JC in India

Yesterday was just a normal day. Just an innocent day.

So, in the interest of giving a view into what such a day is like here in Delhi, this is what happened….

The phone alarm played its first little ditty at 7.45am, which as usual is followed by a reach over to press the off button, safe in the knowledge that at 8am it will repeat.

I had been deep asleep following a relatively normal bedtime around midnight the night before. The prior evening had seen Thibaut and I hosted by Gordon (“The guy from work”) at his apartment for an Ouzo / Greek night. Ok, it wasn’t actually focused on the Ouzo – that was just a wee tipple consumed later in the evening having been sourced directly from Greece by one of Thibaut’s friends. But Gordon made a great lamb burger and Greek salad with all the trimmings, so hence the Ouzo theme emerged, and he had even made an ‘Ouzo’ Spotify playlist to support.

It was not a late night though with Thibaut heading to Paris the day after and myself and Gordon having a normal day in the office. I am too old to go ‘out out’ on a school night these days.

The 8am alarm kicked in, and the snooze button dutifully obliged for the normal extra nine minutes of coming around time. Once those extra minutes were over, I slipped out of bed and headed straight for the living room to turn on the air conditioning. I have separate ac circuits in the bedroom and the main living area, and while I sleep with the unit running in the bedroom (a must in these temperatures), I turn off the main one at night to save power. However, first port of call each morning is to turn it on to cool the living room down for when I emerge from my shower and dressing. 

Next to the kitchen to get the probiotics from the fridge to take my daily dose. Living here with the food and water as it is, one way to assist your body in coping is to take probiotics routinely to keep healthy gut flora in place. Given my usual forgetful nature I have a firm habit of taking this tablet first thing every morning as a ritual.

By the time I had showered (mouth firmly closed, blow nose straight after) and got myself ready it was 8.30, and the kettle was put to work as normal. A cup of tea (whitened courtesy of coffee-mate powder), accompanied by one slice of toast, and half an hour watching Sky News via a VPN on the iPad to kick start the day. Yesterday morning the news was of the tragic fate of the Titan submersible having imploded on its descent to the Titanic. I had a real personal interest in that story as by chance my first degree was in Marine Technology and I specialised in deep sea submersibles, with my thesis coincidentally being about the potential for tourist dives to the Titanic. Sadly therefore I knew well enough that unless that Sub was bobbing about on the surface there really was no hope of survival. As tragically proved to be the case.

Usually around 9.15 or so Gordon will message to say he is on the way, as I generally get a lift into the office with him if he is going too. However, by 9.20 I was messaging him to check he was on the way as I had an important 10am meeting, and he was nowhere to be seen. Having failed to get in contact I thought maybe he had got onto the Ouzo solo after we had left his place the night before and was therefore starting later… My hunt for an Uber started, but before one could accept Gordon called to say he was enroute just running a little late. So, Uber was stood down, and with my usual 10 minutes notice from when he leaves his place to getting to mine, I started to get my shoes on and the bag in hand.

Sushmi my maid then rang the doorbell just as I was about to head out. Normally she comes around 9.30 (on the 3 days per week she comes; Monday, Wednesday and Friday) so I don’t normally see her as I am usually out about ten minutes before, but today with Gordon running late it gave me the chance for a quick hello and to wish her well as I headed for the office.

Sods law though the traffic was terrible. Normally it takes about twenty minutes to get to work, so even though we were setting off late I would have been fine for my 10am meeting, but as seems always the case when you are in a rush the traffic has other ideas. Knowing I had the meeting which I was chairing and had all my wider team included, and knowing I was going to be late I messaged Priyanka my assistant to ask her to slip the start time back half an hour. Not ideal, but being India most of the team would likely have been late for a 10am start anyway so it wasn’t a major problem. Office hours in our company are officially 9.30 – 6pm, but most people arrive somewhere between 9.30 and 10.00 and usually do not leave until after 6.30pm.

Sanjay, Gordon’s driver, was doing his best to weave in and out of the traffic in the usual Indian chaotic ‘each to their own’ manner. Regularly queues are formed just because someone decides to turn left from the far right lane of the road and will slow right down and cut across the traffic slowly forcing everyone else to come to a halt to get across. While we did not see any specific cause of the worse than normal traffic, we did see such driving behaviour on many an occasion, as is usual on the daily commute.

In the end we got to the office around 10.05 so were not that late in the end, and Sanjay pulled up to the rear entrance as normal and we bade him farewell with Gordon telling him the usual ‘normal time’ for pick up later (6pm). It subsequently turned out that Sanjay had to go elsewhere for a personal matter in the afternoon so both Gordon and I would be reverting to the Uber mode of transport for the evening commute.

