As I look out my hotel window, past the palms and golden sand to the sparkling water of the Arabian Sea, I realize that this, my fourth trip to India, will be different. For starters, I am not in the huge cities as before, with their noise, pollution and claustrophobic crowds. I am in Goa, the southwestern Indian state distinctive for its Portuguese heritage and its popularity as a resort area for Indians and foreign tourists.
Because of 451 years of Portuguese rule (1510-1961) this is an area unlike the rest of India, with crumbling Catholic cathedrals next to Hindu temples, where adjacent roadside shrines venerate the Virgin Mary and Ganesh the elephant god. The local newspaper might announce the marriage of an Ashish Romero and Parul Salazar. A local high school is named Saint Francis Xavier. Houses with red tile roofs can be seen under the dense tropical canopy.
Goa gained fame in the 60’s and 70’s as a counterculture mecca, where thousands of hippies of all ages converged on the beaches to engage in a variety of chemically-enhanced activities and/or to seek spiritual enlightenment from gurus in numerous ashrams and communes. The scene is much tamer now. Possession of drugs can lead to prison time, and the beaches are mostly deserted at night. You still see the occasional leather skinned, pony-tailed, bearded 70 year old with a backpack, but most of the modest beach hotels are filled with middle class Indians or package tour groups. Most of the foreign tourists seem to be European middle-aged couples. The women lie on beach towels, sunburned and sometimes topless, and the men appear bottomless, with tiny tight Speedos disappearing from sight under protruding bellies. Beached on lounge chairs, they while away the hours being waited on by the staffs of small ramshackle beach huts scattered in the nearby dunes.
We are here at the Fort Aguada Beach Resort to conduct a five-day leadership development program for 25 senior managers of a large Indian company. The program is to begin tomorrow morning, and the participants are arriving throughout the day, so we have the afternoon free. These are vice-presidents and general managers from various lines of business throughout India. Our Indian host is Vineet, Vice President of Human Resources, who is an energetic and fun-loving 35 year old, dressed in khaki shorts and a polo shirt. He has invited me to accompany him and his two assistants on a parasailing boat ride on the sea. After 20 minutes of spirited bargaining with competing boat owners, he closes the deal, which includes an armload of large bottles of Kingfisher beer thrown in for good measure. “You can’t go out on a boat without beer!” Vineet explains, and it seems perfectly logical to me. I ride in the boat and watch the others parasail. (Been there, done that, no thanks!)
My training partner, Terry, is a friend and colleague from Australia. The program begins on Monday, and the challenges are great. English comprehension is a struggle on both sides – They are hearing English spoken with a Texas drawl and Aussie accent, and we are hearing it in every imaginable Indian version. These guys (It’s all guys.) are warm, open and enthusiastic. They range in age from 35 to 60. There is a clear hierarchy, with the younger managers deferring to the older. During the times of classroom discussion, it feels a little chaotic to us westerners, for whom discussion means a more orderly “turn-taking”, no interrupting, and controlled expression. Many eastern cultures have different norms around discourse, and we are now managing numerous simultaneous conversations, people talking over one another, finishing each other’s sentences. We end each day both energized and exhausted.
The best times are after hours, over drinks or dinner. We are fascinated by the stories we hear about what it is like to be a leader in a huge company in such a diverse country. One manager, in charge of a manufacturing plant in rural India, bemoans the fact that after an expensive modernization effort that included the installation of indoor toilets, most factory workers still prefer to relieve themselves in the fields adjacent to the plant as they have always done. Another tells of rebel insurgents who have infiltrated his plant and are fomenting unrest.
Thursday night arrives, and the first four days have been a huge success. Everyone is ready to relax on this last evening together. We eat dinner on a cliff overlooking the sea, under a canopy of twinkling white lights, sipping Indian “Champagne”. (Honest, it says so right on the bottle.) At the close of dinner, we retire to the bar, which Vineet has booked exclusively for our group. I arrive a few minutes late, and the group is quietly sipping drinks around large tables. Vineet, clearly trying to whip the sedate group into a festive mood, gets up and enters the DJ’s booth near the dance floor to queue up some music. (This bar is transformed into the local disco on weekends.) All of a sudden, the sound system is booming – the Bee Gees are singing “Stayin’ Alive”. Vineet comes out grooving and urges his co-workers to get up and dance. I survey the male/female ratio (28 to 2, counting the two female HR assistants.)
I have always found it endearing that in India it is not uncommon to see males walking arm in arm or holding hands. This cultural trait makes a dance possible in a crowd with 28 men and 2 women, and a dance ensues. The two young women lead the way as they get up and dance with each other in a corner. Soon 5, then 10, then 20 men are dancing in another group across the room. (I feel like a chaperone at a middle school dance!) They come and grab Terry and me and pull us to the dance floor. The music volume increases and has shifted to the Village People singing “YMCA”.
I am now way out of my comfort zone. When in high school I never enjoyed what we called “fast dancing”, and come to think of it, that was probably the last time I did it! Thank heavens it’s dark and no one seems to be dancing with any one particular partner. The two women soon tire and move to the table for a breather, so it’s just us guys now. So we just move to the beat of one American disco song after another, courtesy of DJ Vineet. I look around and have a feeling that is hard to describe: I’m laughing to myself in wonderment: I see a Senior Vice-President holding hands and dancing with a Chief General Manager. A turbaned Sikh Director twirls with a CFO to the strains of Donna Summer. There is laughter and merriment all around. From my cultural perspective, this is surreal, and I am thinking how lucky I am to be experiencing this, feeling exhilarated and truly alive.
Now something amazing happens. The DJ puts on a different type of music. The beat is the same, the volume is unchanged (deafening), but the language is now Hindi. Before, we had been dancing to music I was familiar with, but now it is music to their ears! The emotion and energy level changes noticeably – The few remaining holdouts leap to their feet. The dancing crowd laughs and shouts, lost in the passion of the moment.
The dancing style of this mostly-middle aged group of guys reminds me of a cross between the Twist and belly dancing. There are a lot of hand movements and gyrations. My style, on the other hand, is to attempt to synchronize my movements approximately to the beat of the music and to keep from injuring innocent bystanders. I am dancing, trying to remain inconspicuous and feeling self-conscious, when one of the younger managers circles by me and briefly becomes my dance partner. As the music blares, he looks at my hands, and I look down at them, too. I realize they are clenched into fists as I move stiffly. He mimics my close-fisted style, grins, shakes his head and wags a scolding finger. Then, as he continues to dance, he pantomimes “Do it this way”, coaching me to open my hands and to reach skyward, which I do. There may just be a valuable lesson for me here, I think, as I continue to dance with my 27 partners on into the night.