Doing Business in India

Thirty-seven years ago, urban India. Philip is a good-looking young American businessman, who is reasonably fluent in Hindi—a fact greatly to his advantage in negotiating complex deals such as this. He’s quick, personable, aggressive in the best American business tradition, and wears tennis shorts and a tee-shirt to business meetings.

Negotiations were nearing what loomed as a very successful conclusion. The local side was nominally represented by a consortium of several mucky mucks, but Mister Devasi (shortened to Deva) was obviously the real power. All data, all history, all plans seemed to reside at least in his domain, if not actually in his head. Exclusively so.

Yet much to Philip's disgust, this energetic and very capable man was largely being treated as a mere minor gofiir. Deva was clearly the elder, perhaps close to twice Philip's age, and was sought out for information, then abruptly or casually dismissed again after each appearance. It was clear to Philip that things would have progressed faster had Deva been simply included in the meeting. But no, he was sure the situation being a product of the caste system, which he profoundly detested as exceedingly wasteful of human talent.

In the late morning, negotiations were done, and the whole group shook hands—with Deva pointedly excluded. The muckies exited en masse to do whatever it was they did that earned them their keep.

They left Philip and Deva together to tie up loose ends, which was fine with them both. They had gotten along famously from the get-go.

Deva, in fact, admired everything about this American and found it astonishing that so young a man could wield such authority so easily and so considerately, not to say diplomatically! Philip embodied American characteristics which Deva had often encountered in his long and variegated career intensity and concentration on the task, an almost brutal (but friendly) bluntness and honesty, a brushing-aside of trivia; an ability to evaluate a situation, to find instantly the crux of things, determine, and locate the information needed for a decision; and then (unlike Deva’s local counterparts), make the decision and move forward.

The pace of dealing with Philip's culture, even within an Indian milieu, was breathtaking and utterly refreshing once one understood that the American was being anything but rude.

Since the beginning, Deva had been reporting on the meeting, and on Philip, to his daughter Lakshmi, well named after the Hindu goddess of wealth and business. She was a woman of 21 now and unlikely ever to marry in spite of being both beautiful and unusually well-educated.

She was more than reasonably fluent in English and, said Papa, a complete nut for English literature. Lakshmi had never met an American. She queried Papa endlessly, in detail, about the current foreigner, with whom Papa clearly got along so well. She bored into him for information about Philip's intelligence—which she found monumentally impressive—and his being simultaneously a businessman, an advocate, a scientific researcher, and a university professor at the age of 26!

About his appearance, Papa said he was a large man by local standards, just short of six feet tall, and well-muscled with no fat on him. He was blond and blue-eyed with strong legs, which Papa knew since he wore shorts in the Indian climate, even to business meetings.

About personality, Papa reported a fine sense of humor and a love of intelligent conversation.

"A very attractive man, overall!" said Papa, patiently answering her ongoing and quite detailed inquiries.

That noon, the final details having been cared for and the muckies all long-gone, Philip said to Deva with his usual disarming directness, "Tell me, Deva. The others treat you badly, as if you’re a servant when it is quite clear to me that YOU are the core of this entire project. Is there some aspect of caste at work here? As you know already, I seriously despise that system. It’s such a multiplier of human unhappiness and such a waste of talent. Ugh!"

Deva hesitated for a moment, considering, then drew upon a resolution he'd made recently to imitate this youngster’s characteristics. Now, directness was not a commonplace in Indian dealings. He steeled himself and proceeded.

"Yes," he said, "...you are quite astute. A matter of caste indeed. Four generations ago, my forebear was a member of the untouchable caste profession that collects dung and makes it into cakes for use as fuel in cooking."

There! He’d gotten it out. Deva peered up at Philip's face, awaiting reaction. He found curiosity, but no judgment. In fact, Philip suddenly grinned, laughed, and clapped Deva on the shoulder, startling the poor man thoroughly.

