Moving to a new city is always a thrilling and intimidating change. But even after emotional roller coasters’ and homesickness’ weather away, uneasiness will slowly seep in when obstacles like language, loneliness and culture refuse to leave and things can start to get a little nerve racking. Apart from the constant whirl-wind of uncertainties and indifference from the unfamiliar world that you are forced to deal with, these city folk who moved in to Bengaluru to pursue their new job/higher education, tell us their story of settling in and how they went about it.
Language barrier comes as a combo especially if you are moving to a city in the south and it took a while for Chirag Jain to understand and fit in. Chirag works as a business consultant at an analytics service and solutions firm.
“I had trouble especially with the auto wallahs and shopkeepers. They charge one rate for Kannadigas and a different rate for non-Kannadigas. So, it just took me a while to realise that I just need to learn by heart ‘Cigarette bekku’ and ‘Anna, Indiranagar hog beku” to deal with them,’’ said Chirag who is based out of Haryana.
Chirag Jain
Meanwhile, for Arpit Bansal who is working as key accounts manager at a multinational firm, coping with the traffic and reaching on time was the first and major concern.
“I had to buy a car after I found myself struggling to get to places on time. The cab drivers would never reach on time. Also, the traffic in silk board was too much for me to handle as a newbie in the city. Later I shifted to Kormangala,’’ said Arpit.
Neethu Raphael who works as a project engineer at a city-based design and analysis firm says that catching the right bus was anything but easy for the first few months.
“The public transport here, the buses, had numbers and Kannada written on it and I had a tough time to find the right bus to go to work. After a few months, with the help of my roommates I learned the bus numbers by heart and then I was able to catch up with it eventually,’’ says Neethu.
Anand Reghuraj always had bad days as encounters with the police personnel and debates became a daily affair.
“On every other day, the police would simply ask me to stop and take money from me just because I had a Kerala registration bike. For one reason or the other they claim money and they will never give the receipt for it. After a while, I managed to learn some Kannada and after that they wouldn’t disturb me thinking I was a Kannadiga,’’ says Anand. He works as the team leader (Marketing) at a distance learning centre.
