Chapter 3 – Where are you coming from?

“Hope is all I have, believing in something that can’t be proven, but you are willing to trust, that it is there.”

Every Monday morning at 7:15am my cell phone beeps, reminding me to join a conference call with China. Immediately, I finish my breakfast, wear my shoes, pack my office bag and rush out of the house. I have been following this mundane routine since my returned from Bombay. I dial into the conference call at 7:30 am with China, while driving to work. The 7:30am conference calls are weekly meeting with my entire team who call in from various locations of ABC Industries in US and Shanghai. As I reach the intersection of I-81N and Brighton Ave, I hear Tony saying “Good Morning Saabir” in his thick Chinese accent. I reply to his good morning by saying “Good Evening, how are you doing.”
'Tony' is his American name and that is how we address him. He works in our Shanghai office as a Sourcing Engineer. On numerous occasions I have asked him to spell out his Chinese name, but me and my American counterparts have always failed to pronounce his name right. This has made be to believe Mandarin is one of the most difficult language in this world, to learn and to speak! I find myself pondering on how funny I would sound if I speak in Mandarin.

After the initial formal gestures and banal questions on weather, life, kids, spouse issues, the meeting progresses with Tony giving his updates, reporting on the progress made on various projects. Due to his thick accent and limited communication skills in English, he has to repeat himself many times before my entire US teams understands. At times, I have to jump in and explain to my US team with "what Tony meant....", assuming that I completely understood him. To some extent, I know I understand Tony better then anybody else on that call and the only logical justification to this strange synergy is - I know 'where he is coming from'. English is Tony’s second or third language, and although he has been a Sourcing Engineer with ABC Asia for last 5 years, sometimes it is difficult for him to express himself clearly and to the point in English. After my explanation to my US team, Tony will attest by saying “yes... yes... good job, Saabir. That is what I mean.”

As a Sourcing Project Manager, part of my job profile is to deliver on off-shoring projects in China, Mexico, India and Eastern Europe. I constantly communicate with my team, across these countries, round the clock, either via phone calls or emails. My entire day is spend replying to emails, to my off-shore team, who are on a constant lookout for suppliers, who supplies parts, half way around the globe at a cheaper competitive price. Many a times, I ask myself ‘How this type of job profile is going to help me in such an early age of my professional career?’ As from a tactical point of view it is just emailing and talking on the phone. I guess somewhere I am honing my people skills by understanding cultures, and business practices better. At times, issues are created and resolve by questioning or answering “where are you coming from?”

The following is an example - This is an email I mailed out to my team while working on an offshore design project, involving China, Mexico and US team.

From:sabir.gham@abc-us.com

To: jim.luo@abc-asia.com; dominic.gomeze@abc-mexico.com

Cc:

Sub: Updating and approving - drawing 123

Sent: Tue 12/12/2006 7:30 am

Dear Jim,

As communicated during our Monday call, please update the drawing123 and upload to the drawing management database, using abc-drawing.net server. I would like you to complete these changes and updates by 12/14/06.

Note: I will be traveling for next couple of weeks, so please direct any questions to Dominic (Engineering Lead from ABC Mexico) he is the assigned engineer on this project.

Dominic,

Once you receive the notification from the drawing management database, please review the most current revision and approve or communicate any issues directly to Jim Luo (our China team leader). Jim's team will start the production only after you approve the drawings.

If you have any questions please feel free to call me.

Regards,

Sabir Gham

ABC Industries, Syracuse, NY, USA

Sourcing

PH:315-XXX-XX79

Fax:315-XXX-XX53

As instructed, Jim updated the drawings, but instead of uploading to the database, he emailed the drawings. Dominic who was a shared resource on this project, overlooked Jim’s email, and my email was clogged due to the large file size and I did not receive the Jim's email. Three days later during our weekly update call, I asked Jim- “Why I have not received the drawings.” He yelled and replied, “We updated the drawings the same day. I emailed you as a reply.” I replied after a brief pause, ‘Ok Thank you.’

Studying the scenario I realize I was to blame as I had not answered the simple question, “where is Jim coming from?” Jim, was a new hire to ABC’s Asia team, and had no knowledge or training on our intra-company database systems. So emailing the drawing was the most logical solution. Due to this ignorance on my part, the delay resulted in a domino effect causing the entire project to be delayed by 20 odd days, and hence directly affected my performance as a Project Manager.

We deal with such scenarios as part of our life, and hence 'practical experience' is considered more important than education in professional circuits, and day to day personal life. I was never taught in my Management class on Globalization, to ask the question “where are you coming from.” But I was surely taught how to think with a global perspective and hence take advantage of it!!

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It was Saturday, my 3^rd day in Bombay; my undergrad friends and I had planned a trip to Alibag, a small beach town 4 hours way from Bombay. We had planned this trip via constant email communications, just before I was leaving for Bombay. The entire itinerary was planned - the cottage near the beach was booked, the car was rented, lunch order were placed in Alibag and dinner reservations at the club for Saturday night were made without a single phone calls, just using Internet, by us - the “information savvy” generation.

As planned, Vishal, Anil, Rohan, Anurag, and Ashwin - my undergrad friends came to pick me up, along Ramesh, the driver at 6 am in the morning. Rested and recuperated from the jet lack, I was fresh, excited and ready for the 4 hours journey with my friends. It was a full size Toyota Prado, and was comfortable SUV for 7 passengers. I opted to take the font sit, as I wanted to enjoy the trip, and experience the changes. On our way to Alibag we had to pick Rajiv, from Vashi - a suburb of New Bombay. Rajiv was new member to the '512 Ocean View'[1] gang, I had never met him, hence had a remote sense of curiosity to see him. Because of construction at Vashi naka[2], we had to take a detour and take inner roads to pick up Rajiv.