"So what?" said Philip, "... as a child I spent every summer on my grandparents’ farm, where my own father was born and grew up to become a university professor. I spent those summers working hard. They raised many cattle. I myself have shoveled a great many tons of dung, Deva. Whole large wagons filled with it, stinking in the hot sun. I would then spread it on fields as fertilizer. An honorable, if smelly, occupation. Such work is hardly cause for being a pariah within my culture. You and I, we are brothers, members of the same caste! I am honored!”

Both relieved and astounded, Deva laughed, shook Philip's hand, and thought to himself, "No bloody wonder the damn Yanks pretty much own the world! No castes, and from manure to professor by his own efforts in a very few years!"

Then, Philip asked, "What happened in your family? You are not exactly a dung-collector these days.”

Deva shrugged. "Here, unfortunately, one cannot readily escape one's caste, however lucky or skilled one might be otherwise. May I tell you a short bit of my family history?"

"Please do!”

"My great-grandfather was, of course, illiterate, living in a tiny village some hundreds of kilometers from here. But he was very smart. He realized that everyone, from the Emperor down to himself, short of a god must cook or be cooked for, and that was almost always over a dung fire. This meant the dung collectors were, if only they could see it, in control. If you had control of any aspect of a people's food supply, you would be some sort of king!”

"Therefore, he organized the collectors in his village, then in the many surrounding small villages. Together, they forced a big increase in the price of dung for the other classes who could afford to pay a bit more. All benefitted, and he took a small percentage of the added value. All benefitted, even the users because the prices became known and stable, as did the supply."

"He sent his eldest son to school, insisting on the value of education, a first for the family. For the next generation, it was better education and movement into supplying and distributing compressed gas for cooking and to run motor vehicles. Then, it was a fleet of tuk-tuk cabs for my father himself and school through a two-year college, leading to business school for me and this job. A progression upwards both economically and in education."

“Nonetheless, Mister Philip, in India, no one can truly escape from one's caste even today. I am still, to most people and including those who run this business, an untouchable despite my abilities and experience. As you have said, it seems a terrible waste.

Deva sighed, shrugged, eyed Philip briefly, and took another plunge.

“We can be finished by 1300," he said. "Would you be interested..." He almost stopped, managed to proceed, “…in coming to my home for tea, to celebrate this contract, relax, and meet my family? It’s just my daughter since her mother long since died of cancer."

He hurried on, "It is but a modest small home and has, of course, never been visited by any of my business associates, all of whom are trapped in our caste system, and with them, no such invitation could possibly be given much less accepted. But you are absolutely not caste-bound.”

A pause, Philip waited, not yet his turn, really.

"You would be meeting my daughter and only child. She is very curious about Americans yet has never met one. I have told her a great deal about you and about our negotiations—perhaps a bit more than is really polite, but nothing secret, I hope. No personal secrets were revealed, except that you are handsome and single, details which she absolutely demanded, and which I, poor man, had to supply."

He sighed. “She is named Lakshmi; she is beautiful, but, of course, all fathers must say that. You would have to judge for yourself. As her parent, I cannot guarantee any degree of accuracy in my evaluation. Most importantly, her English is greatly better than mine, and she will likely wish to practice it extensively on you, a native speaker.”

He finished nervously, "I wonder; would such an invitation be appropriate?”

Philip stuck out his hand, shook Deva's, and said, looking him straight in the eyes, "Deva, I am honored by an invitation into any man's home. I accept with thanks!"

"Will you ride home with me on my motorcycle, Mister Philip? Have you any experience with them? They can be... perplexing!"

Philip had indeed. “Of course, no problem. I own a powerful cycle myself and have ridden it many thousands of miles. When necessary, I can be a sack of potatoes on the rear seat. Let's go!”

"Ah…wonderful!" said Deva "But first, I must warn my daughter Lakshmi who is our hostess. For when you eventually do marry, you must never forget this. Never, never appear at home with an unannounced guest!”

He stepped to the desk, set the business phone on 'speaker,' and dialed.

A perfectly lovely female voice answered with musicality and implied head-bobbling.

Deva announced Philip's presence. The disembodied voice greeted him and introduced its owner as Lakshmi, Deva's only daughter.

