Category: India

I come across these 2 things a lot. I find these themes very common with all the Indian people I talk to.

1. Liquor: Indian men like to brag about how long they can hold liquor! Period. They also brag about how much they can drink. If you come across any Indian and 90% chances are that they drink and if you bring the topic of going out for drinks – watch out next 10 seconds – you would hear something un-realistic claim to fame from them. I really don’t get it. I mean c’mon it’s not like you have ‘large feet’ (If you know what I mean!). You just can drink awful lot that’s all. It’s not anything to brag about. It’s a shame that you drink so much and you need so much to actually have some fun. This is something I hear every day from so many people.
2. Past: I also come across people bragging a lot about their past. They incessantly dwell in the time period where everything was so good. I tell you, it’s a national epidemic. Most of them live in past. They are just worried about the future and compare it with past. What about the present? Hello? The stories of the past just don’t stop. What’s annoying is that most of the time these past stories are about how much they drank! C’mon let’s get a fking life and get on with it.

I recently hired a driver through one of the guys whom I know. The driver is a 20 year old young chap who is very active and dedicated to his job. When I asked him about his skills, he admitted he is a very good driver and has been driving for a long time in the city. I asked him to get a copy of his license and he got me a crappy copy of it where I can’t even tell whether it was him in the picture. That’s fine. I was ok with it.

Now coming to his direction and knowing the city skills – here he acts a little shady. When I asked him, does he know the city well – he responded he knows it actually very well. But as I see him driving everyday, I am surprised with the amount of knowledge he has about the city. He doesn’t know anything about the city. He doesn’t even know that when a Traffic police takes down his number it means that in future he might have to pay some “chalan”(fine). But do you think he would admit it? Nope. He would front on me that he knows everything. He is ashamed to ask me the directions. I had to direct him everyday.

The problem for me is that not that he doesn’t know about the city and directions. But he is so not willing to acknowledge his ignorance for once and get over with it. Instead he chooses to go through the painful process of getting embarrassed every day in front of me. He probably thinks that I would get rid of him if I know about his ignorance, but him lying and fronting doesn’t help his case either. It’s actually annoying to me to deal with his lies and also show him the way.

I have seen similar kind of behavior pattern in Software field. Mostly people from Indian origin (Disclaimer: I am Indian). A lot of people who have dreams of going to USA and making it big actually come to US without much experience. There by they become what we call – “The google researcher”. No, they don’t work for Google, but they use google  for all their programming needs. These guys somehow get inside the company that they know a lot about whatever the client needs. Once in, they pretend and front to be experts. Which is probably ok – considering the amount of time, money and energy they spent to get there. But what shocks me is that when I reveal their ignorance – instead of admitting it they front and lie on my face.

The most difficult thing for an Indian is to say is – “I don’t know”. As if by saying that, he/she might cause a big pain to their erudite heritage of India. Instead of admitting and getting on, they lie and keep lying at every point of their ignorance. Once admitted, ignorance doesn’t last. If I admit my ignorance, I am creating a space for learning in that space. But nope – it’s too much to take for an inflated ego to admit his ignorance.

I have worked with a friend who was a poster child for this kind of case. I would see him struggle with Javascript every day. Every frigging day! He would ask my help and in case he senses that I am getting  little restless with his ignorance, he would go and ask someone else. But to our boss he would always say that he can fix things with Javascript. This would make my boss’s job easy, but my colleague’s life was awful. He would struggle every day. I was so pissed off by his behavior that I actually gave him an electronic version of my Javascript book. Not only that, I said we will do the learning simultaneously and finish off the book in 1 month.

You would think that would change his mind. No. He refused to take my help and struggled all the time I was working there. I actually pity him. Only for once, if he could admit his ignorance and create a learning space, he would master it so fast that he would never need to ask for help from anyone. I kinda had a feeling that he liked his pain or he is just plain old moron. Some how he validated his pain with something and was ok with it. The biggest road block he himself created for him was “Admitting his ignorance”.

Apple has a history of not to go with anything that has to do with streaming. Looks like Apple doesn’t believe in streaming. It has 3 technologies out there, which prove this point.

1. Music – You need iTunes to download music on to your computer and then later put it on your iPod.
2. Movies – You still need iTunes and then you can put it on your iTv and watch it on your TV
3. Communications – You still need iTunes and then you can put stuff on your iPhone

So, it clearly shows how Apple deals with media. And there is a reason why Apple chose that way, it works. Period. This central place (iTunes) to manage all the media is the principle behind Apple’s way of doing things.

Lately, I came across similar principle here in India while paying our bills. In India (at least in AP, I am not sure of other states) you can pay your electricity, water and telephone bills through a service called “e-seva”, which literally means “electronic service”. It’s nothing but a wide set of offices dispersed throughout the city – and you can take your bills there to make a payment. Kinda like one place to pay off your bills. Just like iTunes.

I was wondering why didn’t the people who designed e-seva put the whole thing out there for normal people to access? Why can’t I go to the e-seva site and pay off my bills online? Couple of reasons come to mind –

1. Internet penetration is not that dense
2. Online payment requires, some sort of bank a/c or credit card – which is just picking up in India. India is still a largely cash based payment country.
3. Language could be a barrier. A lot of people don’t read or write English which is most of the Internet is made up of.

But for now the e-seva system works fine. May be once all the above issues are resolved then may be I can make auto-payments of my electricity, water and telephone bills online as I used to do in US. May be once we all get 100MB pipelines to internet, Apple will offer iTunes’ online version which basically streams movies, audio etc. Till then e-seva and iTunes are just fine and work.