The entire education wing of our mother-company was implementing software to automate the publishing processes. Our Delhi office was abuzz with activity because our foreign colleagues were going to arrive at (Read: Take over) our office.
They say that the Gods must be crazy…yeah, looking at what I had to undergo in the initial session, I’m sure that that’s pretty much the same for the rest of us!
The schedule-overview session saw a remarkable happening – over 50 well dressed ladies and gentlemen getting stuffed (now don’t get the wrong idea!) into a 12 ft X 30 ft conference room. For the first time the poor room, once the pride of the office, looked like it had met its match. On top of that we had a (our own) high ranking official declare that it was the largest room we had (so not true) – Embarrassment 1 & 2 (the official was the first embarrassment!).
The next session brought out the humiliation factor. There I was sitting in a group of editorial and marketing ‘experts’ with an Aussie ‘sheila’ telling us how to use a mouse! My ‘geek’ pride got kicked in the you-know-where. I felt like I was being dragged through 3rd grade. The level of tutoring might have been painfully stupid but the product was, by all means, useful. It made our current system look like the caveman’s tally. Suddenly sheila’s laptop cable got disconnected and the room suddenly became a hive of activity with every single guy giving her a view on how to put the damn thing back together…truly amazing considering that these would be the last people to normally help you around the office. They were vying for the bonus of getting a front row view of what her skimpy top was trying (in vain) to hide. Aside: You should have just seen the faces of the other women go…this shiela literally pulled the ground from under them! Interestingly, the office boys had a competition about who would serve her the most cups of tea in a day.
Throughout these sessions, apart from getting an overview of the system, I also got a fairly good view of our attitude towards whites and also towards change. We are still shit-scared of both. With the whites the issue is more than skin-deep. I have often mentioned it in my discussions. With change, it’s the who-moved-my-cheese syndrome…if you can call it a syndrome. The whites are considerably staunch in their belief that we Indians are scared of them. We augment that by not speaking up when we are supposed to and also by speaking out when we should have held our peace. Discretion is the better part of valour. Indiscretion leads to disgrace. I was observing the look in the eyes of some of my colleagues. Man! There was a slinky desire to please…the only missing formality, as I see it was raising an arm, standing up, lowering the gaze, and addressing the dude as ‘Sir’. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating disrespect. I am the first to give respect…as long as drooling is not part of it.
The general sessions came and went…as and when the top officials felt like having an audience. Finally, lots of cancelled sessions and successful lunches later I was ‘invited’ for a ‘discussion’ with the ‘elite’ group. The group consisted of an expert from our Aussie office (not the showstopper please…although even this lady had her personal fan following), a programmer, my boss and several other people. They discussed, they decided and I clapped…case closed.
Okay jokes apart, the system turned out to be excellent for our work. It had several modules for the successful functioning of a publishing company. Everything was covered from the publishing process itself to finance and inventory. However, there were still modules that they had to activate without which the remaining modules only increased our workload. All in all, I was pretty happy with the implementation (as if anyone cared). My boss worked very hard for it (as the editorial expert) and she deserved kudos for it.
Such work on an international scale deserved dinner and dinner it was. It was probably the single-most boring dinner I had ever been to. It was a steamy evening made worse by itsy-bitsy showers. I was the only guy from the Indian editorial team. As if this were not enough, the Englishmen sat together, the Aussies sat together, the Chinese sat together while the Indians sat scattered. Among the Indians, the bigwigs sat together leaving us small fry to linger around like unwanted kids. Some of our senior and most respected officials were playing the role of the court jesters to entertain a group of foreign women. I was just wondering where all this would lead to. Anyway, I chose a hitherto unoccupied table and was immediately joined by another Indian colleague who was in the same predicament as I – To leave or not to leave.
Soon an Aussie, who was an exception to the rule of groupism, joined us. He did not mind having his dinner with a ‘brownie’. However, ‘elite’ company did not come cheap…I had to ‘actively’ listen to his graphic description of kangaroo meat processing in Sydney. By the time he got to saying, “On Delhi roads I would normally have to drive my car up another’s arse” I was at the end of my patience. I was just hoping that the dinner in itself would be sumptuous. I could not have been more off the mark though. The food was almost entirely made for the effeminate taste buds of the goras. The word ‘spice’ needed to be thoroughly redefined to the cook. I finally settled for some dinner-rolls with Hawaiian Chicken salad and some ice cream. It was positively the worst corporate dinner that I had ever attended.
Finally, the good-byes were said and the visitors returned to their countries after having ‘gifted’ us with an automated system. Although the automated system promised to make our work easier and more standardized, it also signaled change. It demanded that space be made for paradigm shifts in our work policy and this, it seemed to me, was not acceptable to several of us. However, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to resist change the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant changes also begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of changing.
