Rising to a challenge

Evelyne and Baljit Singh Toor do not intend to go back to Germany. Life in India is not easy, but here they feel free to organise their time, although they are still hard working. On week days, when her husband has gone to Una, Evelyne cooks German food, says Anja Ludwig

KUMAD (Kim) and Marga Singh got to know each other while studying in the USA, and since that time they have been partners not only in life, but, starting recently, also in their Indian venture. Marga Buhrmann Singh is a German, English and history teacher. Her husband, a strategic management consultant and specialist in insurance and reinsurance sectors, grew up in Punjab and studied geology at Panjab University before he graduated from an American university with an MBA degree. Mrs Singh’s roots can be traced back to the city of Kaiserslautern in Germany, and it was in Germany that the couple began their "world tour" that has taken them to a number of exciting cities and countries. For three years, Marga, under guidance of Kim, had run a company in Cologne, Germany, trying to bring together medium-sized German and Indian entrepreneurs for business cooperation.

The impulse for this initiative had come from the Indian side, since Indians had frequently asked Mrs and Mr Singh for such type of support. With the Singh family moving to Switzerland, this business had to be dropped. Besides, success had eluded them. Mr Singh explains that lack of commitment on the Indian side had been responsible for this failure. The Indians involved had shown great enthusiasm in the beginning, in the course of the different projects, though they had no staying power. Mr Singh sees the main reason for the lack of real commitment in the fact that in India small and medium-sized companies find the Indian market big enough to sell their products. Thus export, of major importance for the development of a national economy, is of no interest to them.

In Switzerland, where Kim Singh occupied the position of a senior vice president of a major German insurance company, his wife took up her profession as a teacher again. She also worked with kids aged three to 10 in order to teach them a foreign language, in this case English, the playful way. According to her experience, a child cannot be too young to be confronted with a foreign language. Mrs and Mr Singh’s own two sons today not only speak German and English, but also languages like French, Thai, Japanese or Spanish. Aged 24 and 21, they study in Switzerland.

After their stay in Switzerland, the Singh family moved on to Hong-Kong, and after two years there, they took the chance to be free to choose their next place of residence and settled in India. Kim Singh’s native country had always been a part of their life, but had never really stood in the foreground, although he and his wife had always intended to work in and for India one day. Now they wanted to put some of their ideas into action. Marga Singh points out that anyone coming to India with his eyes open and possessing a realistic outlook on life, will be able to develop quite a number of reasonable projects for this country. The essential thing is that though one has to work on the spot, it is no use delegating the work from outside. Mrs and Mr Singh’s intention is to develop a product for India which will later on become an Indian export product. The name of the company they have founded is "Creative Learning".

Since May, 1998, their activities within this broad spectrum concentrate on "Marga’s Global Kids Clubs", where Indian children aged five to 12 are trained to discover and actually integrate their own creativity into their lives. Here in India, Mrs Singh’s work does not focus on foreign language teaching any longer. Instead, the encouragement of children’s creativity is now her main objective. One reason for this change is that most of the Indian children are already brought up with English as a second language. But the decisive factor is that the Indian school system very much concentrates on book-knowledge and the learning of facts by heart. Children’s creativity gets lost on the way. Even educated Indian parents lack the awareness that children learn through play, that playing does not mean to waste time. This idea is unknown in the whole Asian world.

In "Marga’s Global Kids Clubs" the children get together with a so-called animator one hour per week. Each week, they deal with a certain subject, e.g. "nature", and discover its different meanings and aspects by means of playful activity. There are already 14 of these clubs in Chandigarh and their number will surely increase in the future since kids love it. Only more parents need to be convinced.

After Mrs and Mr Singh had decided on settling in India, they first intended to live in Delhi. But soon they realised that they did not feel comfortable there. Thus, they came to Chandigarh, where Kim Singh had lived as a student. "Here you still have air you can breathe. The city is clear and well organised", they say. On the whole, the quality of life in Chandigarh is better than in Delhi. In a few years, they would like to spend half the year in India and the other half in Europe. I ask them if they really feel at home in Chandigarh. "Not quite", replies Mrs Singh. She misses the organised European environment and good friends. So far she has not been able to make real friends with Indians because she finds it hard to understand them. Indians talk a lot, but in most cases they do not mean what they are saying. Marga and Kim Singh call this kind of behaviour "superficial" and "non-committal". Furthermore, they are astounded by the curiosity of some Indians, who sometimes ask very intrusive questions. Mr Singh explains that, for example, in Switzerland, people always keep a healthy distance between them and others. Indians, on the contrary, do not regard this "natural" borderline. This is what hinders friendships from growing since they are not given a chance to develop slowly as time passes. Also, they still have to get used to the Indian way of socialising. Mr Singh and his wife prefer to plan and to fix a date and a time for a meeting. They do not appreciate visitors who "only wanted to say hello".

