'Lift' me high

Every individual in this world is unique in character. Their behaviour, speech, action, sense of humour, spiritual awareness is different from one another. This uniqueness is spread across all people across all continents. It has to be preserved and embraced so as to preserve the cultural heritage, which is followed for centuries. 'Continuous change is the only constant' is the most famous mantra widely accepted throughout the world now. The world has changed, over the last two decades, and is still changing at an alarming rate threatening the cultural heritage and uniqueness followed by its people.

Global companies, in the name of outsourcing, to get cost benefits are moving its work to India. Jobs, especially in technical and customer service area, are abundant. Since the work is carried out for a customer who is thousands of miles away from where the customer service agent is, it is very difficult for the agents to understand the needs of the customer unless the agent knows the customer's cultural background. The companies are taking up this challenge as a part of its induction program, to create cultural awareness. The customer service agents are given a false name and are thought to pretend like an American in the way they speak and behave. They are encouraged by the companies to practice western culture in India. This obviously has an adverse effect on the employees as they don’t understand the western culture completely which in turn leave them following neither western nor their own culture. The behaviour of the resultant culture is wicked, which only takes the worst things out of both the cultures. Like smoking, drinking, pubbing, partying, having premarital and extra marital relationship.

If you find someone trying to behave like an American, talking in a false accent which is grammatically incorrect, to anyone who cant understand the language, then you can almost certainly say that the person belongs to this 'Confused-culture' group working in call centres.

During the IT recession time at the stroke of millennium, call centre jobs were a good source of income. I was one of those confused group of people thinking that life is cool in a call centre in Tidel park, which is the first IT park built in Chennai. Though I didn’t like the false accent, I was trying to match the fellow workers to shine in what I do.

One night, after having dinner, I took the elevator to return to my desk in the eleventh floor. Three others, a cab driver, one of my colleagues and an American client joined me in the elevator. I pressed the button marked 'Eleven' and stuck to one of the walls inside. When the elevator crossed the ninth floor, it started to fall. For a moment, I had my heart in my mouth as I was falling into an endless pit. After a couple of horrible seconds, the elevator came to a sharp halt between sixth and seventh floors. All of us were in cruel shock all of a sudden. Nobody was prepared to move. An automated voice came from the elevator's speaker. 'Don’t Panic' it cried. From that moment on, the girl in the lift started to panic and started shouting for help.

George, the American client, pressed all the buttons in the elevator to prevent another free fall. After a horrible five minutes, we heard a voice from the top, probably from the seventh floor, that help would arrive after half an hour since it was late in the night. George was the only person in the lift who didn’t panic. He infact was sharing his experience of getting stuck in an elevator in New York. In the sixth eighth floor. 'If I ever get out of this lift, I will take the day off and jump into the pool in my hotel' declared George all of a sudden. All of us, me in particular, were looking at him in amazement. Our lives were under risk until help arrives, but he was able to take it easy and was thinning of jumping into the pool when he gets out.

The cab driver, Kumaran, who is the most horrified among the group, was totally dumbstruck. I asked him, in his native language, what he would do if he goes out alive. He said that he would take care of his mother, whom he abandoned a month ago, like she took care of him when he was young. He was crying so badly that we wanted to be reunited with his mother immediately.

Tina, who was pretending as an American for four years now, said 'If I ever get out of this mess, I will take my friend to a pub in Bangalore. He always liked to see me dance late in the night'. George raised his eyebrow and asked whether she liked drinking and dancing. He was surprised to find people who he thought to exist in Chennai, do not exist in Chennai. He said, 'I read a book about South Indian culture, especially the section about Tamil Nadu, and I was very keen to get a feel of it here, but I am getting a strange feeling that whatever I read and whatever I see here don’t seem to match'. When asked, he said that he thought South Indians are tightly family oriented and know to respect family values and what they have got.

'If I ever go out of this cage' I said, unsure of what to say next. My mind went blank. While I was talking, Tina was busy over the phone with her newly found life with a boyfriend, Kumaran was still scared and was standing very close to the door while George was busy reading a book. Indeed no one was listening to me.

After another fifteen minutes, help arrived and we were taken out of the elevator by the rescue team. When the rescue team arrived, Kumaran was the first person to be taken out. He pushed all of us back and was trying to get out as soon as possible. Tina went next. George was the last person to come out. When he came out, our manager was only keen on George's condition. He made sure that George was safe and never cared about us.

'Yes', I told to myself when I was alone after this incident. George was correct, we have our own values and we fail to respect it most of the times in the name of globalisation. I was also a victim of it for a few months and desperately wanted to come out of it.

I have been thinking about this for sometime now. I went into an elevator to go to my office and came out of it an hour later. Everyone in the elevator are at least sure about what they wanted to do at the exact moment they wanted to do it.

I wish I were as lucky as they are.