This is just to add to the insects that I've seen. This is a moth found outside the elevator in my apartment building; about 4 inches across.

Religion permeates almost everything in India. There are cigarette shops named after gods. From my friend’s roof you can see a mosque, church, and temple; all within about 150 feet. Almost every business has some small shrine to one god or another; just a small thing with some candles, incense, and recently placed garlands.

So when my company moved to a new location I was told that we would have to have a pooja. What is that, I asked. It’s where the office gets blessed. Oh, ok.

The separation of church and state is pretty solid in the US (pledge of allegiance, 10 commandment statues, and federal funding of religiously motivated social organization’s aside). If a US company brought in a Priest, Rabbi, or Witchdoctor to bless a new office I am sure that pandemonium and law suits would breakout everywhere.

So it was with great interest that I took off my shoes, walked quietly into the conference room, and sat cross-legged on the floor with my colleagues. In one corner sat our managing director with his wife and two young children in front of a picture of Ganesh adorned with flowers, candles, bananas, rice, coconuts, candy, and incense. By the time I entered the ceremony had already begun so the Hindu priest was chanting the same verse over and over while individually calling up each male member of the staff, tying a thin red rope around his wrist, and applying red paste and rice to the center of his forehead (see picture).

When it was my turn there was a faint murmur of chuckles given the odd cultural juxtaposition and the intense sincerity written on my face. I kneeled down and the priest tied the string and applied the dot and I was done.

When all the men had been done the women went up, but he wouldn’t apply the paste to their foreheads, he would only give it to them on the end of one of their fingers and they would have to apply it themselves (I later learned this is because the “bindi” (the dot) should only be applied by a women’s father or husband). They also didn’t get any rice pushed into their forehead.

So then I sat there as the rest of the office was blessed. Every once in a while a red piece of rice would fall of my forehead while I squirmed to find enough floor space to accommodate my increasingly inflexible legs.

Once everyone had been blessed we all had to go in front of the shrine and hold the bowl of burning oil and spin it in three circles. While we did this some of the older women, our managing director’s mother and her relatives, I believe, reached out for the smoke and motioned it over their heads.

When it was all over they broke out a few boxes of sweets (in line with the recent New York Times article on diabetes in India) and we went on with our day.

I knew that it would inevitably happen. I would call a US 1-800 number and get the distinctive Indian accent telling me “Hello, thank you for calling Citibank, this is Gary.” There are numerous oddities to this interaction.

The strangest is that Sanjay or Rahul or Piyush or Santosh or Anurag have been asked to say that they are Steven, Richard, Peter, Sam, or Andrew. I wonder if they let them choose their western names. I probably wouldn’t have to search very far to find the answer to that question.

I understand that these companies are concerned that if Bob Jones hears that Sanjay will be processing his credit card payment he’ll go into a blind, Lou Dobbs-fuelled rage against the outsourcing of America. But I wonder if these companies have weighed that against the fact that I find it insulting to Sanjay and insulting to me that we all have to play this charade. I wonder when we, and by that I largely mean Americans, will grow up enough to be comfortable talking to someone half the way around the world and allow him to use his own name. I mean it seems that it is the least we can do for someone who has stayed up until 3:00 AM to field our call about some unknown credit card charge.

“Thank you, Gary, up front I want to tell you that I am calling from Hyderabad and so this ‘toll-free’ number is quite expensive for me. Can you tell me where you are located as I imagine there may be a less expensive way for me to talk to you?”

I think Gary may have been a little hurt that his American accent “cover” was blown, but he said, “Yes, Mr. Mitchell, I am here in India, please hang up and call our international collect call number and the call will be free of charge.”

Fair enough.

For those of you who know anything about Hyderabad is probably that it is second to Bangalore in the IT and outsourcing boom, but to be honest I really don’t see that side of the city very much (as evidenced by the fact that I don’t know if Rahul can masquerade as Robert, Richard or even Zachary). One of the reasons for this is that when I am leaving work they are just starting.

This phenomenon creates some problems. My neighbour has a son who has been working US hours. When I leave for work I see him come back and he looks unnaturally exhausted. I think humans have a seriously difficult time completely separating their sleep pattern from the environment around them. The outsourcing lifestyle also causes serious problems for married couples (usually newly married, since most of the outsourcing call center people are quite young); when she’s going to work he’s going to bed and the only time they can see each other is on the weekend when one of them is in a semi-jetlagged state.

So, Bob Jones, calm down, let Sanjay be Sanjay, and appreciate that he’s sleep deprived, he rarely sees his wife, and he’s just working to put food on the table just like you.