi’s house where he lives with his parents, his grandmother and his sister. It was near Nanal Nagar a Kreisverkehr in Hyderabad. Their house is a bit hidden in one of the little streets. It is really a nice place to live, it was almost quiet, there were a lot of trees, less garbage and a small park.

After our arrival we were invited to have some small snacks:

Later we went to his uncle & aunt which moved to Hyderabad some weeks ago. There we had tea and some snacks again. Indians are really hospitably. We had a really good afternoon because we talked a lot, laughed a lot and we played badminton.

About 7 pm we went back to Bhavi’s house and we hoped to get something to eat because all of us were a bit hungry. But we didn’t get anything at this time. Indians have dinner around 9 pm so it was too early. When we came back – The show began! All the neighbors entered the streets and they started to burn the crackers. But they are really dangerous! You have to be fast! It is not like in Germany where you first burn the cracker and then throw it away. You have to but the cracker on the floor, burn it and run away. They also have really big ones. I saw a 1000 piece cracker. It tooks 2 minutes to burst the whole cracker. About 9 pm we went upstairs to the top of the building and started the burn the rockets but some of them flew directly back to the terrace and exploded on the ground or on the streets. And also one cracker hurt me at one of my toes – it was one of the 1000 piece crackers – not funny.

First Day at Work

Directly one day after my arrival I started working at Kony Solutions Inc. If you would ask me to summarize my first day in one word I think funny fits best. My day started at 8 o'clock. I should begin working at 10 am as it was my first day I decided to get up early. After breakfast I started wondering where my cab is. So I called my contact person and she told me that the cab will arrive a bit later, about 10:30. The 30 minutes I used to talk with my new roommates and they all had the same experience. So it is normal that the cab will be a bit late at the first day. I think I told you already that there are now street signs, even less house numbers. So it is the same like the day before the cab driver don't know where my apartment house is. After some more calls my cab arrived at 12:30. Because it was not my fault I had a short first day.

Then I met the first time Sandeep. I had with him a short phone interview at the beginning of October and some email conversations. He gave me a short overview about the structure of the department, same facts about the founding of the company and information about the product I shall sell and what I will exactly do in the next months. I think our short introduction session was after 2 or 3 hours finished. But now the next funny things happened. I really hoped that work will be this way every day but I figured out some days ago that the funny games they/ we played at the afternoon was only part of the upcoming holiday Diwali. 

My colleagues from the Business Development department battled against the guys from the finance department. They played a jigsaw puzzle. This means you mix two or more puzzles and you have to finish the puzzle as soon as possible. The superman puzzles weren't really complicated they only had 30 parts. After this battle we worked again for one hour and then they played charade. They had to explain Hindi or Telegu movies so I wasn't able to guess. But it looks really funny. Ah and at the end another nice detail. The first five days I shared a laptop with Sandeep so work wasn't really efficient.

My Journey

My journey to Hyderabad started at the 19th October. After a 6.5 hours flight with only some little turbulences arrived I in Dubai and had to wait 4 hours for my connecting flight to Hyderabad. But the time ran really fast. My first thought at the airport was I am in a mall!!!! It is a really amazing terminal. Have a look.

 

After my arrival in Hyderabad I had to catch the aeroexpress to the bus stop "Katriya de Royal" where somebody of AIESEC should pick me up. The accentuation refers to should. But nobody was there and I couldn't reach anyone so I called the contact person of my company. I was so glad that he had the right number of two AIESECers and after further 30 min they picked me up and cart me to my apartment house. At the half of the way my companion left the cab and I had to travel the residual way alone. In India is everything a bit different. Actually the buildings have numbers but they are only written on paper. And when you take a cab you can't be sure that the driver knows the exact way. Normally you have to tell them some landmarks. In my case I knew only the exact address, so the cab driver had asked several times for the way and the bill increased. I was really glad that the security guy trusts me and gave me the key for the apartment. When I entered the flat I was completely alone and felt for 4 hours to sleep.