SERIAL : 9

INDIAN IN COWBOY COUNTRY

THE INTERVIEW

“Focus, Satish, focus,” he said to himself. “Focus on keeping your job and getting your green card. Not on the promotion; that can come later.” 

“Mr. Peterson will see you now,” announced Ms. Black from Pete’s door. 

“Thank you, Ms. Black,” he said as he went into the room. She shut the door behind him. 

Pete’s office was the largest, most imposing one he had ever seen. Satish had heard about its features. It was laden with rich mahogany panels on the walls, a formal library with richly bound volumes, a huge, almost red cherry desk, leather Queen Anne chairs, and a leather sofa in a corner with a matching love seats. 

The adjoining room had a huge dark mahogany conference table and white boards on the walls. Pete’s oversized desk faced large windows that overlooked the woods of the campus. 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Peterson,” he said as he entered the room. 

“Afternoon,” Pete said, without looking up from the papers that he was reading. “Sit.” 

“Thank you,” he said as he took the seat directly in front of Pete. He watched him as he read some documents, his eyebrows visibly knit in anxiety. Pete then shut the file, set it aside on the edge of the table, and leaned back in his swiveling chair. He looked him in the eye and said, “So, you’re Satish.” 

“Yes, sir,” he replied with an enthusiastic yet nervous smile.  

Pete learned forward at the table, pulled out a book from a drawer, leaned back again, and started writing in it, keeping the book on his lap. Then he stopped, looked up at his nervous employee, and said, “John tells me that you’ll be a good engineering manager, and so does Tim. I’ve seen your performance reviews. They are excellent.” 

“Thank you, sir,” he acknowledged. 

Ignoring Satish’s response, Pete continued, “Everyone seems to feel that you’re a keeper. And I’ve seen some of the reports you’ve done. They are good; not extraordinary, just good.” 

“Thank you, sir,” he said, assuming that there was a compliment in there somewhere.

Pete continued, “I have another meeting in ten minutes, so let’s get to the point. We all know why we are here. John wants to promote you to a manager, but,” he said, and paused, looking at him dead-pan, “I am not going to sign the PCO form to promote you.” 

Then he paused to write something in his book. Satish sat in stunned silence. He had not expected such an abrupt statement. He did not know how to react. 

“Don’t you want to know why I am not going to promote you?” asked Pete, again looking up. 

“No, sir,” he said. “I mean, yes sir. Are you not satisfied with my work?” 

“Your work is fine. You are a good worker bee. We need more people like you, but you are not a manager,” Pete said. 

“Sounds good,” he said and began to rise from his seat, satisfied that his job and green card were secure. 

“Don’t you want to know why I don’t think you’ll be a good manager?” asked Pete, gesturing him to sit down. 

“No sir,” he said. “I am sure you have good reasons. May be I am not ready for it and I have to wait.” 

Pete leaned back to write his notebook, then looked up and said, “No. I cannot promote you because the oil industry will never accept an Indian as a chief. You are an Indian in cowboy country, and this redneck industry will never accept you as one of them.” He paused to gauge Satish’s reaction. 

“Look at Billy Stayton, president of our contract drilling division. Do you think he will ever take you seriously when you tell his engineers what to do, which you will have to?” asked Pete. 

“People take me seriously, sir, because I do good work. When I make engineering sense, they don’t look at the color of my skin,” he replied calmly, rapidly regaining his composure.  

“Satish, I am doing you a favor. Get your green card and get out of this industry. I am from Minnesota, and even I feel the prejudice. You are an Indian and you look different, and the prejudice will be ten times worse.” Pete sounded genuinely concerned for Satish’s welfare. 

He continued, “I cannot jeopardize this division’s progress by having an Indian in a managerial position. You have to sell your ideas and positions, and I cannot take the risk that you will be rejected because you are different. This will impede the acceptance of our products in the market, by other divisions, and, most important, by our customers.” 

Satish remained silent and watched him scribble again in his book. Without looking up, Pete told him, “That’s all. You can leave now.” 

He did not know what to think as he left Pete’s office. He walked past Ms. Black and the next group of visitors without acknowledging them, a very unusual act. He walked past the portraits and wandered out of the building toward the cafeteria. There he picked up some bread crumbs that were kept for people who wanted to feed the resident ducks at the campus lake. 

