India will turn you into a unnecessarily rude person

You must be wondering what do I mean by the title. Most people on whom you rely on for service lack professionalism to the core and especially evident in services where education does not matter. Examples of this are, servicing your appliances, carpenters, plumbers etc. There are other cases where big companies operate their tech support teams and you will find most of them will put a pea-brain to shame. I am talking about companies like Citibank, Tata Indicom (phone) etc. As long as you owe them money, the attention to service or detail is at its highest. The minute they have to provide you the service for the money that you have already parted with or have to issue refund, things are 180 degrees out of whack. So, everyday you are praying to yourself that hopefully nothing goes wrong in your day that requires somebody to come and assist you. Because of the way they behave, the next time you will start off very aggressively and so end up becoming rude for no good reason. I don't need extra incentive to be rude to someone but even I get challenged. You can only imagine people like Bhavani who are so composed but are required to scream at people. If you want to hear more interesting stories ask someone like Sathish who had to deal with lots of such people in order to build his house. Not only are the stories good entertainment (after the fact and over a beer) but you can only imagine the persons state of mind when they are going through it.

So, beware of people who paint a very rosy picture of things here because you do have to deal with some ground realities. The solution, hire a house manager and let him deal with all the hassles.

Problem of Theft

While in US, I was so used to keeping valuables around the house (including cash) and that has costed me dearly here. In US, even when we had cleaning maid come in, the cash was never touched. Many a time we had things outside of our house (like the office bag with laptop) or kids bikes all night and were never stolen. However it is amazing to see what people steal here and how. I have in the 3 months lost 3 mobile phones (costing around $400 total), a Ray-ban glasses ($70) and had it happen inside the house!! We naturally suspected the house maid and filed a police complaint. When you buy a phone here, it comes with insurance but claiming that is such a hassle I have not bothered to claim the insurance money. The police came and took her to the station and questioned her and she kept to her guns of being innocent. Obviously I did not have the heart to proceed further due to lack of proof and asked the Police to let her go. I felt really sick that day thinking, what if she had been really innocent and I made her go through the agony. Since then, we have become extra careful and follow the housemaid every step of the way, which is a huge waste of our time. Recently, like everyday, we kept the trash can near the gate for the trash lady to pick it up. However that day she instead of keeping it back inside the gate left it outside. The trash can disappeared in no time. Because we live in a very established neighborhood, these things are relatively infrequent. I can only imagine what it is like if you live in one of these upcoming layouts. People here have lost all sense of morals. The lesson, watch your back and trust no one unless you really know them. The problem with theft is more than financial loss, it kind of hurts you that somebody invaded your privacy and that is a problem hard to reconcile.