Anish Kothari

I joined Twitter just before coming to India, so here are some of my more interesting Twitter updates since then. I've also included the most interesting photos that I've taken. Enjoy and follow me!

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Hello again.

Here's a breakdown of what I've done over the last year.

March 2010: Mumbai

• Started work at Citigate Dewe Rogerson India, an investor relations firm located at Nariman Point. On my way to becoming an Excel/PowerPoint expert.
• Commuted to work by local bus; learned how to read numbers in Marathi (bus information at the front of the bus is written in Marathi; it's in English on the side of the bus).
• Procured a PAN card, opened a bank account: finally got some official documents to prove that I existed
• Began eating street food: vada pav, bhel puri, sev puri, sandwiches, etc. So began a love affair with street food!

April

• Weekend trip to Lonavla through work
• Went to a Mumbai Indians IPL match with friends from work
• Family event at Pune: cousin's mother/father-in-law's 50th anniversary - handled DJ duties for the musical extravaganza
• Started work in earnest: I was assigned 3 clients with colleagues; work included writing press releases, creating board presentations and I wrote a Chairman's statement in an Annual Report for a big Indian conglomerate

May

• Summer begins and I sweat like crazy. Seriously debate climbing 10 flights of stairs every morning.
• Lost my phone on the bus in the morning commute. Made trips to the bus depot and police station to try to get help - nothing doing.
• My dad visits me in India; we travel to Bangkok, Thailand and Koh Samui
• Water shortages led to planned trips to the office bathroom and bucket baths replaced showers.

June

• Mango season! Eating fresh Alphonso mangoes (the king of fruits!)
• The rain begins and it's wonderful at first; the moist earth smells amazing and everything is fresh and clean. Mosquito population increases dramatically.
• Started looking for a place to rent. I found a place through a friend in Lower Parel in a redeveloped chawl (225 sq. ft. 1BHK: bedroom/hall/kitchen). Everything was ready through an agent but the owner never showed up to make it official. The deal went through; a blessing in disguise.

July

• Came down with malaria... it was probably the worst 4 days of my life in recent memory. I thought I was dying: intense fever, sweating, body aches, hallucinations, I was having trouble standing and walking at some stages. Luckily it was over pretty soon and I got back to normal.
• Moved into my cousin's flat in suburban Mumbai and started commuting by local train. My daily commute went from 1 hour to about 3.5 hours, but it was an excellent experience. I'll write a post about that soon.
• Ordered tiffin for lunch from Magic-o-Meal. This was really fascinating - I would be informed of that day's menu by SMS by 11am or so and the dabbawala would deliver the tiffin by 1pm and return by 1:30pm for pickup. The plan was to eat or empty the tiffin during this time while the dabbawala would himself have lunch. He would deliver the tiffin on one side of the passageway and pick it up on the other side. If the tiffin remained where he had left it by pickup time, it would not be delivered that day. I would eat with friends - we would open our tiffins (some of them had tiffins delivered from home) and share the contents depending on our tastes; some people would give away their tiffins so they could order fast food.

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I came to India in September 2009 which is where I want to start reviewing 2010, the first full year I've spent in India.

Let me explain. I'm from the United States (Chicagoland). My parents were born in India. I was born in the USA. 25 years later, I came to live in India. I was frustrated by the lifestyle, the economy and was not optimistic about my future in the USA. I wanted to be with family and to experience India's economic growth, I wanted to speak Hindi and I wanted to travel. I wanted to be Indian.

So in the remaining 9 days of the year I want to recount the year, month-by-month. This first post is from my arrival date in September to the beginning of the 2010.

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