Gurgaon Totally Sucks

I can't stand Gurgaon. It's such a wannabe Western city without any infrastructure. The only way to get a cab is to call on the phone and reserve one. There is no information on any possible public transportation, the roads all look alike and have no signage, and there are these hideous malls everywhere. I can't figure out the buses, and I'm not sure how to catch an autorickshaw. None of them speak English so I can't ask them if I can hire them to take me from point A to point B like they do in Mumbai, or if they have specific routes like they do in Kolkata. It's just not a friendly place. Even the beggars here are nasty. They'll bang on your windows and spit at you if you don't give them money. Very aggressive. And I thought the beggars in Kolkata were bad... The ones here are like gangbangers on crack compared to Kolkata.

There's a ton of construction going on, a metro being built, and the roads are in terrible condition. The frameworks of buildings under construction are on every street, the access roads torn up for new drainage pipes. I have no idea where a post office is. No idea where to buy packing materials to send out a package. Everything has to be done with a local accompanying you - you'll never find the place even if you have the address.

Whenever I want to spend time with friends we end up in South Delhi or somewhere around CP. There's nothing to do out here except shop or go to the movies, and there's no green spaces to let the dog run.

I've lived here since June and I STILL don't have proper cooking gas installed in my home. My electricity goes out at least ten times a day, even with a backup generator. The building complex where I live is poorly built and barely maintained. My landlord and his local representative are completely unresponsive. My apartment has two bathrooms and both of them are never working at the same time.

The servants hired by the company I work for haven't lasted more than a month at a time. One of them was responsible for letting a large piece of wallboard fall out of his window and it crashed through the back window of a car fourteen floors below. It could have killed someone. The owner of the car wanted 20,000 rupess to pay for the window. My go-to guy at the office came over and negotiated it down to 4,500. He kept saying that I was an American and I could certainly afford to pay. I think this same servant is responsible for the death of my cat as well. He kept leaving the door to the flat open, and my cat got loose and was killed by stray dogs that roam outside the building. The servant that I found through another expat was hired at an exhorbitant price. (Rs. 18,000/mo - more than twice the amount I pay in salary for link builders in my office.) She just gave her notice today because she wanted another 2,000 rupees for conveyance - that was on top of her uniform fees, holidays, two weeks paid vacation, and medical bills.

We get complaints from our neighbors all the time. They claim we throw our garbage out the windows, we make a lot of noise, that our dog causes a lot damage, they're always gossiping about us. I told someone that I lived at Princeton Estates and he said, doesn't that place remind you of the movie "The Grudge"? Yeah, it does. There's a weird vibe to the place. Another expat said he doesn't like coming to visit me because Gurgaon feels like it "isn't supposed to be there... looks out of place". Even the security guards are nasty.

My son says "Gurgaon is a city in denial about itself". My parents thought it was awful too, when they came to visit. They never even bothered to leave the house because there was nothing of interest to them here. Though many residents think it's paradise but I'm still searching for an oasis in this desert.