Flat hunting: The one with the Broker Wars

There’s been mayhem, stress, upsets and danger in the hunt for a flat. It’s been a better drama than an Eastenders Christmas Omnibus with more memorable storylines. But perhaps that’s an easy accomplishment.

N & I decided to share a flat as we’d shared a room for four weeks through the training and orientation period. No mean feat given that rooms were maybe 10 x 10 feet with a small en-suite bathroom. Sharing was a sensible move as one bed flats in Delhi are hard to come by and with an allowance of 8,000 rupees each per month (about £106 GBP) this doesn’t get you much here.

Potential VSOers should not be put off. Countries vary and even in India the situation of fellow volunteers in other parts of India are completely different. Delhi just happens to be more difficult. Much more difficult. We’d decided to look around ourselves for various reasons but in Delhi two Western women usually means an inflation of the rental price by about a third.

We went through many brokers. We’ve seen flats that felt like terrorist cells. We’ve been called so many times by one broker it was nearly harassment. Another we could not communicate with, our Hindi being so limited at this stage. One admitted he struggled finding anything in our price range as bigger flats were built for families who in Indian culture have less privacy. Two single Westerners like having doors on the bedrooms and not having to walk through them to get to the main bathroom. Flats just weren’t built for us.

But finally about a week into the search we found a place. A week sounds like nothing in Western time but you don’t see pictures or get to read blurb on a property. You get in an auto and go to see the place. We’d visited 16 in a week, 10 in the first weekend alone. ‘The Taj’ as we named her was the one. On our second visit we were invited to have chai with the landlord and his son. We chatted, were told we would be treated like his daughters and we negotiated a price. Two days later we hadn’t sorted out the finer details between our NGOs, VSO and us. The Taj went to someone else. So much for being family. Gutted we had to haul ourselves around Delhi once more.

We got into situations we shouldn’t have for the sake of getting somewhere quickly. Neither of us wanted to carry on living in hostels having been in them for four weeks. We got on the back of brokers’ motorbikes without helmets as we were repeatedly told, ‘another flat is around the corner, Madam’. Calling brokers from the internet and having to meet them at properties. The worst situation was the day of ‘broker wars’. One day a younger broker had shown us two flats. Neither suitable he offered to show us more the next day. He turned up with a friend in a car who thought he was Mr. Smooth. N got offered an invite to a Hindi wedding and a jacuzzi. The next day they repeatedly called us. We were with another broker and they showed up to try and get us to see the same flat. Whilst sitting in our broker’s car, we saw the younger brokers drive by with their tinted windows. They returned and Mr. Smooth got out. All pointed white leather shoes and black velvet jacket, on the pull. I cringed thinking an argument was about to occur. Whose patch were we on anyway? Our older broker got out shook their hands and introduced himself. We had to excuse ourselves and lied that we were about to sign a deal. All because we were Western women and the young broker had obviously got his friend along for some fun.

Contrary to the Hollywood stereotype that has permeated some of India, we’re not easy. We didn’t want to go to a club, just a flat. After all the drama, there’s no Eastenders ending thankfully. We got lucky and found a flat. We had more drama and nearly lost this one too. Eventually we got the deal done and moved in today. It’s Christmas Eve and after two weeks of nightmare stress; it’s been the best Christmas present I could have had this year.

On the Road for Deaf Drivers?

I was asked to go on short day trip with work. Excited to be on a train out of Delhi, it was a great chance to chat to my colleagues out of the office, to get ideas about where my work with them and VSO will go. On arrival we got picked up by a Deaf man. I was astounded. I’d noticed some tweets on Twitter before I came to India that Deaf people aren’t allowed to have driving licences and here was someone Deaf driving.

It was explained like so: they can drive so they do, the law is behind on these things. Fair play. India is more than behind on this one, why wait?

The Chief Executive of my organisation is currently going through every law relevant to Deaf people in India, and there are many, to advise government about the necessary changes to bring them in line with the UNCRPD and human rights recommendations. He has been reading out of parts of the law and they are archaic. It’s a bit like hearing about some of the old laws in the UK still in existence such as, a man who feels compelled to urinate in public can do so only if he aims for his rear wheel and keeps his right hand on his vehicle.

The National Association for the Deaf (NAD) has been campaigning for Deaf people to be able to hold driving licences for some time. Last week NAD were featured on page two of a national newspaper, The Hindustan Times. There was news that the Supreme Court of India had turned down their appeal on the grounds that driving here is more dangerous and they wouldn't be able to hear the honking.