My office is on the second floor of ‘NUB’, or New Udaan Bhawan as it is known, the GMR headquarters fairly close to the main terminal in the Delhi Airport demise. I said the usual hello to the two security guards on the rear door and climbed the stairs. Point of fitness is not to get the lift although many people do. Walking through the banks of open plan desks I came to my office on the Northern side of the building from where I have a view of the air traffic control tower and can see aircraft taking off from one of the runways on occasion. My seat faces away from the window, but I have strategically placed a map of India on the wall in view of anyone I am speaking to on my laptop, and sit basically in a line of sight between this map over my right shoulder and the air traffic control tower over my left. It helps reinforce the Indian and Aviation elements to my position.

I got myself organised and promptly started the Teams call at 10.30 and was soon joined by 17 other members of the team. This particular meeting was my monthly Airline Marketing Committee, where I get all the 5 airports teams together (the ones who focus on aviation development – what the Indian’s refer to as Airline Marketing. It is not ‘marketing’ in the normal sense but actually means marketing our airports to airlines for air service development). Also on the call was the CEO of Hyderabad airport, who has a remit of executive sponsor for this aviation development activity, plus my boss, the companies Global Chief Operating Officer who was in Paris yesterday, so the call was an early 7am start for him.

Having the Hyderabad CEO on the call means this meeting usual contains a lot attempts by some to seem knowledgeable and impress. A standard trait in most meetings here when seniors are included. But we ran through the relevant subjects, each airport presenting in turn their updates and by 12.30, we were done. Being honest it is my least favourite meeting of the month as I am not one for large audience virtual meetings as I find the dynamics very hard to manage, particularly in the Indian environment. But we got it done, and for the subsequent hour or so I focused on some follow ups and actioned a few other items on my to do list. For a change I kept the door shut to my office, as I needed to focus on a few key matters. Normally I very much deploy the open-door policy.

Patrick, a fellow expat (from Europe) who is the Chief Operating Officer of Delhi Airport messaged around 12.30 on our expat WhatsApp group to see if anyone wanted to join for lunch but I replied I was going later, after a meeting I actually had with him at 2pm, as I needed to focus on the work I was doing. Gordon duly jumped at the chance though and with the others being away in France, and Thibaut at the same time would have been boarding shortly his flight back to Paris, I believe the two of them went by themselves.

Normally I go for lunch in the canteen and order local food from the range of units there. Rush hour for lunch is between 1pm and 2pm, so it is best to go before or after and given I am in diet mode at the moment going around 2.30pm meant anything I ate would tide me over for the evening as well.

I went for my meeting with Patrick first though at 2pm, only to find he was running late back from his lunch with Gordon believing our meeting was actually at 2.30pm, but I waited and by 2.10pm we were in his office with the Head of Media for the airport discussing a couple of quick issues.

Then I went straight to the canteen and got myself a platter of veg noodles, which have the obligatory Indian spiciness to give it a nice kick. When I am eating solo I use the time to check the socials or my personal emails. Or have it with another friend…

One thing India does well is having lunch breaks, rather than just soldiering away at the desk sandwich in hand like I used to do. So I do my best to keep up the practice of having a break at lunch which is a nice thing to do. It is also good to sit outside, heat and pollution permitting, to have a break from the air conditioning. I have sat having hot Chai with Thibaut outside in high 30’s before now. Short doses are tolerable once you get acclimatised.

I was back at my desk from lunch around 3pm and used the next hour to do some more keyboard tapping, firing off some emails and actions to deal with for a few live matters underway across our airports. Then the final meeting of the day was set for 4pm, with an in-person session in our first floor main meeting room, named Amelia. Each of our meeting rooms are named after a famous person in aviation, with our top floor boardroom being the Neil Armstrong room.

I rocked up at 4pm, and by 4.15pm myself and my boss in Paris were sending each other messages about the fact it was a late starting meeting, him sitting on the Zoom meeting link joining virtually. Shortly after though the Delhi airport CEO and his deputy came in and we started a meeting that did not finish until 7.15pm. It was one of the more interesting meetings of the week, discussing a workstream instigated by the Indian Government focused on how to improve Indian aviation hub connectivity. There is a consultant employed to explore some areas around this subject, and the meeting was hearing their updates and debating some of their assumptions. The Delhi CEO has asked me to sense check some of their assertions with respect to certain future traffic projections so that will be something for me to focus on early next week.

Gordon was messaging me during the meeting to see if we could share an Uber back home, and I was telling him I did not expect to be done until around 6.30pm (the meeting was originally supposed to be over by 5.30pm…). He was fine with that as he had work to conclude, but when he messaged at 6.30pm asking if I was ready I told him he should head off himself as I would likely still be a while.

