December 06, 2003

MEET NAVMEET—LET’S DRINK TO AMERICAN IMPERIALISM ?

The other day I tried to get my Hewlet-Packard scanner to work and found it had had some kind of cerebral accident and had become deaf and blind. It kept telling me that it didn’t recognize me anymore. Alarmed, I reached for the phone and finally managed to find HP’s help number (not easy) and called the 800 number. I was told by some kind of voice-robot that HP did not support my scanner model free anymore and that If I wanted to pay $25 I could get some tech support.

I found the voice-robot’s sangfroid in the face of my anxiety and pain disconcerting, but that’s what robots are good at, I told myself. Desperate, I submitted to its demands, keeping in the back of my mind that the scanner was several years old and that I had paid only about $100 for it in the first place.

Soon I found myself connected with a series of polite, disembodied voices with an unmistakable Indian lilt. Eventually I was assigned to a young woman who identified herself as Ranu and welcomed me to HP tech support and inquired whether she could she help me. I proceeded to tell her what was wrong. She then asked some relevant questions and we embarked on a technological adventure together through the maze of the the WindowsXP operating system. She was very patient, knowledgeable, sweet, and, after two hours of probing and testing, baffled by the diagnostic problem my scanner’s brain presented. At this point she asked whether I would mind if she brought in a senior tech support person for a consultation.

Gladly, I said, having gradually become discouraged with Ranu’s abilities to find the problem and fix it. I was sorry for Ranu because in the course of the two hours we had worked together, finding and deleting this or that mysterious file in my Registry (whatever that was), I had discovered that she was talking to me from half a world away in New Delhi and that it was evening there while it was only mid-morning in New York. I had become used to her British accented English with that faintly musical quality that Indian speech has. And she had worked competently and hard on the problem. But my patience was beginning to wear.

A few minutes later I heard a strong American voice come on the line. It was a take-charge voice and I felt relieved, I am chagrined to say, that a more knowledgeable American was on my case. I had the idea that we had been transferred from India to Boise, Idaho, and this guy, who sounded intelligent, resourceful, and determined would fix the problem.

An hour or so later I had discovered that this senior technician really knew his stuff, was smart as a whip, and had a dogged determination. At one point in the course of his investigations and instructions to me I had made a mistake and lost the ability to control my cursor and had no way of rebooting the computer. Like Natty Bumpo he led me down the secret byways of the operating system to safety. Whew, I said to myself, enough. And the problem was still unsolved.

He tried to reassure me that my problem was now his problem and that even if took a month, he would find the problem. I asked his name, thinking that I wanted to thank him for working so hard and say goodbye to him and my old scanner.

That’s when I learned that he was not in Boise, but in New Delhi, and that his name wasn’t Bill it was Navmeet, and he was not 35 but 22. I told him that he spoke English like an American. He said that he would take that as a compliment. We spoke for a moment or two and he tried to persuade me to give him just 24 more hours to research the problem and he might be able to find the solution, or some way of working around it. I thanked him profusely and told him that it would be cheaper for me to buy a new scanner. And, although disappointed, he said graciously that he understood and hoped that I would give HP another chance.

Before I said goodbye, I told him that if I were forming a team of troubleshooters to solve the great problems of the world—evil, poverty, sickness, injustice—I would choose him to be on my team.

It was clear to me that this young man displayed all of the best traits of the American character: optimism, determination, confidence, initiative,responsibility, and competence. The myth of the pleasing, subservient, ineffectual Indian is dead. Navmeet had, to some extent, become Americanized through the transforming experience of taking part in the process of American commerce.

Perhaps now he has the freedom to choose between the best of Eastern and Western civilizations.

If there are many more people like Navmeet around in India it will soon be a powerhouse of commerce and industry. Guys like Navmeet don’t stay technicians for long. His energy and initiative will soon lead him into some kind of entrepreneurial enterprise. And that is the brand of Imperialism that the USA can be proud of.