Today I made my first chai. With spices, milk, sweet and intense. As for the first attempt – it was surprisingly tasty, although flavour was slightly different than the average chai you get from the tea walla on the street. But lets just say, it was my signature chai. Strictly secret recipe.
I did not make it for myself, not even for my Kapoors family (although Alex got to try some). I made it for the electrician, who spent this morning at the Kapoors mansion fixing several long due repairs. I also treated him with some indian sweets and enjoyed nice small talk, with my few hindi words and his few english. We made friends.
It’s been a long lesson for me. After over a year of constant making mistakes, I have finally realized – or to be more accurate – I have been pushed by my coworkers into realizing, why I was failing so often to get things done.
Poland is now politically, mentally and culturally part of western Europe*. And the way we do things is fairly simple. It’s a business, and in business, there is no place for sentiments. If you call a worker – be it electrician, carpenter or plumber – you are a client, so you demand. You demend him to be there at the time and day convenient to you, you demand the work to be done quick, neatly and smoothly. Once he comes, he’s nearly a ghost at your home – doing whatever he has to do, while you’re doing your own things. You may offer him a tea or coffee or cookie, but its not compulsory. He comes there to do a job for which you are paying. And the payment will be heavy most of the time, cost of human labour is the most expansive thing in Europe. He comes, fixes whatever you require him to fix, handles the bill, you handle him cash and that’s it. Over. You probably won’t see each other for a year or so.
In India things work different way. Gas is delivered in cylinders instead of being piped. Hot water warms up in electric heaters / geysers instead of being piped. In residential areas like the one we stay in, we need to pump the water to our water storage tanks, as it comes only twice a day. In brief, the maintenance that is required in the house and the number of things that can possibly break is about ten times that of back home. So your plumber and electrician are practically your flatmates, coming every once in a while to fix one thing or the other.
And in India, especially when you deal with “simple” people, it’s not a business relation like the one I described before. For a minor fix, these workers would get maybe 50, maybe 100Rs. In Europe, it’s 5 times more for just giving a look at things. That’s why perks and personal relations are far more important.
When some time ago I was trying with no result to get a carpenter to fix someting in the house, I was told, that he doesn’t want to come anymore. He was scared and not interested. We were not speaking Hindi, we were demanding and we didn’t offer him anything but a glass of water. He had no interest coming again. Not a friendly chat, not a pleasure of sipping chai, not a small gift for him or his kids. And the job was small, so the money was not attractive enough. He would rather go where the jobs are bigger and hence – better paid. Or where he is friends with the owner (or houshelp) and could count on a nice reception. And he won’t adjust his timing for us, as in India in most houses there is someone all the time – a house wife or a house help. So they can’t understand why we ask them to come in the evening or weekend. They don’t work such hours!
I was also straight forwardly told, that we should keep our workers happy. If there’s festive season – we should give them some small gift, maybe some sweets or toys for kids, or maybe a bottle of Old Monk for themselves. And we shoud act politely with them. If they’re happy – they might even fix something for free for us. If their not – they simply won’t come.
I think this is maybe one of the most important lessons I’ve learned here. Building relationships. Here everything is personal and everything is “human”. Automitization is not a big thing yet in India. Human labor is cheaper. So whatever can be done manually – is done manually. And whenever you want to achieve something, you have to deal with real people. And make them feel you care, so they would care as well.
The only thing I’m wondering about, is if and how it applies to the corporate level business in India? I hope my colleagues could advise me on this?
* – is, but it wasn’t always like this. I was too small to get used to it, but still remember times of my childhood, the end of communism and beginning of transition to a free market economy, times we call “Polish wild wild west”, when all import was smuggled, dollar black market was blossoming, power and water cuts were maybe no daily, but a weekly rituals and none business could be done without a flask of polish vodka involved (either meaning doing business over a glass of Wyborowa, or giving it as a gift when it wasn’t appropriate to open it straight away). Or other kind of favor. Some flashbacks of this mentality still happen from time to time, but they are definitely relics.
This post has been published also on my private blog Same Same But Different
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