So in parallel to my meeting, I was watching with humour his WhatsApp messages about his first Uber driver driving off in the wrong direction. When you order an Uber here, mostly it works well. You can see the car on the map and watch them getting closer (hopefully!). Given the location of our office, normally the ones who accept the job are on their way out of the airport having dropped someone off, so it is a good pick up for them as it means they take someone with them while leaving. But there is a little loop in the road they need to do to turn back to our office, and the tell is always to watch to be sure they take that loop and then start heading towards the office in order to be sure (well, relatively sure) they are actually on their way.

From what I could hear Gordon’s driver yesterday missed the loop and headed off in the wrong direction. A few weeks back I had one that missed the loop and merrily proceeded to continue driving off into the distance. Once it was obvious he had not just made an error but was blatantly ignoring the pick-up I tried to cancel, but was not able to do so without paying around a 30 rupee penalty (30p). It annoyed me a lot that it was not my fault, but I could not do anything but pay this so that I could then try and secure another driver. Grrr. Apparently, it is a thing that some less scrupulous drivers do, as they know they will get a proportion of this cancellation fee. One of the former expats who worked here, George, used to switch to an alternate taxi app on such occasions and just leave them hanging as they similarly cannot accept another job until they cancel. As an aside George disappeared at the end of last year. Ok, we do know he is fine and well, but his contract just ended and one day he was here, the next he was gone, and his door placard was removed.

My meeting finished and I tidied a couple of bits up back in my office then headed for the door ordering my Uber while heading down the two floors to the exit. Contrary to the experiences quoted above, the experience yesterday was perfect with a driver accepting straight away, and was visible in taking the loop and heading for the office pick up point. I arrived at the entrance gate, a short 100 meters or so from the office entrance, at exactly the same time and for once the car was good quality, the air conditioning was running, and twenty minutes later I was placing the key into the door of my apartment.

When I arrived, I did not see either Vikas (day guard) or Pushpender (night guard) as it was around 8pm and time of their changeover so I assumed it was in that narrow window between shifts.

The apartment was cool when I entered as the air conditioning had been on all day. Normally I turn it off and spend the first 30 minutes or so being back with it blasting away and the fan also whirring to try to reduce the temperature. But in my crossing paths with Sushmi in the morning I did not want to turn it off with her there as it would have rapidly heated up while she was working. I am more than happy for her to turn it on herself when she arrives and turn it off when she leaves, but for me to proactively turn it off while she was there would not have been a nice thing to do.

This meant that it was cool enough to get a Matty session in straight away, and I got changed into my sports kit, rolled out the exercise mat in the living room, put the weights beside it and fired up Peloton on the iPad. I browsed his workouts and found a good lower leg strength session to do. I like him as an instructor, as he is calmer than a lot of the regular ‘awesomeness’ of some of the more lively instructors in this American based fitness app!

Thirty minutes of squats, lunges, and other various high intensity strength training was a good way to detach from work mode and is something I am now doing at least every few days while here in Delhi. I can feel it is helping. I will never be ‘pumped’ but that is not my intention. It is just to build some strength and retain some fitness, and I feel like I am bonding well with my New York based on screen instructor, Matty!

Even though the session was only 30 minutes, after that a shower is needed so that was next up, followed by changing into relaxing clothes for a Friday evening chilling. Although by this time it wasn’t far off 9pm. iPad out, and Sky News on to check out the latest goings on. I have always liked to keep up to date with the news and doing so via Sky News here helps keep me grounded from a UK perspective. Watching British news is quite comforting while being over 4,000 miles away in a distant land.

Also being a Friday meant it was not necessarily a ‘dry’ evening, so a glass of Red was poured and before long I was watching the final episode of The Orville on Disney+ (a comedy series based on a Star Trek like theme). I find myself working through various series now on a variety of streaming platforms and it just so happened that last night I had come to the final ever episode of this series.

Around 10pm I abandoned the plan I had to survive off lunch alone, as I was too hungry so I prepared myself a quick omelette to see me through.

I also spoke with Jen a few times as she was driving up to Knaresborough for the weekend and so I could provide live traffic updates via the Traffic England website for her. A somewhat surreal experience discussing queueing traffic on the M1 from the comfort of a Delhi apartment. The 4 ½ hour time difference also means that by the time midnight comes around it is only 7.30pm back at ‘home’. So I waited up until she reached Knaresborough, and then it was time to call it a day and shortly before 1am it was time for lights out.

As I said before it was just a normal day. Just an innocent day.