Philip introduced himself and immediately said, "Your Papa has invited me to come home with him for tea... but I do not want to accept unless you can assure me it is not inconvenient, and it will not disrupt your activities.”

Lakshmi giggled slightly and said, “We would love to have you for tea and perhaps for some discussion about English literature if you do not mind. Your presence would interfere with nothing whatsoever; in fact, it would serve nicely to fill a void of activities and intelligent company. Please do come but give me time to change my clothes and prepare the tea. Papa... can you two arrive home in about a half hour, but not less?”

Papa agreed on the schedule, Philip thanked the lovely voice, and they broke the connection. Papa grinned shyly at Philip. "She is very excited; a father can always tell. We almost never have guests, and she loves to entertain, even just providing a simple pot of tea. And right now, at this immediate minute, I can assure you she is busy having trouble deciding what to wear. Women!"

He was, of course, correct. In the next fifteen minutes Lakshmi went through five changes, settling finally on something almost daring: a diaphanous, not to say gossamer, pair of long Punjabi-pants—the fabric opaque when not touching skin, but functionally transparent wherever it did—a lace bra under an equally see-through short sari-blouse, and sandals. Her spectacular hair given a onceover touchup.

She did a very careful job of facial makeup. Nothing glaring or garish or overdone, just enough to highlight her extraordinary eyes and mouth, which were her personal short-list of “best features.”

Then came the doubts whilst staring into the mirror. Why did she feel the need to dress so enticingly? It would likely disturb Papa, and God knows what it might do for (or TO!) a young male. But then, that effect was precisely what she wanted to test, having literally never been on anything resembling a western "date”. Papa had instigated this and primed her with stories about this man, so Papa would have to regard any personal internal disquiet as his own damned fault!

Satisfied and excited, she headed for the kitchen. She would have everything ready on time.

It was a twenty-minute cycle trip from the office to Deva's home. Philip asked, “Is there a flower shop nearby? Something fancier than a mere tub of marigolds?”

Deva answered, shouting into the wind roaring past, "Certainly! All India is mad for flowers! Shall we go there? It takes perhaps five minutes of extra time."

Philip was in the shop only briefly, returned with a nice bouquet of a dozen small blood-red roses. Deva eyed them and said, "Very nice flowers! Extravagantly nice in fact." Then, matter-of-factly, he said, “Quite romantic, indeed. Roses are generally thought to be, no? Same in America, I think.”

Philip shrugged as he remounted the bike. "These are a gift for the Lady of the House to which I have been invited. If I were dating that lady, which I most definitely am not, then they might have a different meaning than just 'thank you!"'

He shouted into Deva's ear as they roared off into traffic again, “After all, a man can give the same type of flowers to the same women many times, each time with a very different meaning!"

Deva managed to make his reply understood. "One man most certainly can do that! But I am quite sure, Mister Philip, that this will be the very first time in Lakshmi's entire life that she receives flowers from any man, for any reason! Even, I am ashamed to state, from myself! I will be interested to see her reaction!"

He slowed the cycle as they approached the house, chuckled, and said to Philip as the motor stopped, "Which means you will shortly get very high marks indeed for something. Shall we call it simply diplomacy?"

Philip dismounted and said, "If the lady is as attractive as you say and has never received flowers, then she must be surrounded by the dumbest and least sensitive group of men ever assembled on the planet!"

Deva shrugged and muttered, "Perhaps it is so!" He paused. "Myself included!"

They parked the cycle in the closet that passed for a garage and headed upstairs. Philip felt a bit funny about showing up in tennis shorts and a tee-shirt, but he'd had no choice. These were the clothes in which he'd been doing business all week, receiving nary a sidelong glance about it. He carried the dozen roses in his hand behind his back.

Up the stairs they trotted. The door opened as they arrived, as if on an electronic sensor but actually powered by an acutely aware Lakshmi.

Deva introduced them at the threshold. “Mister Philip, my daughter Lakshmi. Lakshmi, this is the Doctor Philip you have heard so much about recently."

