India - the team

One of the best parts of my India trip was getting to know the team I work with here on a more personal basis. We've been working together for several months, but it's really hard to get to really know someone with only a few meetings a week over the phone. This experience has been great for that.

From left: Pallavi, Yashveer, me, Brij, Anil, and Sridhar


The team really treated me well during my stay. I mentioned earlier about the lunches they took me to last week. This week, on Tuesday, they treated me to a night on the town. We took off from work on board several "two-wheelers" (motorcycles). I've not ridden motorcycles much in my life (my brother had a dirt bike when we were younger, but that's about it) and I've certainly never ridden motorcycles in the kind of traffic or roads that you find around Pune. It was a little scary for me at first, but I eventually settled in and enjoyed it.

First stop for the evening was my very first Bollywood movie. Bollywood is India's version of Holleywood that cranks out lots of high quality movies every year. In fact, I've heard it reported the Bolleywood movies now bring in more total each year than Holleywood movies (quantity of movies produced and quantity of people viewing them play into that). The movie we saw was called "Ghosla Ka Khosla". The movie was great - it was all spoken in Hinglish (Hindi with a little English mixed in) so I didn't follow the dialog too well. Even without the dialog, I followed the plot easily and knew the context of most of the conversations. The movie was very enjoyable - you can read more about it (in English) at http://www.khoslakaghosla.com/

After the movie the team took me to a little hidden restaurant in the middle of a small villiage in Pune. We had to take some pretty crazy little dirt roads back into the village to get to find the restaurant (no signs). The restaurant was outdoors under a bamboo leaf roof. Marble walkways led to private secluded tables. The tables were set low to the ground and we all sat on the ground on pillows and padding (no chairs). This is traditional style Indian seating. The food as usual was great - and the ambiance and setting were perfect.

After the fun evening at the restaurant, one of the team drove me back to the hotel on their two wheeler and we called it an evening. Thursday evening I treated them to a fancy meal at the hotel I was staying at and again had a great time together. [Side note: By the way, I mentioned that the hotel was really nice. Well, Thursday Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt arrived in Pune to start shooting a movie there and were staying in the same hotel we were in. I never saw them - I think they snuck them in and out of the hotel pretty quickly, but it was still kind of fun to have some famous people staying where you are.]