Working for DA Man

Two months of working in an Indian office environment has provided me with a few insights. Time to share.I work in a dusty part of town, on the SW fringes of Delhi. My commute takes about 20 minutes in a tuk tuk from where I'm living. Haggling with the drivers is a morning ritual and, on average, I expect to go through 5 tuk tuks before I get one willing to take me to work at the right price (about 80p).

To get to the current Development Alternatives (DA) HQ I have to walk up a small residential road, pass the street's own pack of dogs, people leaving their houses for work and the occasional car trying to squeeze itself through narrow gaps in between the dogs and the people. Off this dusty road lies a small lane. You've seen it on TV. Think Beirut and you're in the right ball park. This is where my building lies.I don't know when it was built, but it's pretty much solid concrete, most of which is exposed. Various offices occupy the basement and two upper floors. Life in the basement dungeon is exceptionally unpleasant in the heat and I thank the Lord I'm not working down there, especially as the rather gruff Accounts boys are the first to greet you as you hit the bottom step. DA's very own Cerberus at the gates of Hades.

On the roof we have a canteen, which I have already documented in picture. Everyone crowds round the serving hatch at lunch, jostling to get their food or a chit of paper on which they write their order. A lot of people also take their lunch in the makeshift dining area by the kitchen. When I first arrived I had the notion of being sociable and I attempted the same, but sharing my plate with a squadron of flies is less than appealing. Nowadays I secrete myself downstairs to my desk - very unsociable like (and not necessarily fly-free!).The view from the roof is pretty cool, looking southwards towards a surprisingly green, forested area of the city. Around are flat-rooved houses, each with their own roof terraces, all at different heights. A freerunners paradise. I've looked over the edge of our roof a few times and thought that at the right speed and with the correct take-off I could soar over the street below and on to the rooftop opposite. Thankfully, both gravity and common sense take a grip and root me to the building. The Bourne films should really come with a health warning: "May Give Men Ideas!"Speaking of this green and pleasant land, somewhere out there is where the brand new DA HQ is being built, a miracle of modern eco-architecture (I'm sure I've written this before). The only miracle about the current temporary offices is how the DA staff have managed to work in it for three years running without trying to take sledgehammers to it. I understand air con is bad from an environmental point of view, but surely there should be a compromise. Oh, no wait there is: an industrial-sized pipe that cuts through the plasterboard partitions to circulate slightly cool air around the building. It sounds like it's raining outside when it's on; booms like a thunderclap when revved up.My particular section of the building belongs to CSB - the Communication Services Bureau. It has one main ceiling fan, which has the power to cool the area directly beneath it and nothing else. The décor is 70s wallpaper, 70s wood veneer paneling on the walls, brown carpet and brown- and cream-patterned wallpaper - a fair reflection of the rest of the offices. I'll take pics soon, but for now imagine Gene Hunt exploring a new career path as an interior decorator casing my office as a new project. As he seeks everywhere for inspiration, his epiphany comes when he stares down to his fag-stained fingers. "This is my vision", he proclaims, raising his index and middle fingers in a gesture first shown to the French at Agincourt, "Take this as your palette and create."CSB is like a family, and a slightly dysfunctional one at that. The core members are:Indira (Ma'am) - Director and Matriarch, prone to sudden high pitched shreeks if she finds somethingshe's lost / sees our pet CSB rat. Previously worked in journalism and a number of senior positions. The ideas factory of the operation - if she left, communications wouldn't be saying much.Soma - Advertising and Marketing Manager and big sister. Single mum of one who can be found face down against the desk at least once a day. Amar-ji - The Office Wallah who's been at DA since God knows when. If you want something sorted, call on Amar-ji: from having your area cleaned (oo-er missus) to taping your loose broadband cable to the router. Good ol' Amar-ji.Mr Jay - Or Dr Jay as I like to call him because he's quite tall and Dr Jay reminds me of the name given to a 70s basketball player. One of the few people I've ever seen whose natural facial expression is a smile. I can't imagine him ever getting upset (a rare trait in this office).Bibhu - Off sick for a month with jaundice, he's the events manager and one of the 'Naughty Boys' in the office, along with…Devanjan - a quiet, friendly soul whose currently off on exam leave. A relative newbie at DA, he's given up a life of media thrills and spills for development. I'm not sure why. A fellow Naughty Boy, though the ringleader has to be…Arpan - the audio/visual man in communications and a popular soul in the company as a whole. Unlike B and D, he's very confident and probably has the most potential to go up the zigarole lickity-split.To this mix add me, the work experience girl Vidhya, the Content Editor and two other foreign interns due in July, and you have a pretty full office. Too full, in fact, as there are only enough computers for 7 people. Maybe they have a free Etch-a-Sketch handy.General office interactions involve Indira telling Soma off, Soma telling A, B, & D off and Indira telling all four of them off. The rest of the casual labour and foreigners sit around and watch the soap opera unfold. The office is always noisier when Indira is here, but even in her absence you'll still get Arpan singing or Soma humming in a high-pitched voice just on the fringes of my aural spectrum. Drives me a little nuts, but I can't very well tell her to cease and desist.Well, not yet anyway.As for the lads, well they interact with each other like high school kids. There's a lot of back slapping, giggling and a tendency to start smirking when either Indira or Soma gives them a ticking off. Much like naughty children. I'm not exactly sure how much work gets done. The pace of work is pretty much as I expected: I waited 6 weeks for feedback on a 6-page pamphlet I drew up within the first three days I arrived. It's not the lack of deadlines or work - just the way it is. It can be frustrating, but you just have to go with the flow. Tea and snacks are brought down to you whenever you feel like, and if there's one thing the Indian's have taken from the British and made their own, it's tea. I think the secret is in boiling the milk for a rich, velvety texture. At first I felt slightly guilty, having these lads come down and serve me tea. I can make my own tea: just show me the kettle and the pack of Tetley. But, as with all things, you get used to it. I've got no idea how I'm going to cope in the UK without a Chai Wallah.The rest of the company seems to operate on a slightly calmer basis, although I can't be completely sure. We have a lot of Wing Commanders and Colonels, who insist you call them by their titles despite the fact that everyone is encouraged to use first name terms. This is something people rarely do. Your boss is either 'sir' or 'ma'am' and you treat them with the type of respect you have to treat your own Aunts and Uncles. It's a good way of maintaining respect, but it leaves little room for challenging the opinions of those above you, which is a shame as this isn't the environment the company fosters, it's just the Indian way. The employees DA attracts are of a pretty high caliber - a fact other expat friends of mine working in the private sector would not be able to agree on. I find it difficult how the younger members of the organization can feel empowered to speak up if they treat their bosses as they would their elders. And it doesn't help when you're publicly denigrated in front of your colleagues (I've seen this happen). Maybe I'm reading the situation incorrectly, but I very much doubt it. The company has a pool of talent, but the individual members need to let go of the Indian family structure and treat each other as colleagues, rather than people to look up to or down to.All in all, I'm having a good experience, but if I have one bugbear, it's having to get up on Saturday mornings to go into work for the weekly inter-departmental meeting. It's the only reason I have to come into work on that day at all. 6-day working weeks are common in India, although they're being phased out. A lot of my colleague's friends have Saturdays off, as do most of my ex-pat mates here in Delhi. But not muggins here. To be fair, the meeting is important as you get to find out what's going on in the rest of the company, but they last for about three hours. Three hours on a Saturday morning when I could be lazing in bed? No more will I complain about the two days a week we get off at home.

Ah balls to that, of course I will!If you want to know more about DA, check out their website: http://www.devalt.org/A better, user-friendly website is on the way…at some point. Manyana probably.