Picking up a large packet of stale bread, he walked to the lake and sat on a bench under a tree, throwing breadcrumbs into the water for fish and fowl. It was a nice March spring day. The grass and trees were beginning to resurrect, and there was not a cloud in the sky. 

Ducks waddled around him, and the water was a beautiful blue-gray with tiny ripples. A jet plane taking off from the nearby Houston airport shattered this pastoral ambiance, but calm soon reigned as the plane left the area, speeding to its destination. 

Like that plane, a few sentences from Pete had shattered his aspirations. He was angry at Pete for having been so blunt, abrupt, and crass with him. 

He threw more crumbs in the water and watched some fish come close to the surface pick them before the ducks could reach them. Perhaps he was like the fish, destined for small crumbs, while people like Pete were like the ducks that owned the pond and its vicinity. If a fish came remotely close to their territory, they simply ate them. Perhaps he had come too close. 

He sat on the bench, throwing crumbs and thinking, till it was well past five o’ clock. His colleagues would have left for the day. To avoid encountering anyone, especially Tim, he went directly to his car in the parking lot and left the campus. 

As he sped south on Highway 59 to his home, a modest garage apartment, he saw Houston’s legendary freeway traffic jam on the other side of the freeway, headed north. He wondered if he and his career had unknowingly merged into that long trail of stranded motorists. They went through this routine, day after day, as if they had no choice or free will, just fulfilling their preordained destiny. 

Twenty minutes later, he took the Shepherd-Greenbriar exit and proceeded to his home in the vicinity of Rice University. 

Though he had had a job for almost two years after graduation, he had continued to stay in his student apartment, built on top of an aging three-car garage. It was small, about seven hundred square feet but had four distinct walled areas: a living room, a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The living room had an unfinished oak wall unit that contained a cable-ready TV and his stereo system. 

Scattered around the room were a few director’s chairs, a beanbag, and small end tables with lamps. He had bought all of them at a garage sale in the neighborhood for $25, a steal. 

He plopped on the beanbag, removed his tie, and threw it on the nearby chair. He reached for the remote and turned on the TV, which was tuned to local news. He immediately switched it off. He sprang up, went to his tiny kitchen, and put a pot of water on the old gas stove to make some tea. Then, abruptly, he switched off the stove, put the mug back, grabbed his tie from the living room, and went to put it away in his bedroom closet. 

This room was sparse. It had a mattress, a phone, a clock radio, and a lamp, all on the floor. When he moved to this apartment, he discovered after he had signed the lease that he could not take his box spring up the curved staircase. Rather than lose his deposit, he decided to do without a regular bed. He bought a futon mattress that he put on top of a regular mattress, and he was quite comfortable with the arrangement. 

Nobody thought any less of him because of his Spartan surroundings, especially Priya, his girlfriend, who was a graduate student at Rice. 

He placed his tie on a hanger in the closet and then went to the phone to call her. He needed to talk to her, but there was no answer. He hung up the phone and decided to call Tom. 

“What should I do, Tom?” he asked his older, single friend, an international banker who had lived around the world, especially in Asia. 

“Let’s talk over dinner. I’ve found this great Thai restaurant in Montrose. You’ll love it. The food’s hot, hot, hot!” Tom said.

Satish drove a couple of quick miles to Jimmy’s Thai House, where he saw his friend, the lone customer in this new restaurant that had bamboo strips on its walls from floor to ceiling. The tables and chairs looked as if they were picked up from a used restaurant furniture store – they were too worn out for a new place. Pictures of the Thai king and his queen adorned the area near the cash register. 

“Hi, Tom,” he said as he entered the restaurant. He made his way to his friend before a waiter could escort him. 

“Hi, sit down. Have some of this Thai beer. It’s terrific,” Tom said, raising his beer mug and pouring a waiting bottle into his Indian friend’s frosted mug. 

“Yeah, I’ll have one. I need it today.” 

“I’ve already ordered some Tiger Cries, Thai street food that you don’t get at regular Thai restaurants. It’s beef, rare beef. I hope a Brahmin like you won’t mind it,” Tom said, smiling and taking a sip of his beer. 

“Only Indian cows are sacred, my friend,” replied Satish, smiling and joining the repartee.

Excerpts taken from the book "An Indian in a Cowboy Country" by  Pradeep Anand. Published by Jaico Publishing House.  - Editor

to be contd.