Still, the couple is ready to face the challenges India holds for them. Acceptance is essential, but full adjustment is not always practicable or desired, finds Kim Singh, who, after 29 years, has returned to his native country as a German national.

"If you are married to a foreigner, you must be prepared that someday he wants to return to his native country", smiles Mrs Evelyne Singh Toor. She was prepared and after 15 years she and her husband Baljit had spent together in Germany, they left this country for good in July, 1995, and settled in Mohali, together with their son Daniel and a huge German dog. Baljit had come to Germany in 1978 and met Evelyne two years later, when working at the same company. Later, they had been working for the central vegetable market and had run their own pizza-service near Stuttgart. On the whole, life in Germany was quite stressful and they longed for a more pleasant life, which they hoped to find in India.

The plan to go to India had long been on their minds. Although they had already bought a plot in India back in 1991, it was deferred almost every year until they said "now or never". When they finally got their suitcases packed, they did not return to Baljit’s birth place Haryana, but came to the Chandigarh area, where one of his brothers lives. Moving to India, Baljit and his family burnt all their bridges in Germany, they even sold their furniture or gave it to friends. The only point of contact they got there now is their daughter, who works in a kindergarten in Germany. When Evelyne and Baljit, who has in the meantime become a German national, tell Indians about how stressful everyday life in Germany had been for them, most people here do not believe it.

They think that if one can afford a range of electrical appliances, life must be just fine. It is difficult to explain to them that even in Germany, in order to maintain a certain standard of living, one has to work quite hard.

Today, Evelyne and Baljit run their own fish farm in Una, breeding grasscarp, catfish, rahu and kattla. Approximately 200,000 fish are swimming in their tanks. During the week, Baljit lives in Una, while Evelyne stays at their house in Mohali together with their son. It was for the sake of the 16-year-old that the family did not move to Una since there are hardly any good schools around. Besides, the family finds Chandigarh and its surroundings to be very clean in comparison with other Indian cities.

Though Mrs and Mr Toor got friendly neighbours, they say that they do not get any support when it comes to more important matters. They had a hard time finding a school that would admit their son, who speaks neither Hindi nor Punjabi. Once Daniel started going to school in India, he soon realised that his classmates do hardly have any spare time. He enjoys playing basketball, but the nearest place to exercise is still far. On the whole, the area does not offer sufficient facilities for the youth.

Evelyne and Baljit spent a number of holidays in India, but now that they made their home in this country, many things turn out to be different from what they had expected. For example, when Mrs Toor goes to the market, some vendors charge her higher prices than normal. Also, in many cases, work in India is carried out slowly and thus the family had to wait for nine months until their phone got connected. "Indian bureaucracy really demands a lot of patience from you. When you plan to get two things done in one day and one of them is finished by the evening, you are lucky", Mr Singh Toor says. Instead of helping them to feel at ease in India, many Indians tell Baljit to go back to Germany.

Still, Evelyne and Baljit Singh Toor do not intend to go back to Germany. Life in India is not easy, but here they feel free to organise their time, although they are still hard working. On week days, when her husband has gone to Una, Evelyne cooks German food. And every fortnight, she gets together with other foreign women living in India. Together, they enjoy their "coffee morning" and exchange their experiences.

Mrs and Mr Singh Toor are optimistic and convinced that their decision to leave Germany was right. Still, sometimes they cannot help measuring India against Germany, although they know that both are countries in their own right and cannot be compared. But is it not a natural thing that people who are strangers to a country or those who return after they stayed abroad for a long time, will face certain problems that natives do not even recognise? Talking about these issues keeps the fruitful process of learning from each other alive. The choice to remain silent is an easy one and does not contribute to mutual understanding at all.