'What the fuck, were you guys pushing the car? It took you 2 hours to reach Vashi from Dadar, on a weekend at 6 o’clock in the morning,’ yelled Rajiv seeing the car pulling into his apartment complex. After a good 10 minutes argument and exchange of swear words, I was finally introduced to Rajiv as an ABCD (American Born confused/conflicted Desi[3]) who completed his undergrad in Bombay and is a Maharashtrian. I could tell that he accepted the lie at the face value. After, formal introduction and brief exchange of gestures, I reverted to my friends and started filling them on my life in Syracuse, my job and answered similar questions. Being a part of the new generation ‘zippy[4]’ Indians, the topic of our conversation lasted not more then 2 to 5 minutes. It is my theory - Any banal conversation between two 'zippy' generation Indians last not more then 5 minutes, and the only anomaly to this claim is topics on technical subjects or religion. Since Rajiv was new, and did not graduate from the same undergraduate college, he was not able to relate to our conversation. Ones in a while he expressed his opinion, and spoke candidly.

I made a strange observation about Rajiv - he spoke with me in English with a thick American accent. Being in US for around five years, I accept that I have a faint American accent, which is highly despised by many of my friends, both in US and India. This fact, made me more aware about Rajiv’s strange communication style. Seldom, I communicated in English with my undergrad friends. We used English only to address formal issues, like making reservations on the phone, or responding to strangers while giving directions etc. Initially I thought Rajiv worked for a call center and hence has an American accent, but when I was told that he works for a German based manufacturing firm, I was a little perplexed. I did not allow this act bother me and replied him in Marathi or Hindi. Being multilingual, we can easily switch from Hindi to Marathi to English or any other regional Indian language in the same conversation and no one will questions the grammar or sentence formation. Since Rajiv was new to the group, he was picked and was object of our satire. I could see, he was getting annoyed and was a person who did not liked his buttons to be pushed, or take humor positively. Not to upset him, my friends, used caution and advised the same to me.

We reached Alibag as planned, and after finishing our lunch, we headed for the beach. The conversation continued at the beach, and Rajiv was left alone as he was helpless to relate to our undergraduate memories. I saw him wondering around the beach all alone while rest of the gang was enjoying the beer and talk. That night the beach cottage was decorated with bright Christmas lights and loud Indian pop music was playing. We started opening the beer cans and hard drinks, and started dancing in the ‘hysterical’ Indian way. I call it ‘hysterical’ way of dancing, as it was pointed out to me, by my American ex-girl friend, she said ‘Desi’s don’t know how to dance, all they do is swing their hand and legs, any a hysterical fashion, asynchronous to the music.’ We spotted a group of girls partying next to our cottage, but never gathered enough courage to talk to them. Somehow my friends tried to convince me to approach them and gave me tips on how to make a first impression with the American accent I had. But I denied. I was in no mood to put on a mask and fake my identity. Also being an Indian I know, it takes a lot to impress Indian girls. I knew, even if I was successful in breaking the ice, the newly developed acquaintance won’t go far, maybe would be just limited to a dance and exchange of some formal gestures like, you are wearing nice dress, you have a cute smile, your dance is synchronized and you should teach me someday. I was just not in a mood to take all that efforts, to fake an attitude.

After some drinks, and more talk on my life in Syracuse, and my white American girl friends, Rajiv was finally successful in getting our attention; as he started talking about his German firm and his encounter with a German colleague, Roger Muller-Baku, the new Managing Director, who had just moved to Bombay, and was going to manage the operations in India. After describing Roger’s assertive management style, Rajiv mentioned he was impressed by him, which motivated him to read “Mein Kampf.” He said ‘I loved the Hitler’s ideology.’ I got the shock of my life as he continued to say, he told to Roger ‘I loved Hitler and admired him, for what he did,’ during his two minutes of formal meeting with Roger. Rajiv kept talking and said that the Director never spoke to him since then, or acknowledged his presence at job floor. I said to myself ‘hmm… wonder why, you dumb ashole.’ I was still shocked, from his statement, the immediate thought came to my mind, how can anybody at this time and age, have such a prejudice perception. Somewhere I was shocked by his ignorance. I call myself a spiritual person, and believe in the Vedic philosophy of ‘Vasudeva Kutumbacam’ – One world family, hence somewhere Rajiv’s statement had hurt me, and was in no mood to talk to him, or argue with him. My mind was in complete denial to understand what experiences had made him to make such a sallow statement, or I had no interest in knowing ‘Where Rajiv was coming from?’

I decided to hit the sack, without any further comments. I told Rajiv to stop his non sense and baseless talk, but I was completely ignored. No one in the room, failed noticed the rage on my face, as they where more interested to know Rajiv’s narrow and sallow commentary on Hitler’s ideology of Aryan superiority and how Aryan race is loosely connected to old Indian civilization, also known as Indus valley civilization. That night I was the first guy to sleep early, by completely ignoring Ashwin's offer to take a walk on the beach. Angry, tired and now dehydrated due to wine, I went off to sleep as soon as I hit the bed.

…to be continued

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[1] 512 Ocean View gang, is the name of apartment I stayed during my undergraduate years. My college friends and I used this apartment, owned by my mother to study. Hence the name - 512 Ocean View gang.

[2] Vashi Naka – Naka is referred as intersection, or a main junction. ‘Vashi Naka’, is the main intersection in Vashi - a suburb in New Bombay.

[3] Desi –in Hindi, means 'country.' It is used to address people saying in South East Asia.

[4] Zippy – A jargon used by Thomas Friedman in ‘The World is Flat’ describing the middle class English educated IT generation Indians.