Before Philip stood, quite simply, a goddess. Small, almost tiny, but not quite. She was the most exquisite figure Philip had ever seen in the flesh, and that figure was quite unsuccessfully veiled by gauzelike house-pants and blouse that clearly showed every stitch of her underlying bra. Papa was visibly, if briefly, nonplussed.

In the first five seconds of eye contact, Mister Philip was instantly toast, psychologically so far and so deeply gone that he couldn't even wonder whether he was being obnoxiously obvious to his host and hostess. Philip could not see his own reactions, but they seemed to satisfy the goddess, for she blushed, dropped her eyes, then flicked them back up at him for more contact.

Philip's libido simply exploded. He felt as if his entire insides had been instantly turned to boiling jelly. He’d never in his life had anything remotely resembling this reaction, not to any of his many women, and it rendered him stunned and breathless.

It seemed as if someone had gone to all the cultures of the world, collected the most erotic and beautiful features of their women, distilled each feature down to its absolute essence, then mixed them all together and poured them into the mold of a perfectly shaped, perfectly proportioned woman. Cafe skin, overlain with a dusky, subtle, slightly purplish tone. Makeup at the highest level of effectiveness to emphasize her eyes and lips and teeth.

She embodied the intense sexuality of every Indian erotic sculpture he’d ever seen, with the exaggerated features reduced to their proper proportions. She had a nearly perfect figure and set of facial features he had never encountered, far beyond any imagining.

Awkwardly, almost like a bashful ninth grader, he held out the roses. Lakshmi looked thoroughly startled, then very graciously received them. They eyed one another silently across the flowers, then, hands full of roses, she made her Namaste to him, bending her head downwards.

The world's most beautiful hair confronted him... glistening jet black, parted down the middle and then plaited, the single tapered braid so long she could easily sit on it. Philip's senses were at maximum acuity now. The small crimson bindi on her forehead, between the eyebrows, was perfectly done—difficult to do, its perfection a show-off item mostly between women.

She stood there as transfixed as he, feeling much the same way and utterly confused by it. She said to him, in a near-whisper, "My first flowers ever, Mister Philip... I thank you!"

As he tried to catch his breath, Philip made a decision, quite coolly, based on his reactions. This woman was going to be his life’s partner. There wasn't the least doubt in his mind, despite having disbelieved in such fables all his adult life. Lakshmi was his other half, the missing fifty percent. And he could clearly see a reaction on her part that was similar to his own.

She rose from her namaste’s greeting-bow and said in excellent, idiomatic English, "Welcome to our little home, Mister Philip. Our humble abode, as it were. Since you were invited for tea, perhaps that is where we can begin!"

She led them to the low table in the living room; a double tea-service sat there, freshly filled, waiting. Beside it lay a mid-sized red book of Mark Twain's selected short stories.

Papa grinned at Philip's surprise and said, “I told you, Mister Philip; she is intelligent, well read, and very nearly fanatical about her English, most of which she has learned entirely on her own. They only provide four years of English classes in her school, and they’re not so good. I also warned you that she might want to practice the language with you. You are her very first American. Not an imposition, I do hope!"

Philip managed to say that he would be delighted to discuss Twain and his works, which would serve admirably for practice.

Lakshmi simply smiled, bedazzling poor Philip. "Masala chai or black, as you wish."

Philip opted for the masala, knowing that every woman had her own recipe which she would be anxious to show off. Lakshmi made an odd movement with her left hand, wrapping that hand in a napkin before pouring left-handed. Philip wondered if she were left-handed. The pot's handle was non-metallic; it couldn't be too hot to touch, and at any rate, the gossamer cloth made little practical sense for use as a hot pad.

He accepted the cup, wondering also why his own hand was still steady and how he managed not to drop the awkward thing.

"My Papa says it is fun working with you, Mister Philip. That is a rare compliment!"

Philip acknowledged the compliment, then commented intelligently on the chai, particularly her discreet use of cloves, so unlike others he'd had recently. Lakshmi purred. He tried to relax and managed at least to control his voice. "Miss Lakshmi, your Papa is exceedingly proud of you. Your English so far has been impeccable, which is a rarity among second-language speakers. My congratulations and admiration for a job of learning well done.

