The Job Story - 11

Herentals is a small town with an industrial area near the city. Its a city where life takes it time to live. For us who came from big cities in India, life here was as good as dead. We hardly saw people even in the industrial area.

We were told to pay for our food and lodging and our company was supposed to reimburse the lodging expenses before we left for India. “D” was in charge of the small team. He was responsible for completing the work in that location. “D” was a South Indian guy who hardly new Hindi. He would talk in Tamil and English. The only few words he knew were “Thik hai”, “Haan” etc. The only other exposure to Hindi was the hindi bollywood movies, particularly “Kuch Kuch hota hai”. He was very fond of one KKHH song which he would sing with a typical tamil ascent

The song was “Tum paas aaye, yun muskuraye”. He would sing with a Tamil touch giving prominence to the “ye” of “aaye”. So the song would go like;

“Tum paas aayehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Yun muskurayehhhhhhhhhhhhhh”

“JS” was a married guy whose wife also worked in the same company. He was missing his wife and son immensely. He was a very quite guy.

“K” was the opposite of these two guys. He was from North India, particularly from Rohtak. He had that Delhiness in him. He liked to take work easy and have fun while “JS” and “D” were very serious kind of people. “K” and I had worked together in Mumbai and knew each other quite well.

We were accommodated in a four star luxury hotel which was just next to the highway. There was also a river running quite close to the hotel. The only problem was that the hotel was very far from the place we were supposed to work. The public transport is not so good in a small European town and the solo bus arrives every hour. So if I miss the bus then I have to wait one hour for the next bus. The other option was calling the taxi but it was costly considering the limited amount of cash we had and we had no means to get it reimbursed from the company’s office.

The day we reached Herentals, we explored the area close to the hotel. “D” and “JS” slept through the day. As it was a Sunday, all the office were closed. It was the last Sunday in Herentals when we actually relaxed on a Sunday. The next day we called a taxi to reach our working place. The office was a part of a factory in an industrial area. As we were far off from our European office which was in Amsterdam and the company told us to use the allowance we had, we had to do with the money we had.

We knew that if we traveled by taxi, we would exhaust all our money in few days. We were not sure how much time it would take us to complete the work and with no bank accounts or way to transfer money, we were virtually on our own in a small town in Belgium.

However we decided to ask the client for help. The Hotel staff only told us about the bus option. We reached the office which was in a big industrial town with factories around and no living person in sight. The only time we saw some life when we saw cars in the morning and evening and trucks during the day.

The client was a team of two IT people. A manager, K and his assistant David. The other staff was almost non-existent with  a kind lady as a office administrator and one accountant who always worked in offices all over Belgium. Now we were in a big Industrial town with lots of work and nothing else.

The clients were quite supportive. Understanding that we had no transport and no source of food in that industrial estate, they first arranged a car for us. That was a big relief because now we could atleast travel to office without spending money. They both tried to find food for us and what started an experimentation of trial and error over the next 17 days.

During the next 17 days we tried everything from bread, butter to pasta to pork and bread jam. They tried to get us food that we could eat unsure if we could eat everything because of the religious significance. We once ate pork by mistake and both of them were quite apologetic about it and still they got us food everyday, everyday for the 17 days. Food for us was spicy and cooked and for them it could be just salad and we were surprised.

Another thing we tried were the endless variety of  ”Knorr” soups in the small kitchen and lots of cold drinks and juices in the refrigerator. We drank a lot of those. We never had coffee breaks, we had soup breaks. Our hotel had free complementary breakfast and we literally hogged on the food. We ate lots of bread and fruits so that we won’t feel that hungry till lunch which was always a surprise. Always used to spicy food in India, we found it difficult to have the salads and bread/butter as food at lunch. Sometimes the bread was so hard that it was becoming difficult for us. We could not even tell “No”to them because we could see that they were genuinely trying to get us good food.

Another embarrassing incident was when the lady in the office washed our utensils. The kitchen was not a substitute to a canteen and everyone washed their utensils after use. We had canteens in India where somebody else washed the utensils. After the first day, we washed the utensils ourselves.

The evenings were worse because by the time we returned to the hotel, the hotel restaurant closed  down leaving us with little or no food. Added to it, “JS” and “D” fascination with rice. They needed rice once a day and the hotel restaurant was the place to get it. “K” and I could not understand the fascination because it was plain white rice with sometimes onions or even ketchup. We did have pizza in the restaurant which we tried for few days but it was the hardest pizza and very very difficult to eat.

With very less time to complete the work, we had to stay back. They left early and we were working almost 14-15 hours a day and sometimes more. The most we worked was 17 hours and we returned to the hotel very late. We were quite used to working like this but this was another country and the client was quite surprised at us putting so many hours. For most of the 17 days we slogged and spent insane amount of time in the hotel and yet was fun.

It was my first trip away from home and also from India. Although I had grown up long back, it was the first time I was independent, away from home and yet I was with so many people. I somehow liked the quite town of Herentals.

Actually It was my first exposure to the outside world!

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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 and Part 10