Single White Female

It's Friday night. She gets out of the office, jumps into an autorickshaw, heads for the flat she shares with two other people in Delhi's upper middle-class Greater Kailash. She changes into a Manish Arora skirt and her favourite bargain top from Sarojini Nagar market and is ready to conquer the world. Or at least, Elevate, the Noida nightclub where she and her Punjabi boyfriend like to hang out with friends, drinking vodka and listening to techno music.

She could be any South Delhi girl who earns good money and likes to party. Except that Christine Gow isn't what Delhi would call a Delhi girl. This 25-year-old Canadian came to India over two years ago with a degree in fashion from London's highly-rated Central St Martin's College of Art and Design. After knocking about a bit, Christine got the job she wanted, with Elite Model Management, heading its wardrobe and styling programme and being marketed as a stylist by the company. How long does she plan to be here? "Indefinitely." She counts the advantages matter-of-factly: "I get to make as much as my friends in fashion abroad, after they've paid tax, and they pay four times the rent I pay. It's a new industry here, it would have taken 10 years to get this far in London."

Christine represents a new kind of single western woman showing up in India. They're not memsahibs, not hippies, not diplomats and not professional do-gooders. They're drawn here not by Kathak or karma but by the international buzz around an economy growing at 8 per cent a year. Tough, without domestic baggage and eager for new experiences, they're marketing their skills in a changing India. An India where small-town girls want to walk the ramp and middle-class women want chic haircuts and drinkable wine. Where the BPO industry has grown by over 50 per cent in the last five years and Bollywood's experimenting with new skin colours. Where 'destination spas' are opening up by the dozen and new luxury resorts are wooing jaded international travellers who've had it with Balinese rice terraces.

In the top league are seasoned professionals flying into India on international salaries, with extra bucks thrown in for hardship. Like 49-year-old German hotelier Sue Reitz, general manager of the Oberoi group's pricey Raj Vilas in Jaipur, who manages a staff of 300. Or Sally Baughen, a 41-year-old New Zealander who runs the Aman group's new boutique hotel near Alwar, which promises a finely distilled experience of rural India for $550-900 a night. Says Sally, who does not underestimate the challenge of offering soft-footed hospitality in the Aravalli hills, "I knew the job would stretch me, and it does. It's maddening and exhilarating at the same time."

THENNY MEJIA, 37 American, BPO Head, Delhi Manages a staff of 400, here for life if business stays as good. "Two weeks away, and I’m homesick for Delhi. I’ll never be able to adjust back."

Former New Yorker Thenny Mejia would probably say the same. In 1998, when BPOs were taking off, an NRI entrepreneur offered Thenny, who had worked for over a decade in the US healthcare industry, the chance to run an Indian operation handling medical billing for US doctors. At first, she went back and forth, but in 2000, this single mother thought the unthinkable, and moved to Delhi with a reluctant 12-year-old, promising to keep him in pretzels and parmesan cheese. The operation began work with 10 people, now has a staff of 400 and needs to hire 200 more within a month or two. "I moved because I saw the potential to grow in the business. People say the US is the land of opportunity, but really, it's India," says an exuberant Thenny, who works crazy hours but also lives the well-staffed life of an affluent Indian.

For every Mejia who's made it, there are several hopeful women in their 20s and early 30s looking for breaks: fresh graduates hunting for resume fodder, new entrepreneurs trying to cash in on growing western interest in India, young professionals looking for assignments hard to come by in competitive western markets—and for the chance to live intensely in another culture.

Coming to Bangalore to work for Metro Cash and Carry, a multinational wholesale store, helped Brigitte Casander from the Netherlands make the jump from floor manager in a department store to the more demanding job that she really wanted—that of a buyer. "My vision of the world has changed after working here, I see more opportunities, I know my own weaknesses and strengths better," says Brigitte.

Says Delhi-based entrepreneur Evie Gurney, 27, who sources embroidery and jewellery on commission for UK fashion outlets: "This place needs people who can make connections with UK businesses. I don't have to keep looking over my shoulder and worrying constantly: is someone going to steal my business?"

TANYA ZAETTA, 31 Australian, Bollywood Actress: Hates the cappuccino here but loves the never-ending work. "In one year of living here, I’ve learnt more about life and the world."

