KARMA GONE BAD by Jenny Feldon

2004 young newly married all loved up, Jenny and her husband go to Hyderabad, India for a 2 year posting. The contrast from their well heeled, very comfortable and professional New York lives to the chaos, poverty, disorganisation, frustration and third world mismanagement of urban India could not be greater. The two extremes of 21st living in our world. For our intrepid travellers it becomes a disaster. And Jenny gleefully documents what is a classic culture shock experience; her husband would have been doing it just as bad, but really does not get much of a look in, other than being unsympathetic, unhelpful to her, although going through it all himself. Eventually she, and he, and their marriage comes through the other side, which of course accounts for her light hearted and what I have come to think of as arrogant attitude to her Indian experience.

I am scathing of her because only a couple of years later in 2007, my family of husband, 10 and 12 year old daughters and myself, 20 years older than Jenny, went to Bangalore for 12 months. Jenny and hubby were probably heading back to NY as we were arriving, but not much would have changed in the life of an expat white family in that two years. There is nothing about living in India as an expat which is easy, especially for women. Like Jenny we had to find our own housing, organise our own transport, bank accounts, relying on the kindness other expats than anyone from the employer. Our employer was of no use at all in the settling in process, unlike families who had been moved to India through their employment with big banks, computer companies, multi national retailers etc for whom all that settling in stuff was taken of. So I relate to how Jenny felt. It is a very challenging place to live in. To do it successfully requires some very deep digging into the personal psyche.

But it would appear she could have done a much better job of getting knowledge before she went. Her ignorance and complete lack of preparation for this adventure is really quite shameful and to a certain extent I feel she was the author of her own tough time. The energy and curiosity of a young person for the big wide world just did not seem to be there, almost as if NY is the center of the universe, and no other place is important. Her ignorance is shameful. She only had herself and her husband, and a dog - no children to worry about, to find school for and settle in, to feed a completely different diet because home food is not in India. Nowhere does she say that she talked to people about living in India, nowhere did she say she did research about anything about the place. Did she even read Lonely Planet India? And there were many books out there on culture shock, and various expat experiences. Her knowledge of basic health precautions was nil, they didn't even have a basic first aid kit. What she had in her head about even going to India, let alone living there, I really don't know. For someone with her education and apparent intelligence, it was well and truly hidden. India is not a place you go to lightly, even on holiday.

I could relate so much to what she experienced which is why I picked up the book to read in the first place. But she was such a princess, such a diva I got to the point, meanly, where I hoped she would give up. Good on her for not, and then having the courage and intelligence to start finding all the amazing things India has to offer. But there are way better books to read than this one on the corporate expat's experience of living in a place such as India.