Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Travel
Publisher: World Home Publishing
ISBN-10: 1542633524
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 230
Copyright: May, 2018
ISBN-13: 9781542633529
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
Experience India's monkeys, mayhem, color craziness through the eyes of international educators who learn to take it all in stride.
"We're moving to India!"
Travel along with two international educators who take the leap and move to Gurgaon, India, to become principals at an Indian/International school. Excited by the opulent marble hallways and the grandness of the school, they quickly learn it lacks even the most basic supplies, like chalkboard erasers. The couple, however, make a go of it and ultimately adjust to the dizzying day-to-day life of Indian society where sacred cows stop for red lights, women wear glittery saris while planting rice, and dreadlocked sadhus go about renouncing all their worldly pleasures.
Part memoir, part travelogue and part tragic comedy, readers will marvel at all the couple has to endure only to end up leaving the school and India abruptly, without even so much as a Namaste. Despite a catastrophe or two, their go-with-the-flow attitudes and kindred senses of humor help them to endure the overwhelming bustle of India, while recognizing and appreciating its distinctive allure
Excerpt
Illegal in India
Our life as educators and foreigners in Gurgaon, India, ended on an inauspicious day in September, 2009, after only one year. Although my husband, Dan, and I, had been hired in 2008 to work for two years at an international school as the upper and lower school principals, we found ourselves leaving before our second year had barely begun. It was the first and only time we had broken a school contract and never had we left a school under such harried circumstances. I suddenly found myself working in India illegally because the school decided not to provide a work visa for me. As a result, Dan and I felt we had no other choice but to give up our furnished apartment, our car and our jobs and return to the U.S. I didn’t know what kind of trouble I could be in and only imagined the worst.
Would the Indian government deport me? Make me pay a huge fine? Put me in jail?
***
Prior to that fateful day when we had departed Gurgaon for good, Dan and I had spent the school vacation with our family and friends in Wisconsin. When September rolled around, we packed our bags once again and said good-bye to Ian and Ali, our college-bound kids. We got on a plane and flew back to New Delhi to begin our second year of working at the International School. Days after arriving and settling into the school routine, we were informed by the business manager that our work visas were about to expire and we needed to apply for new ones. If we didn’t, we’d be unable to stay in India. While the teachers were busy decorating their classrooms and preparing for the new students, Dan and I were trucked across the city to the humid, crowded and disorganized Indian Immigration Office.
Cars whizzed by in all directions as Arjun, the school driver, who also doubled as the business manager, hurried us across the busy street toward a massive gray building. We followed him inside and climbed up and down stairs from one paper-cluttered government office to another. After searching for ten minutes, we finally located the correct room and joined other foreigners and Indians who, by the looks on their tired faces, had already been waiting for a while. Dan led the way as we shuffled over to two gray metal folding chairs at the far end of the room and dropped into them. Stifled by the hot, suffocating air inside the room, I used my Tourist Visa application to fan myself.
“Be ready to follow me so you can get an extension on your tourist visa while I get my work visa,” Dan whispered to me.
A group of four unsmiling agents sat behind a large counter at the front of the room, sifting through paperwork, signing and stamping documents. At this rate, I thought to myself, we’ll never get our visas. The slow-paced men moved at a rate that was as painful as watching paint dry.
Despite the fact that I had spent the entire previous year employed as the elementary principal, the Banerjees, the school owners, didn’t want me to apply for a work visa. It seemed they wanted me to ‘pretend’ to be a trailing spouse. I was surprised and a little confused by the odd request, but assumed they knew the Indian laws better than I did. While I sat and waited for Dan’s name to be called, I broke the monotony by studying the variety of sparkly red, pink and yellow saris worn by the Hindu women in the room. They were elegant and bright and clashed with the run-down and dreary surroundings. As I stared at the women, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were at all comfortable and just how long it took to put one on. While I stared at the dazzling array of glittering colors, Dan continued to remind me not to say a word to the customs agents. He was nervous and agitated and it was rubbing off on me.