And then, there's Australian actress Tanya Zaetta, who says, "You don't choose India. India chooses you." Brought here to promote her TV show, Who Dares Wins, she was thrilled to find herself popular with audiences, and caught herself thinking about moving here. After roles in Bunty Aur Babli and Salaam Namaste, she's shown there's space for foreign talent in Bollywood. "I'm the first foreigner to have three back-to-back films here, and not item numbers, all acting, with no Indian connections. I've proved that it can be done," says 31-year-old Tanya exultantly. She's given up beach and harbour views in Sydney for a regulation pad in Bandra. But with films, endorsements and ad campaigns lined up till the end of next year, she won't have much time to look out of the window.

This is not just a big metro story. There are also young foreign women living and working in tiger country, in vineyards in Nasik and in spas everywhere. Agronomist Marion Stannard, 29, went back to France last week after a two-year NGO assignment in Dehradun helping farmers grow citronella, lemon grass and basil for an expanding Indian market in perfumes, cosmetics and soaps. "I lived only among Indians, made Indian friends," she said. Gemma Hyde, who managed a camp in the Kanha Tiger Reserve for two years, has stayed on in India to sell "luxury Himalayan products" to upmarket western travellers.

Rajiv Samant, managing director of Sula vineyards, which attracts a stream of women wine-makers, explains the tradeoff. "Europe is experiencing a slowdown, there is a shortage of jobs for new graduates. The industry here is growing but lacks a lot of the skills available abroad. These graduates—and for some reason, it's mainly women who want to come here—bring us specialised skills. They go back to better jobs back home, after they've gained experience here." On the spa circuit—where you find not just western women, but expert masseurs from Indonesia and Thailand—foreign therapists trade their skills for ayurveda knowledge that's eminently saleable abroad.

Apart from the high-flyers and the young hopefuls, there are other kinds of single women floating around, women with marriages and relationships and offices behind them, looking for a more flexible lifestyle but not an opt-out. Amazingly, they're finding work, too. Belgian Isla Maria ("Lulu") Van Damme, 55, moved to Goa to build a dream house and maybe retire. The dream house now doubles as a guest house while Lulu works with builders to help other Goa settlers create theirs. On the side, she sources flats for English investors.

Sara Carson-Smith, 38, from Belfast in Northern Ireland, lives and works with a manpower training company in the Delhi suburb of Noida, helping trainers associated with BPOs and airlines to master a British accent. In her spare time, she hobnobs with writers and chants with urban middle-class women in a Buddhist group.

BRIGITTE CASANDER, 20, Dutch, Buyer for a wholesale store, Bangalore: "I love the culture, food, music—and mess. Mixing with Indian colleagues has made me open-minded."

That's true for most of the others as well. Not Buddhist chanting, but socialising mainly with Indians, many met in workplaces. Unlike in Hong Kong and Singapore, where expat professionals seem to spend many happy hours trashing the "locals". Thenny, for instance, doesn't know any foreign women living in India. She attended one gathering of expat women in her early days here, and fled from housewives and recipes to the crowd of Indian movers and shakers who remain her best friends. But while she parties with the Page 3 set on weekends, during the week Thenny negotiates a different sort of Indian reality, persuading mothers and mothers-in-laws to let her women employees work overtime.

So what's the downside? Across nationalities and age groups, it seems to be one three-letter word: men. Pollution, traffic, power cuts, corruption and bureaucracy are irritants, but they seem to pale in comparison to the men who grope in bazaars or park their cars on the side of the road in mid-afternoon, hoping to hook a passing blonde. Or the men they meet professionally who "don't respect" single working women and mistake all white women for East European prostitutes (that other kind of import hitting Indian shores).

Or the severe shortage of dateable men in a country of one billion plus.

Women like Christine, who shares a flat with two male models and dates a third, are the exception. Others would agree with Tanya, who never expected to find a 'dating dilemma' in India, but ran slap into one.

Says the actress: "I thought, there are 1.1 billion people in the country, half of them will be men, I'm going to have no problem playing the dating game here. But Indian men are not able to play the game properly. They don't know how to take a girl out, how to return calls, how to follow up. I thought Indian men would be in touch with their spiritual side, be passionate, tender. I think I was reading all the wrong books."
 

By Anjali Puri with Payal Kapadia in Mumbai and Sugata Srinivasaraju in Bangalore