It is 2006, Madras is hitting the IT boom, and it is evolving into Chennai. The streets look like Swiss cheese, full of holes. Deep cavernous pits being filled with concrete dot the fabric of the city. Buildings are mushrooming in a forest of scaffolding. Despite this, I cannot find a house to live in!

The ruthless sun beats down and in the glaring light of midday I sit in traffic jams feverishly searching for a house. Hot and frustrated, I look at newly built apartments where the cement is still wet. They are dreary dark spaces filled with acres of marble flooring, and views of building sites.

In desperation I settle on a house in the leafy Boat Club area. When I see in the contract that the landlord plans to live with us, his wife to be our cook, I change my mind. We all need some privacy in this overpopulated city.

Time is running out, but time, I soon learn, means nothing to an Indian. There is a word for it, “kal”. It means today, tomorrow, yesterday and the day after tomorrow. To a Westerner it means learning the art of patience.

We can only stay at The Madras Club for three weeks, so this temporary haven with its rolling lawns, and the thwack of tennis balls breaking the silence, is coming to an end. My “Sir” is busy setting up his new office in Nungambakam so I have to keep searching alone.

But in India the unexpected often happens. I make a friend, she knows of a house in Kotturpuram.

This is a lush, green area just over the bridge that spans the River Adyar. Forty years ago it was the countryside, an unfashionable agricultural area, but Mr. Raja, predicting the expansion of the city, built a home here in the 1960s. Today mansions have sprung up along the streets and sports cars, parked behind high security gates, have taken the place of bullock carts. A few streets away children run barefoot among the increasing building sites, and an elderly woman sifts through the piles of rubbish on the street corner.

Mr. Raja is planning to house all his close relatives in a purpose-built block of flats, and rent out the old family home. These strong family values are a completely alien concept to us Westerners as we try to distance ourselves from our siblings as soon as they come of age! We are invited to meet the Raja clan and see if they like us and our credentials!

This is the 21st Century and in a country that is booming in the world economy. But to our amazement we have to conduct the interview at an auspicious time on an auspicious day. In India, the supernatural and natural forces are intertwined, it seems the supernatural is contained in everyone and everything. This differs from our Western Judeo-Christian religion, which divides the natural and supernatural into separate categories. It seems that even to the well-educated, the evil eye exists and our fate is in the hands of the Gods. What’s more, there are religious specialists who ensure that all is correct with the lunar cycle. Politicians in every party take astrology seriously and stay in line with the celestial positions of the planets, believing that this affects the rise and fall of their personal fortunes. Faith is a large part of the Indian psyche and propitiating the Gods, it appears, is a must do!

In the coming years this will cause me untold frustration as I am told not to have my hair cut on a certain day, not to pluck flowers at night, to wear red underwear for good luck (this might be sensible in the very likely event of a car crash) and even one time having a bucket of water thrown over me by my cook who presumed I had touched a dead body at a funeral!

Auspiciousness and inauspiciousness adhere in reference to certain events, births, weddings, and obviously doing a property deal! Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays are auspicious. Saturdays are very bad and you should never start a trip on a Tuesday! The following Sunday, at four ’o clock, we are seated in a formal sitting room being scrutinised by all the members of the Raja clan. It seems that the Gods have smiled upon us as a week later we move into our handsome new home.

Seetama (named after Mr. Raja’s daughter) is a large white villa with a beautiful garden. It had ten airconditioning units, miles of polished marble and not a stick of furniture.

Nowadays there are many stores selling furniture but in 2006 I struggled to find anything that I needed. I did not know where to start looking. For two weeks I looked for a bed, with no success. This, it transpired, was confusion over terminology, as I should have been looking for a “cot”.

Visits to “Lifestyle” became a daily fixture as I made the tedious acquisition of cups, plates and cutlery that took twice as long to wrap and “bill” as they did to choose. This was an unfamiliar and exasperating world.

One full week we waited on for the delivery of a sofa. Night after night we refused invitations in case we missed the delivery.

“Madam, this sofa is very definitely going to be with you tomorrow and if not possible today then the next day for sure it will be there.”

India is a good place to learn patience. A week later we were sitting on the floor eating a cold supper and drinking miniature bottles of wine from an airline that our smuggler was dealing with, when the doorbell rang. Our eyes lit up at the sight of two men delivering our sofa.

The enormous sofa and two chairs finally emerged from a sea of bubble wrap and were set upright. We watched in amazement as slowly but surely every leg of the sofa fell off and it lurched drunkenly to one side before collapsing completely.

“No problem Sir, madam, no problem, only needing some glue,” said the sweating delivery boys who had already received their tip and had no intention of taking the beast back.

My “Sir” who was by now desperate to sit on anything except a cold marble floor said, “As long as we don’t move it, it should be alright.” “Take them back, I want my money back,” I screamed.

Along with superstition I learned another side of India that week. No Indian likes to be the bearer of bad news. A problem is not a problem. If conflict can be avoided, somehow everything will sort itself out – and, strangely, it does!

I lost that battle. The sofa is still with us today, ten years later, with the legs glued on. Another lesson I have learned is that in India much more can be achieved with a smile than with a rant.

How can a Westerner learn to curb his or her natural impatience? For me it is only with time and constant exposure to the placid nature of the Tamil people. Perhaps the key to the gentle temperament of the Tamils lies in the Hindu religion and acceptance of what the Gods have apportioned to them?

I don’t know, but over the last ten years I have noticed that this is beginning to change. Perhaps it is the silicon surge and subsequent sudden wealth that has produced a new level of discontent? The disadvantaged certainly seem to have more sense of entitlement; understandably they do want a bite of the cherry. Even the Madras Club, with its legacy of British bureaucracy, has moved from interminable “chits” to a card payment system. I am all for progress, but my impression is that it is often accompanied by impatience; certainly this is true in the West.

More than half of India’s current population is younger than twenty-five which makes me wonder how shopping for furniture will be done in the future. I suspect it will be online and delivered the next day. There will be much less personal interaction. Of course, there is still every possibility that the sofa legs will fall off, there just may not be anyone to scream at, they will have left it on the doorstep and rushed impatiently to the next job.