Death of a Salesman

Just today I saw my friend Venu's home page. There was a line there that said most of his friends would find it hard to digest the fact that Venu is a techie now and not into sales and marketing. Well, that isn't really surprising because there are a million Indians of our generation -- the 25-plus-but-not-yet-30 -- who thought they would be the star salesmen in their companies, always dressed in dark well-tailored suits, making presentations that wow audiences and having breakfast strategy meetings with the CEO at the Taj overlooking the Gateway of India.

Then came the revolution, leaving a whole generation of going-to-become-a-star-salesman types crouching in front of monitors figuring out how to pass a value to an API, pausing to curse Jon Von Neumann, Bill Joy (a special one for him in the choicest Urdu for adding a new dimension to an already hassled programmer's life) and all the others who started this whole mess, each time the error message reads “bad DLL calling convention”. They realize that human ingenuity is a double edged sword -- while they can keep in touch with ex-girlfriends in far off lands for free, thanks to email, they also need to read books the size of two bricks with titles that read “Oracle 8i Unleashed” to get a job.

In their coffee-break-moments by the vending machine, yesterday's going-to-become-a-star-salesman reflects on those halcyon days in college when the future meant landing a job in a big manufacturing company and forgetting all the engineering you ever knew the moment you crossed the hallowed arches of the factory and focusing instead on preparing for CAT and getting into an MBA program so you could join an MNC bank and spend the rest of your life making phone calls, talking to people, making Power Point presentations to a congregation of black suits and learning how to use your cutlery.

There are a few star salesmen still holding fort. But they are tormented by the “missed the bus” syndrome. They are wondering if it wasn't foolish not to do that C course at Aptech so many years ago. Of course, such soul-searching is not for those in the industry. They have reached a certain higher level of existence -- their minds dwell on such lofty questions as: “Will they put me in Support?” or “Is this a Development project or a Support project” or “Is this on Java?” or “Will this experience look good enough on my CV?”

The Death of A Salesman is a small chapter in the larger story termed the Tale of Two Cities. Bangalore, by all accounts a sleepy little town until the 80s has for some time now been referred to as India's answer to the Valley (if you are thinking Lake & House Boat you got the wrong continent). Of course, calling Bangalore Silicon Valley is now passé. These days calling Bangalore 'Bangalore' is in, as evidenced in several Indian states clamoring to replicate the 'Bangalore' model. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and so on. You know Bangalore has definitely arrived when you hear Bangloreans say “no IT knowledge or what?” like it's a four-letter word and when the autowallahs ask, “Where Do You Want To Go Today?”

There are those who will tell you that what they are doing in the Valley is the real stuff whereas what they are doing in Bangalore is ersatz. But that is splitting hairs really. The fact of the matter is people are making spade loads of money in both places -- remember the guy with black-streaked, white, center-parted hair on the Forbes list. Yes, the salaries in Bangalore may be half the monthly rent for one room in the Valley. But that is precisely the point. You get more bang for your buck in Bangalore. And the girls are nice looking. There aren't any in the Valley.

It is also passé for Indian finance ministers to harp about the trade deficit and the Balance of Payments. India is making money from it largest export -- programmers. In all those airports -- JFK, Heathrow, Zurich, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Singapore and Seoul -- you see Indian programmers clutching their passports plus air tickets and hungrily devouring their copy of Nudist on the Late Shift. Indian programmers are ubiquitous -- be it Saidapet, San Jose, Hubli or Helsinki. By the way, Helsinki is not for rhyme's sake -- there are a bunch of Indians at the Nokia Labs.

At last count, the highest ethnic population in the Valley was that of Chinese. Second was Indians. The Chinese also run a lot of restaurants and laundromats. So where it matters, it's Indians all the way in all those office parks from San Jose to Palo Alto and in all the Toyotas Corollas in between.

For India, IT is the savior, the parter of seas, the light house on a stormy night, the beacon in the darkness, the light at the end of the tunnel, the miracle healer, the Midas touch, the panacea, the universal formula, the opium of the masses. If in doubt, remember Chandra Babu Naidu won the last election.

The impact of IT is miraculous -- you can research for an article on the Net, type it out, edit it, email it and have it published in the span of a single afternoon, Chamatkar! Of course, the downside is that if any of you depart for your final resting place without writing the book of your life, you will have nothing to blame but a lack of imagination. That, I think, is the worst kind of verbal abuse anyone can muster. Well, maybe just short of the worst. The worst of course is alleging that someone reads Shobha De.