“Let me do all the talking. If you start babbling, I just know you’ll say you’ve been working here all along. You know you’re a terrible liar.” He spoke to me in a low, but persistent voice, much like the flies that buzzed around the smudged windows.
When he finished, I looked him in the eyes and mimed pulling a zipper straight across my lips. If they caught on to what I was doing, there would be problems for both of us, and I hadn’t a clue what the government would do if I accidentally dropped the charade.
I chewed my nails down to the quick and sprawled across my uncomfortable chair. After an hour in the oven-like room, an agent finally motioned for Dan to come to the counter. He glanced at the paperwork and after making a few comments to the school business manager/driver, gave his stamp of approval. Dan’s papers were all in order, which now made it legal for him to work in India. I also received an extension on my tourist visa, and we left the office giddy with relief that everything was in order.
We found Arjun leaning against the wall next to the stairway. He led us down the stairs and out the building toward the busy street. We dodged the bustling traffic once again and jumped back inside the air-conditioned car. Ready to get back to school, we zoomed around a lounging cow and onto the crowded road. While the driver/business manager stared straight ahead, Dan leaned across the front seat and asked him a few more questions about my not-exactly-legal status.
Soon after, our euphoria came to a crashing standstill. While keeping his eyes on the road, he informed Dan of one final matter that still needed to be taken care of.
“Dan, Sir,” he advised. “They will be sending a police officer to the school to check that Jill Ma’am is not working there.”
“WHAT???” Dan blurted out loud. “Everyone knows that Jill is the elementary principal at the school. Even our maid knows it. The officer only has to ask one person and they’ll tell him exactly that!”
As I sat and listened to the verbal exchange images of me whiling away the time in a cramped and dirty Indian prison played out in my mind.
“Jill, I can’t believe this! What are we going to do?” Dan asked, cradling his head in his hands.
“Well, let’s go talk to Mrs. Banerjee and see what she has to say,” I said, trying to be the voice of reason. “Besides, she wouldn’t really let me go to prison, would she?”
“I don’t know what she would do! I don’t speak a word of Hindi and I absolutely don’t trust that the owners would put themselves in jeopardy on our behalf.” Dan seethed with anger, his face growing redder by the minute.
While he continued to fret over our dubious situation, things got even worse. We learned that this was the first time the Banerjees had actually hired foreign educators. Without technically admitting it to us, they seemed to want to skirt the government taxes they’d have to pay for hiring foreigners. After some research, Dan also found out about an Indian law stating that a company could hire only one foreigner for every one hundred locally-hired employees. Since there were less than one-hundred teachers in the school, the owners could legally only hire Dan. When confronted about the situation, Mrs. Banerjee acted as though it was no problem at all for me to continue to work illegally. Plus, it saved them money. The Banerjees didn’t seem concerned that the school, or I, could get into serious trouble if anyone found out.
Dan didn’t know who to turn to and no one seemed willing to help us. He talked with the school’s business manager—again. He confronted the owners. He called the American Embassy. All to no avail. The same inferior advice was given over and over. Don’t worry. It will all be okay.
A lot of good that was going to do us, I thought. All through our years of working in other countries, we had never been in trouble with a foreign government before, and we didn’t want to start now. Whatever country we visited or lived in, we made sure to obey their laws, keep our passports up-to-date and obtain the proper visas. I never imagined myself, an American citizen, living in another country as an illegal alien.
Our situation went unresolved and after many sleepless nights and worry-filled days, we made the final decision to give up our jobs and leave India for good. We were not willing to risk a policeman coming to the school and dragging me away in handcuffs. So, feeling as though there was no other recourse, Dan headed off to the local DHL office and inquired about shipping our belongings back home to Wisconsin. Our decision to leave India now made, we booked flights for the very next day. Dan telephoned Mrs. Banerjee early on the morning of our departure and explained that we just couldn’t work for her under such impossible and unfair circumstances.
“Let them leave,” was the thoughtless and uncaring response she gave to the teachers as we uprooted our lives and paid our own way back to the United States.
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