I worked long hours, 9:30 am - 7:00 pm with an hour lunch break, 6 days a week. Luckily, I didn't have to commute - my office was literally next door. Unluckily, everyone in the office was Maharastrian so I was put into a Marathi crash course everyday. Everyone spoke to me in Hindi, which wasn't much better as my Hindi wasn't fluent back then.
As for the job, I started off making training videos in English and supervised making Hindi training videos. I helped with writing scripts and editing video. Then I got into HTML/CSS to work on the software user interface, which was pretty interesting. I got to play around with design and was making progress in making the software user-friendly.
I stayed at my cousin's house which was really nice. I slept in their guest bedroom, got to see a lot of movies and eat a lot of very good food. This was where I was introduced to Maharashtrian snacks like sabudana khichdi and vada pav, which are some of my favorite foods now.
February came along and I was getting bored. I spent so much time at work that I didn't have time for much else; I jogged a couple of times a week and played basketball on Sunday afternoon with schoolkids. After dinner, we would taIk, go for walks, or play cards. I bought a book to learn Marathi but didn't make much progress. My family kept me busy - we would go shopping, watch movies, go out for dinner but I couldn't relate to anyone my age. I took a couple of days off work and we drove to Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary in Karnataka for the weekend, which was very refreshing. We went white-water rafting, went on a safari ride through the forest (saw a river crocodile) and most importantly, relaxed.
Then out of the blue I got a call for a job I had applied to earlier in Mumbai. Could I come down for an interview? Definitely. I was there in a couple of days, taking a bus out of Pune in the morning and returning from Dadar in the afternoon. The work was in finance, related to my degree, and the office was at Nariman Point, a dream location near my family's place in South Mumbai. After 2 rounds of interviews I was offered a job. I accepted and I was glad to be coming back to Mumbai with a renewed spring in my step. I finished my work, revamping the user interface and making it more intuitive and efficient. On March 1, I was going to start my new job.
