A Finn Having Fun In India

Meet Jonne Kolima, From Finland, Working In Bengaluru

Then & Now

I was not really familiar with India before I came here. Of course I knew the usual clichés – spicy food, colourful festivals and busy streets – but had no first-hand experience. I did read a bit on southern India and Bengaluru before coming here but, generally speaking, my strategy (some would call it laziness) was to jump in the pool without dipping in a toe first. The thinking behind this was that immersion would be more effective with an uncluttered mind… I guess this kind of worked, my first couple of weeks in Bengaluru were undeniably chaotic but after that everything seemed to click. Well, actually, I landed in India just before the demonetisation started, so that perhaps led to more confusion than was absolutely necessary…

Bureau-crazy

My first point of contact with India – before even entering the country – were the people and organisations around the massive bureaucratic machinery that every expat encounters when coming for a longer stay in India. We Finns love bureaucracy but we have got nothing on India! Then again, I do not know how complimentary it is to a have a nation of 5 million people, which has for some reason created the same labyrinthine bureaucracy needed to run a nation of 1.3 billion people…

Looking back at the process, I think it went relatively smoothly, with some minor hiccups on the way (a PAN card lost in the mailroom for a month comes to mind…) Also, it gave me to opportunity to have the first experiences of the Indian way of doing things, which I guess is something like: It might take a while but it will get done.

Manchurian moments