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Going Native

Home away from home

No more a foreign turf Thenny has learnt to look at the other way in India

American Thenny Mejia has been living in India for the past eight years and loved every bit of it. India is home and she feels “settled” here. “All my friends are here. My son grew up here. His friends, which is his real family, are here. He now plans to marry his Indian girlfriend. Though my parents keep asking me to come back but that would mean starting everything all over again which would be tough,” says Thenny, country head, Healthcare division of Davidoff group.

Had she got a direct flight to the US from Chennai in 1999, Thenny wouldn’t have been in India today. But as planned by destiny, Thenny had to come to Delhi to catch her flight back home and fell in love with the country. “I had one whole day to spend here which I spent sightseeing and I clicked with India at that moment,” recalls Thenny who first visited India in 1998 when she came to set up a BPO in Bangalore. “I wasn’t exactly living here then. I would come, train people and go back. Bangalore wasn’t a happening place. We were one of the first BPOs to set up shop there and my office was in some remote corner. I told my CEO that I am not going back to Bangalore and that’s how I relocated to Delhi. In Delhi, people were warmer than Bangalore and I wasn’t made to feel like a foreigner,” says the former Senior Vice-President operations at Globerian.

Moving back to US within a short span of time again didn’t make sense primarily because of her son’s education and thus she decided to stay put. “I was sick and tired of living in hotels so I found myself a loving nice family in Jangpura and stayed with them initially. They treated me like a daughter,” says Thenny.

Soon she was on her own. Finding an apartment for a single mother, that too a foreigner, was difficult. “But I had come here with no expectations. Also, I realised that in India you have to learn to look the other way,” says Thenny. Like many foreigners, she also came with set notions of poverty, over-population but nevertheless fascinated. Over these eight years, the fondness for the country has only grown. “I am now determined to learn Hindi. My son’s ex-Hindi teacher at the British school will come over to my house to teach. I want to go to Janpath and Sarojini Nagar and be able to bargain without the help of an assistant.” Amen

Shailaja Tripathi

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