In comparison to some countries driving here is more dangerous but that doesn’t make Deaf people any less able to drive. There are only 26 countries where Deaf people are not yet legally allowed to drive. It’s a shame then that India is one of them. Anyone who has been to Rome or Paris can see the chaos there where Deaf people are allowed to drive. Can a driver playing tunes with a thumping bass hear the honking? The appeal was turned down illogically. I spent some time in the car and I was no more scared than I usually am!

Sign 4

They say try not to see anyone from home in the first few months of your placement as it can make you feel homesick. I didn’t have much choice as I attended the Sign 4 conference held in New Delhi from the 17-19/12/09. Needless to say, I didn’t feel homesick but rather it was great to see some familiar faces and hear about people’s experiences of India. I’m extremely grateful to two British colleagues who I’d texted beforehand and they’d brought over some supplies for me. Thank you both (you know who you are)! As an aside, these supplies were Marmite, Nutella and red wine. You can get anything you want in New Delhi but it comes with a price. A small jar of Marmite comes in at a fiver. To put it into perspective, this is more than a day’s allowance. Eating local wherever you are is always going to be cheaper.

The conference didn’t directly relate to my placement as it was on Sign Language linguistics but as it turned out it gave me an overview of the development of interpreting in India from the perspective of a University and a chance to meet some Deaf people from India. I could also practice my International Sign Language and meet Deaf people from around the world. There are many reasons I am doing a VSO placement. One of them is that I’d been after some international experience for a while. There are a few conferences around the world you can attend in linguistics, Sign Language, and both Deaf and interpreting associations. This felt like the start of that international experience except I was there as a new resident of India to work with the community here for the next year.

How good it was to see an International conference for Deaf people held on Indian soil. There is much to do here for Deaf people and any international events can only strengthen the case for government to set up the post of an Interpreter for Deaf people. Until it does it will be unlikely that people will want to work as interpreters with no formal employment and no recompense for that role. The government has said it will recognise the job when there are more interpreters. The chicken and the egg? It seems so. I hope that any work I can do out here can play some part in getting the egg hatched.

First Day at the Office

The flat hunting saga continues but work must carry onas ever. I spent the first two days of this week visiting many flats with nothing vaguely suitable. It's quite weird searching out accommodation in Delhi and the search has certainly been eventful. But that is a whole other story.

It is Wednesday and it feels good to have gone to work today to start what I came here to do, four weeks after arriving in country. In country orientation (ICO) involves four weeks of talks and language training. In our intake we also had a strategy conference thrown in which was by far the most beneficial part of our ICO as it was an opportunity to hear from Indian speakers who were heads of NGOs, experienced VSOers and a leading academic talking about key trends in India.

By the end of ICO everyone is itching to get to their placements. Having said goodbye to most of the 18 people with six of us staying behind in Delhi, it was time to start work. I’d been to my new office the week before to say hi to the staff and still managed to get lost.

It was an enjoyable twenty or so minutes as Nehru Place is an entertaining corner of Delhi. The main part looks a little like a built up 1960s British concrete shopping centre. A grew up near one in Edmonton in London. The same one that was immortalised by Frank Spencer in an episode of Some Mothers do Have ‘Em. You may remember the episode where he is uncontrollable on rollerskates. You can’t see much of the centre on the clip but it is similar to the old Tricorn in Portsmouth. The difference here is Nehru Place is a hotbed of IT activity. The middle of the street is taken over by men selling wallets, shoes, socks and ripped Hindi movies. Apart from a few cloth shops, most of the rest sell IT goods or can repair them. Want a laptop in Delhi? This is the place to come. It is to computers and stereos what Tottenham Court Road is to London.

Amongst the wallets teenage boys lurk waving lists in plastic wallets of every type of copied software imaginable. Sam Miller in his book on Delhi said Microsoft once hired an elephant to trample on CDs in Nehru Place to make a point. He then states many of the sellers brag that Microsoft employees based in Nehru Place often buy fake copies of Windows themselves.

My first day was great. I got to meet more staff, learnt more about what my VSO placement will entail and practice more Indian Sign Language. My laptop had a mini-malfunction but thanks to one of the IT shops the staff managed to get it connected to the network. It seems I’ll get stared at a lot working around here as I didn’t see one other Westerner today. It may take some getting used to, but it’s quite nice being in this corner, away from tourists and a lot of other expats.

The YouTube clip is available here.

Volunteering to Clean up the Yamuna

Only two days after attending my first big event in India I got on a bus with 10 or so other volunteers and turned up at the infamous Yamuna River in Delhi for the next event, International Volunteering Day. I say infamous as the Yamuna is known as a bacteria-ridden sludge fest running alongside the east of Delhi. Sam Miller in his book on Delhi points out that great cities have been built around their rivers. Paris on the Seine, London around the Thames. The Yamuna is neglected, ignored and often used as a rubbish tip. Many homeless people live on its banks and life down here is another world separate from life in the rest of the city.