He turned to Papa and spoke in formal Hindi, much to Lakshmi's surprise. Papa had made no mention of such an ability, and she was quite impressed. Philip said, with a grin that almost melted poor Lakshmi, "Sir, with all due respect, you are but a goat, like me and most other men. How is it that you produced this daughter, who is clearly the most beautiful woman in my own universe, and certainly likewise elsewhere? How did you do this marvelous thing?”

Papa beamed; Lakshmi flushed under her basic color.

Papa replied, “I had the considerable help of her mother, a woman of impossible beauty, now alas long dead as I mentioned earlier. We thank you for your compliments!”

Lakshmi took the initiative. "Mister Philip, I have been given this body by whatever gods there be, if any. I am, of course, grateful, but we all know that the vessel will rapidly age and lose its initial gloss, looks being of all things probably the most evanescent. But I do thank you for the compliment on my English. My usage is not perfect, and I would like it to be so. Such knowledge and ability are more persistent, and more important, than the accident of one's appearance.”

Philip shrugged then said gently, "Such perfection in English as you seek is simply impossible, my lady Lakshmi. One's English can be completely correct, but perfection must include whatever meaning is both intended and received, as well as things like musicality. In English, there is no such thing as overall perfection, although perfect grammar is perhaps achievable. So far, you are doing quite well. Again, my congratulations.”

Papa said, "Now, Mister Philip, I see you are also a philosopher of language. I am quite proud of her. She finished long ago the eight years of school available here for girls. Twelve for boys, of course. All eight years, she got the best grades in the entire school, and every year, she won the academic examination. Beat all the boys she did, every year!”

Lakshmi nodded then said in a low voice, "Every single year, I won, and every year, the authorities gave the school’s only scholarship to the top boy instead. ‘Girls are incapable of real learning’ they always said. It’s wasted resources if more or better education were given to a girl! It is exactly like being in the wrong caste, just a caste based on gender, nothing more. They would not even allow me to attend the other four years available to boys. Perhaps you can tell, Mister Philip, that I am a little bitter. But I threw myself into English studies. I love English literature, hence the Mark Twain volume before you."

"English lit is a huge subject, lady Lakshmi. Have you narrowed it at all?"

She laughed: "Yes... to American as opposed to British literature.” “Why so? An interesting dichotomy! Why not, say, Indian literature as well? Or even instead of those two?" replied Philip.

"Indian literature is not serious, merely difficult! It consists almost entirely of rehashing fantastical and confusing tales of the doings of entirely mythical gods. There may be lessons to be drawn from it, but others can have the privilege of spending their lives seeking them.”

“I greatly prefer American to English because of its breadth and vigor. People are going places, doing things, and taking charge of their own destinies. The language is real, as are the situations. British literature seems to me to be stuck some hundred years back, if not more, and is eternally reexamining the British caste system. Frankly, here in India, in this very home, we have already a long-standing sufficiency of familiarity with a caste system!”

She was on a bit of a roll, Philip realized, as she kept right on. "Consider, Mister Philip, the classic novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. A woman of minor nobility is married to a crippled man of her caste, a man incapable of fathering the child they both wish for. He gives her permission to breed with some other man of her choice, so as to beget an heir. She does so, and all is fine until husband discovers that wife has stepped outside the marital caste and mated with their own gamekeeper, an utterly unacceptable choice. Further, she seems to have fallen in love with this low-caste man."

"The rest of the story is an exploration of the angst of all parties as they flounder in the net of caste prejudice. Phooey. How drab a story, how odd the huge controversy over it. What sane person wants to read such drivel? Especially after a lifetime of living through it themselves!”

She stopped. Philip was floored, almost intimidated. He said so, meaning it as a compliment. Then he said, “Well, I can certainly provide some observations on the local gender-bias problem as seen by an outsider... honesty only. Okay?”

Lakshmi looked at Papa, grinned, and said "He is behaving just as you predicted, Papa. Now we can have an interesting conversation instead of tea-time-talk! Please, go ahead!"