He looks Chinese, he speaks English, and his outlook on life is that of a westerner. He is actually from the Indian state of Assam… but he hates tea… He is Kalyan Gogoi, has been in Mauritius for two and a half years now and he knows the country better than most Mauritians!

This should be no surprise to anyone. Kalyan is the Thomas Cook area manager in Mauritius and he believes that, to help others in their travelling arrangements, he also has to travel a lot…(he laughs at this.) Every four months or so, Kalyan packs his bags. “You have to, you know. Mauritius has this tendency to close down on you if you’re not careful. I found that you get so engrossed in what you are doing, you forget about the rest of the world!”

And that would most certainly not do. You see, this gentleman believes in everything that is fast. He was living in Bombay before moving to Mauritius and has since been living life in the fast lane. One of the things he had to do when he first came to Mauritius, was to make a conscious effort to adapt to the laid-back trend of things here.

“I remember the first few days at work here. It was about 7 pm. I looked outside and Port Louis was dead. I went to see my staff and they were all sitting inside, bored as ever and looking so miserable. I did not get it at first. I later realised, of course, that here, people are balanced. Work is not all.”

This most precious lesson was one brought to him by Mauritius. “Being laid back - too much so, has its drawbacks but it sure puts things in perspective,” says the man. Kalyan loves it here and makes a most interesting comparison between Mauritius and India. It wasn’t so much the multicultural aspect of Mauritius that took him by surprise. It had more to do with the fact that “whereas India has evolved and moved on, Mauritians seem to have retained all the old traditions and aspects of what India used to be. The worst thing however, is the fact that, however different people might be in India, they are above all Indians. Over here, it almost feels that people are not proud to be Mauritians. They are everything else first.”

But, being the practical person he is, Kalyan decided to put all this aside and explore the country that was going to host him for some time; he loves it, loves the food, likes the people… and knows a lot about it too. If you need any advice on where to eat out, pay a visit to the Assam boy, he knows everything there is to know. For instance, he knows why the area he lives is called Sodnac. Do you? Kalyan reckons it’s Candos spelt backwards. That’s also how he remembers what local words like “taler” mean… swap the “t” for the “l” and you get… “later”! Is he having fun or is he having fun?