Balaji’s Blog

I can’t rise above my racial imprinting!

So I was reading an article on the web and noticed that one of the “top guys” mentioned in the article was an Indian.

My first visceral reaction was “Oooo..”. And my second was “Goddamit! Why did I just do that?”

See, this is where I think the 150+ years of colonial rule still lurk in some reptilian corner of the Indian brain – we have extremely poor self-worth. All Indians love to hear/read about the Indian who made good in the burra sahib world.

Plus, I know that:

1. Indians rising to senior positions on the “back-end” side of things is old-hat by now. And in this case as well, the guy is really just a top “rocket-scientist”.

2. Despite that, the guy is probably never going to crack that final barrier – into the top management. The few guys who have (1,2,3) have had fairly ignominious ends – Under investigation for stock-fraud (1), fired (2) or even worse, in jail for fraud (3). Can’t say that they represent a shining example of Indians doing their country proud.

But did that stop that reaction – No. And I freaking hate myself for falling victim to it.

PS: The article that started this whole mess was this NYT article.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 1:11 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.