Morten Falch Sortland - India

When I was looking for an internship back in Norway, I was trying my best to stay away from India. I told my friends that if I go to India for 6 months, I would probably end up in jail after loosing my patience somewhere along the way. Then, one day, I received a mail from a company called Helios Solutions. They were an IT company delivering web developing services to Europe, and were today operating in Germany, The Netherlands and France, and wanted to enter either Norway or Sweden. My job would be to make that happen, and to manage projects once we started generating business. To me that sounded like an awesome way to spend 6 months, in the sense that I would be given a lot of responsibility by a company that was actually willing to take a chance, and that I would learn a lot. Exactly the internship I was looking for, but unfortunately in the wrong country. After thinking for a while I decided I could not let them do the biggest mistake of their lives by entering Sweden, and took it upon me to prove that Norway had not been a bad choice, even though the population, and hence the market, would be half the size.

After 2.5 months in India, with almost exactly 4 months to go, I still feel like something inside me will snap in the end, and I will earn myself a ticket to jail. India is for me, to be honest, challenging. We are all individuals, and one of the German interns here loves it so much that he recently extended his 6-month contract for another 3 months.

But, after 2.5 months I also still feel like the job is something I am really learning a lot from, and that I like doing. Being one of 6 Europeans working in a small office, where I have the sole responsibility for not only maintaining business but also having the sole responsibility for making “Project Norway” work, is really cool. My boss have given me complete freedom to do what I think is best, and gives me really good advice when I need it.

English is the official written language in India, but funny enough almost nobody understands or speaks it, except an educated elite. Some states are supposedly only speaking English, but I have not witnessed this. Indians are also extremely curios about foreigners, and hence they use the very little English they know to attack you with the same questions over and over again. One of these questions are “Do you like India?”. To make it easy for myself I often answer “Yes”, but sometimes I´m honest: As all countries India has its pros and cons. I hate the cons and I really like the pros. India is really dirty and traffic is unpredictable. You are constantly a victim of price discrimination, meaning Indians can visit Taj Mahal for 20 rupees, while foreigners have to pay 750. It makes no difference if you work for the country or not. What would be banned as racism in Europe is often common practice here. People stare at you. At all times. Often only centimeters away from your face…

But India is also really cool, and even though I feel extremely privileged not to be born here, I am really happy that I can experience it. I will truthfully appreciate being Norwegian and European (or simply from a developed country) more from now on. India also offers cheap and good travelling, the coolest mosques I have ever seen (hidden, so there are no other tourists than you), camel trips in the desert, good friends, lots of laughs, and insight about one of the largest emerging economies in the world, which all are really cool to experience! Apart from the constant diarrhea…