The aim of the day was to clean up the Yamuna. A passing journalism student had heard the band and seen all the school children. She wandered up and I explained that we were helping the bus loads of school children clean up the Yamuna. As we stood there in blue rubber gloves with rakes she looked incredulous and stated this was impossible. Of course, we added, this wasn’t the entire point of the day. The point was to involve children and young people in issues directly affecting their community, to promote active citizenship and volunteering. This seemed to be a concept that wasn’t understood. Behind us a few locals were chucking rubbish over the bridge into the river as the children was trying to rake out debris from the Yamuna’s murky shorelines. We pointed at the children and said the future of India. The journalism student pointed at the people on the bridge.


The buses kept coming, the bands kept playing and the rubbish kept coming. Soon the banks in the allotted space were full and the stash of rubber gloves has run out. Within an hour people has moved past the roped off area and had moved down the shore in a breakaway faction. One volunteer beckoned another group of us over to help. There were children, adults, volunteers and other expats working in NGOs raking rubbish out of the river, balking at the methane released by trash being disturbed. There was a sense of togetherness as people just got on with the job at hand.

The media present rightfully saw a good photo opportunity. Two photographers and one cameraman were present for over an hour clicking away at people working together, passing down empty bowls to be filled with the ever increasing mounds of plastic bags, city detritus and nameless lumps of half degraded black smelly goo. We were excited the next day when a few volunteers got their photos in the newspaper working away with some local people. One story though had completely missed the point as had the student. It pontificated: why hadn’t the government cleaned up the river, why were school children doing this, what was the point of an event like this.

Talking to the excellent organisation, Swechha, who ran the event, would have shown what the aims were. Walking around the stalls of NGOs, chatting to people, listening to the bands and the impassioned speeches from VSO and the UN would have made it clear. The title of the event itself was pretty obvious. The easiest thing of all to understand was the determination that people showed on the day, the way that they worked together and the enjoyment of community spirit and coming together that was apparent all around.

YouTube clip now available.

World Disability Day 2009

Some countries call it the International Day of People with Disabilities. Others the World Disability Day (WDD) as it is named in India. Whatever the label, with 70 million disabled people in India it is a day that needs celebration. A day that asks politicians to sit up and take notice. A day for disabled people to raise awareness and to champion their cause.

WDD has been held for the last 3 years at India Gate, under its imposing arch, far bigger than the Arc d’triomphe or Marble Arch. India currently has the People with Disabilities Act (1995). An act that disabled people and organisations say is weak. It follows the medical model of disability which says that disability is something to be treated. It does not address fully what society can or should do for disabled people or what their rights are in terms of education, health and access.

Despite this seemingly weak stance India ratified the UN Convention of Rights for Disabled People (UNCRPD) on 1st October 2007. It was the sixth country to do so but so far it is a piece of tokenism. Little has happened since. The underlying theme of WDD in India this December was to refuse amendments to the current law and create a stronger rights-based law, empowering disabled people to live fulfilled lives as equal citizens.

With regard to Deaf people the current law mentions Deaf people a handful of times including once in a definition, twice in the names of organisations that serve the Deaf community. There is not much else. It is as useful as a jumper on a hot summer day in Delhi.

It was gratifying to be part of the day, to see people out in force. With 5,000 people present it occurred to me that the many people attending seemed to be Deaf. I asked someone where everyone else was. I was informed transport is so inaccessible here that many who would have wanted to attend would not have been able to do so. Many NGOs do not have spare funds to put on transport to solve this issue. Without this, without disabled people turning up at events in force there is less likelihood of politicians seeing the changes that are necessary.

Perhaps enough will be done by the disabled people’s movement as a whole and by pressure from NGOs and external countries to get India's politicians to catch up. Perhaps there will be funding and transport for people to attend. Perhaps media efforts will be enough to raise the profile of disabled people in India. What I saw today was some incredibly passionate and committed people. A feeling of disappointment at the past but hope for the future. People had come from as far away as Orissa and Pune to attend. We're talking over 24 hours spent on a train to be there.

The UN’s message for WDD was ‘realising the Millennium Development Goals for all. These goals were set out by the UN to be achieved by 2015. They include providing a universal education for all and eradicating poverty and hunger. With disabled people often being the poorest in society due to a lack of access and exclusion from society, India has a lot of work to do over the next six years.

YouTube clip online now.