Recently some people have asked why I’ve stopped
writing my blog. To me, its obvious that this isn’t the case at all. However, I
see that I only wrote 2 posts last year – the least ever since I started in
2010. I am not sure why – the easy answer would be the lack of time. Of course,
that is hardly ever the truth. Writing for me is and always has been a way to
process experiences and feelings. 2018 though, it left me feeling drained. Not necessarily
in a bad way. Just a LOT to process. A year where I moved 2 cities and 4 homes,
started 2 new jobs – both very different from one another. Moving cities though
always exhausting, was a breeze because falling in love with Berlin was so very
easy. The work however…
Berlin 2018 was just downright mad. A medium
sized event is the funniest thing to work on. Its too small for you to REALLY
be able to make a huge difference to its success or failure, yet its not large enough to ignore or hide behind anonymity when the crazy shit hits the roof. With a majorly
stretched event budget and the realisation that German efficiency is only a
myth; all I can say is that the European Athletics Championships 2018 was by
far the most trying event experience I have had so far. Of course,
accreditation is not an easy responsibility to handle – some say only
masochists choose this functional area. The very exacting nature of the work,
coupled with a very user unfriendly online system ensured that I was running on
overdrive within a few days of starting on the project. Its not a secret
however, that I love challenging work. What drained me was not the 12 hour
workdays or working weekends. It was the work ‘culture’.
Granted, this was my first full-time job
in Germany. And it was almost fully in German. A long drawn out job hunt had already taken a toll on my self-confidence, so I was probably not starting from the most self-assured of places. But, I had enough experience
from 3.5 years of part-time jobs to be expecting a much more wholesome
workplace. This one however, was riddled with –isms. To date, I do not know to
what extent I can break down what I saw there – chauvinism, racism or rather probably
linguistic discrimination and ageism. The first couple of months were extremely
frustrating for me. Sometimes I would feel like I was invisible or speaking
into a void – as anything I said was completely ignored, or worse yet, treated
like a joke. It was the first time I worked completely in German, and though I
have mastered the language enough to make my point in most discussions, my
level of skill is nowhere near where it is in English. That meant I was always
compared the results I got from meetings and negotiations to what I would have
achieved if it were in English. I was also hesitating and choosing my words
carefully, as one generally should. But this meant that my pauses were interpreted
as insecurities about my work by people who were looking to push their own
agenda. This was definitely not the case with everyone – within my own team for
instance, I was well accepted along with all my crazy! It was with difficult
external vendors and our extended team that I was struggling. I remember one
incident in particular. We were in the middle of a very heated discussion, ok,
argument and had reached a ‘she-said-she-said’ impasse. At this point, the
accused ‘liar’ got extremely agitated and asked me if I was accusing her of
being a liar (“Machst du einen Vorwurf?”). Of course I was, (because she was
one) but in English I would have tried to diffuse the situation. However, in
German, I unfortunately did not know what the word (Vorwurf) meant, so I simply
said “Ja”. Its safe to say that all hell broke loose then.
As a personality or cultural quirk, I try
to break the ice in business meetings with a joke or a friendly comment. Here
though, I was getting nothing but cold stares when I tried the tactic. I seemed
to spend the remainder of the meeting trying to convince people that no, I was
not a clown, I actually knew my job. Eventually I stopped, telling myself that
this was a task-oriented culture so I should cut the crap and get straight down
to business. When even that didn’t make much of a difference, I started to
psych myself before meetings to “go into bitch mode”. My favourite trick to get
‘in the mood’ was imagining myself fighting to get into the Delhi metro. Many a
times I envied the only other foreigner at this organisation because she could
not speak any German. This forced everyone to speak to her in English and put
her at a natural advantage during the conversations.
As we got closer to the event, I had less
and less time to care. To care to choose my words perfectly or make sure my
grammar was on point, to re-re-read emails or to worry about faux pas. I worked
closely with the Landeskriminalamt, fondly referred to as the LKA. It is the
State Criminal Police Office, and the night before my first meeting was spent tossing
and turning. How would these officers of the law react to a foreigner with
imperfect German coordinating with them about security clearances for the
event? I barely dared to say a word during the meeting, but at the end, I did
take the plunge and crack a joke when I saw the opening. I was so very
surprised when everyone in the room laughed a hearty laugh. They accepted me
instantly and it was a breeze creating a smooth working relationship with them.
Then there was volunteer training. I threw a minor tantrum to be allowed to
train the volunteers in English instead of German. It was the EUROPEAN
championships, I said! They have to understand English, etc. I wanted to
make sure they respected me, not judged me; like I felt I was, by some
colleagues. When I went up there though, somehow, I just didn’t care. Some invisible
switch went off in me – I don’t know whether it was confidence or just defiance
but I started the presentation in German and it felt right. I think this was a
defining moment for me. Public speaking though never overwhelmingly scary, has
always commanded my respect. However, having to do it in a foreign language in
front of about 50 strangers in whom you want to inspire respect and the motivation to come sweat it out at 33 degrees weather for free – that’s just
something else.
The event and work did not get any easier
after this moment in my journey. Just the person I was and the role I had to
play in it became clearer to me. I valued more and more what I brought to the
table professionally as well as personally and found it easier to ignore
chauvinists and jerks. I started being less harsh on myself. Every event has
those who thrive and those who crack under pressure. And when the ones that
cracked tried to take me down too, oh I was ready for them in all my new-found multi-lingual
confidence. When partners and vendors tried to push me around, I told them in all sorts of faulty grammar where they could go unless they cooperated.
It feels like Berlin 2018 was a big and
monumental step in my ‘integration’ journey over 4 years in Germany. Since then,
I don’t feel the need any more to really go out of my way to change, filter or
tweak my reactions so as fit in. I have learned that the linguistic skills I simply took for granted in India both hold me back by defining my confidence along with giving me an advantage over others that I never fully appreciated before. I feel comfortable with the mish-mash of
cultures that I am. I almost feel an odd sense of equilibrium – whether I am
listening to Karnevalsmusik, Berlin rap or the Mahalaya in Bengali, it feels
right. The pull of very opposing cultural identities seems to have momentarily
atleast, made peace with the fact that I can’t choose between them. I am now in
a very international organisation that gives me the freedom to work without
making the effort of trying to integrate.
Since I moved back to Cologne and now to
Bonn, a lot of things around me, things that were vital to my Kölsch identity,
have changed. People moving away and on. It took me some time to deal with
these changes, I realised I am used to being the one whose life moves, often fast
and wild. It’s a different challenge to be the one that stays, to be nearly "stagnant" while others’ lives change. And its even more difficult maintaining
that new-found equilibrium when the waves of their life changes wash over you. (I told one of these friends recently that I need time to get used to his new suburban dad life - I was only half-joking.) It
harder yet to not cling on to the past. It requires patience, something I don’t
have in abundance. It requires faith that these new things too, will be good if
only they are given time to take root and grow. When I called a friend in panic
over this, she wisely told me to “just be where you want to be, Pri”. She was really only talking about where I should celebrate Karneval, but I took this gloriously out of context because it fits the larger picture perfectly. So that’s where
I am right now, exactly where I want to be – holding on to a fragile stability and my jigsaw puzzle
identity while building the foundations of the future I hope to have.
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