Behind the internship scenes

You know how every parent goes like, “Why are you wasting your time doing nothing?”.To avoid that confrontation mainly I decided to do a one-month internship in the long span of my three-and-a-half months of holidays. I mean sure, I had other reasons to back me up like academics or something like getting exposure or building a CV. But seriously who am I kidding? My parents and I would have gotten so bored with each other in like a week, and I had to prevent that from happening. 

Very enthusiastically, my dad put me in the IIT Delhi hostel and I agreed to share the same enthusiasm. Well, that was before I knew what I was up against. As much as I was aware that it is called a summer internship for a reason, I underestimated how excruciating the temperatures would actually be. For a person who has been spoilt by the luxuries of being in an air-conditioner even in her own hostel, living in IIT felt like living like a cavewoman. The rooms had fans but did not even have a provision for some type of coolers. The typical North Indian loo winds were, quite ironically, the “icing” on my metaphorical cake. It was not just the heat that was bothering me, though.

No offence to all sorts of engineers out there but people please work on your communication skills. Please. I shared my room with two other girls, both engineers. The maximum amount of communication that I ever had was them was our eye contact in the morning and in the evening. It was not just them. I know way too many people of the same species who seem to go through the same ordeal. But despite these vivid descriptions, I did not stay in IIT for more than 5 nights out of which I slept 3.5 nights wondering where is sleep when you need it because as it turns out it is indeed an embarrassing moment when your boss catches you red-handed while you are dozing away.

I decided that I won’t be sleeping in IIT as far as I can help it. I decided to hunt down for houses I can possibly stay for short periods of time. I found 11 loving families who were ready to adopt me for a few set of days. With every different house, every different family, I got to observe how different families function. As much as we like to draw generalizations about our society, every single house is so different in their own unique ways, both good and bad. No two families are ever the same. They might be surely similar but they are never same. Despite this statement, I found a striking resemblance in a few aspects. 

Firstly, people love over feeding other people, especially children. More like filling up the air in a balloon till it bursts with that scary popping noise. Secondly, every time I asked someone to make a tiffin for me, it would invariably be paranthas. So once in a while when I was blessed to have puris, it was a treat to the eyes, tongue and obviously, my tummy. Thirdly, discrimination and class distinctions are very much present just about everywhere, even if it is subtle. So, to all the feminists and human rights activists out there, stop congratulating yourself. The third situation is similar to when your mom asks you to clean your bed and instead of folding clothes and keeping them in the cupboard they go to the chair. The bed looks cleaner but the mess is still there while we go on congratulating ourselves on showing our moms what they wanted to see. Fourthly, according to people, history as an undergraduate subject choice leaves me with career options that include being a part of the civil services or being a school level teacher. As much as civil services is a very lucrative offer, I am just not interested in it as of now. Thanks but no thanks. 

Let me start with my third point there. One may ask what kind of injustices I was witness to? Where do I even begin? From the negative differential treatment metted out towards our house help to how getting a degree in history is still not constituted as a real career option to how you should be home by a certain time because it’s ‘Delhi’. Maybe I’ll talk about it all at once but these observations are not in chronological order. 

We still have a long way to go when it comes to treating our house help with the respect and dignity they deserve. My observations lead me to believe that even though we are moving forward, certain social stigmas keep pulling us backwards. Our house help continously has to deal with the insensitive bickering and lashing, for something they are not at fault for. This problem is presented to us in a bigger spectrum when it is combined with issues of child labour which is still prevalent in metropolitan cities of India. This came as somewhat as a shock because, in my college, we mingle with our housekeeping staff so often that we often forget that the real world exists beyond our bubble with its injustices and unfair treatments. 

I came to Delhi three years ago because I was in a city that absolutely detested the fact that people with decent marks should do anything but science. But meeting so many people made me realize, Delhi is slightly better because it is very much ready to accept that I or anyone for that matter wants to take up history. But what after that? The most common question I was asked was “Do you wish to join the civil services?”. When I said no I was told history has no career otherwise. You should have followed your father's footsteps that would have earned you both money and wealth. I had some absurd discussions on “history” as well. It included stuff like talking about past life and how it is very much a part of real history because it has the word ‘past’ in it. Or how your family history is the only history you should be aware of if you need to be successful. It hurt the most when your own people discouraged you. I once happened to be part of a small family gathering and as soon as I told them that its history what I am doing, they all burst out laughing and screaming “unlike you, we won’t even bother to familiarize ourselves with the subject”. The same gathering suddenly went from laughing to serious when they got to know that my brother is in 10th is doing so well in Programming already and how he will be successful and famous etc. Another question that was asked of me was “How much percentage of history have you managed to cover?”. Thinking back, would my brother have gone through the same trials and tribulations had he been in my place?

But all was not bad. I actually had fun. I caught up with friends. I got down to explore Delhi and practically spent most of the time in the metro hopping from one place to another. I went to new cafes and restaurants and even had Japanese food,  which by the way I happen to be a fan of thereafter. My Taiji and a friend of my mom took me out for 2 movies namely Pokharan and Veere di Wedding. I bonded with a lot of people and made new relationships. Four houses were such that they had dogs and out of them three dogs made friends. (Buddy, why you don’t want to be my buddy? You were so adorable!). In any case, I was extremely exhausted by the tenure of my month-long internship, from having no stability and hopping from one house to another. But I would like to say, thank you to all those people who took me in. Thank you for bearing with me for all the days I stayed with you and probably caused trouble too. I learnt a lot from each one of you.