Working with American Clients is not easy, particularly if yours is a Software Company. The worst part is having to sit for late at night in the office. There are some good parts as well, though. You get a lot of free time during the day. This allows a lot of time for net-surfing and blogging. And you have calls everyday, where you get to speak with some Amrican Baaboos.
I sometimes feel pity for these Americans. Anyone who has interacted with these clients would know how scared a breed they are. But for the cost advantage, who wud trust us Indians? Particularly after the kind of dubious way most of us answer their questions in calls, in broken Desi accents which even we find hard to understand. Just talk to yourself and you'll know. The confusion in our minds reflects in our words too. Interestingly we are less confused a lot when we think in Hindi, or say our first languages. I think the command of a person on a particular language reflects his/her clarity of thought in that language. And that forces me to believe that one is not equally clear in his/her thought process at all times. It really depends on what language he/she is thinking in.
No wonder Indian women, particularly the city-bred, are so confused. Most of them, if not all, force themselves to make english their first language. But the first language is really decided in the preliminary years of one's adolescence. That's when you start thinking, and that's when you think best. You pick up the first language and start thinking in it. It is really your “first” in that sense, and it will always be. You cannot, at a later stage, give that status to any other language. And if you try to, you would unknowingly affect your thought process.
Coming back to the American clients...
Though there are a lot of ways in which we Indians suffer at their hands, it is equally true that even the Americans don't have a very rosy time with us. And I get a weird pleasure when I see them worried and helpless in having to depend on us for all their businesses to run. The other day, someone was saying that the worst fear of an American Computer guy is that of getting Bangalored. And there are other less prettily-named fears too, some emerging and some already quite strong - chennaied, puneid, hyded, noidaed, and within a year, we might have Bengaluroood...
I hope some day in the near future we could all turn our focus to the Indian Industry, create software that would help our own businesses run, and equally important, the Indian Industry - Manufacturing, Finance, Healthcare, Agriculture, etc etc - grows mature enough to leverage our very own potential in IT...that's my dream...and I am sure, of millions of Indians too...Let us all strive to make that a reality...
