Spain…hitting head-on on a stationary wall

Remember those times when you are running at high speeds, looking down (or just lost in your dreams), and you suddenly hit a pole/wall? That’s the feeling you get when you move from India to Spain (or more specifically Bangalore to Barcelona). No kidding! In a nutshell, the pace of both countries is a magnitude of at least 20 years different. I have been in Barcelona (and areas around) for the past month and a half, and it almost feels like I have been transported back to the India I had experienced when I was a child in my early teens. Some may say that was a romantic time, where people had a life, but hey...when as a country you learn to run fast and get ahead of the world, you lose the sense of romance and slowing down at such a rapid pace does not feel romantic, at all. Its just frustrating and beats logic. Consider this…it took me 15 days to get an active bank account and another 1 week week to get their credit and debit cards. Its been a month almost since I applied for my internet connection but still don’t have one. What beats this is that they bundle internet with cell phone connections, and now I don’t have internet on my phone! Ikea told us they will deliver the good we bought within a week. The first week went by and no news from them. When I finally called, they said just wait for us to call back and reschedule. Thankfully they did, but again second appointment, they missed! Now 2 weeks later, I don’t have a clue where my paid consignment is. People take one whole month off here for summer vacations. Everything, including restaurants shut. My office colleagues advanced their weddings to July cause they could not get their marriages registered in August. The whole country shuts! When I go through all these experiences, I can see my father’s frustrated face when he used to come back home harassed by some government office, tortured by the sheer apathy and lack of customer care…30 years ago in India. Today, in India you can open a bank account in 5 minutes on your cell phone, internet connection is a 2 hour job ( at most 2 days if your paperwork is complicated), no one shuts down for a whole month, and customer care really cares (honestly you will truly understand that Indian customer care actually cares after you have interacted with customer care in Spain). And then when I tell friends that this place is quite frustrating, they always come back with the canned dream reply of “look at their infrastructure dude! Its awesome!” Yeah well, if you have all the money in the world, and such a small population to service, its not difficult to have awesome infrastructure and be able to maintain it too. But then, this beats logic. Why, if your population is low, can’t you do things faster???

Well, maybe enough cribbing. I guess that’s just a spoilt Indian (coming from a technologically advanced city of Bangalore) venting out not being able to understand how some country can be this slow and backward in technology, at this day and age. But lets sit down after hitting the wall, wait for the spiral in your head to calm down, and then you start seeing that the wall that you hit your head on while trying to run fast, actually has a beautiful painting. A mural that is very rich in its description and depiction of the glorious history of the country, yet tragically depicting that that’s where the country is stuck in and likes being in. There is absolutely no doubt that this country is blessed by natural beauty in which the people of Spain have beautifully interwoven gorgeous architecture and a serene lifestyle. At every nook and corner you can glimpses of the rich and glorious past, still twinkling in the eyes of the citizens. A very heart warmingly unbiased welcome to people from different parts of the world, with no visible bias and prejudice. In more ways than one, this is more desirable than any technological advancement you may wish for. 

So in all of this where is the romance? The romance was actually born out of the experience as a family.  When I reflect back, I think of an old black and white Bollywood movie. A young couple, just moved to a new city, trying to set up life, have 2 kids (born early within the marriage), trying to make it through the daily routines of life. The husband leaves early morning, walks a distance to catch the local Mumbai train (in this case Barcelona metro), carries a box for lunch made by the loving wife (Nisha has discovered a new passion for cooking and insists she cooks lunch for me), changes from train to bus, and finally reaches office after an hour. Finishes work by 5:00 and leaves office (with no tension of getting back home and working again), reaches home and has 2 kids who come running to him when he opens the door (yes my kids actually do this and its an amazing feeling. The little one jumps in his stationary spot). The loving wife stays at home, cooks, takes care of two bratty kids, and also finds time to stitch (in this case working from home for her company in India) and does this throughout the day and in to the nights. The only respite being when the husband comes back home, takes over the kids for a couple of hours, and lovingly makes a nice cup of ginger tea every evening for the loving wife. In between all of this, the husband continues to battle with the system, while the wife ensures the husband is fighting fit and emotionally happy to take on the world. Its been the most cute and romantic time of our lives. Stressful, tiring, tough, yet nothing we regret.

I know in this post, you may not have found anything about Barcelona that you would have heard of, romanticized about, experienced or wished to hear about. This was all about me learning the fact that visiting a city, and actually having to move and live in it are really completely different experiences. This time the joy was not discovered in the external factor of the city, but in the small family we have created and the experiences go through all of this together. Truly, the romance was not the city, but the company 😊