If Steve would have beaten me up…

It was the day I was returning back to India from Bethpage, NY after my short onsite stint of a month. I had called for my Yellow Cab to go to the JFK airport. I was just whiling away my time sitting on a bench outside my hotel. The weather was chill and I was enjoying my last few moments in Bethpage. The cab arrived on time and to my surprise it wasn’t the regular sized cab; it was a van. I think they expected someone with a lot of luggage. My one large suitcase, a cabin bag and a laptop was equivalent to a lot of luggage for me for sure. The driver was in his 50s may be and seemed friendly.

His name was Steve. He asked me where I was from. He wanted to know whether everyone in India knows English. He asked me how long I had been in U.S. and where did I work. I answered him and told him about my client and the application I was working for. Steve as it turned out was a very satisfied customer of my client (a telecom service provider in U.S.). Steve was pretty friendly and was talking to me all along. He said he wanted to buy a laptop and was not sure whether to go for Windows based one or a Macbook. I was curious as to what he wanted to do with a laptop. It’s not every day that you come across a cab driver asking you for laptop suggestions.

I asked him whether he needed it for casual browsing and multimedia downloads or was he engaged in some kind of job where he did use a laptop. He said he used to work as a Recovery guy (don’t imagine the Indian versions) who helped hospitals get their due payments from insurance companies. He knew his PC all right. But some years back the job was outsourced to a company in Delhi. He lost his job and turned to driving cabs. His son still taught him computer stuff and he needed the laptop for something I didn’t hear. I was just pondering on what he said so casually about losing his job to outsourcing to my country and turning to cab driving. I expected his friendly demeanor to vanish. I expected may be some sarcastic comment or a covert accusation to come my way. But it didn’t. I could only mumble ‘I am so sorry’ which he cast aside with a casual flick of his hand and continued his talk.

In my earlier project, we had a client who was insecure about his job being outsourced and his way to deal with it was giving us a hard time. He worked doubly hard, worked the weekends just to ensure that he didn’t lose his job to us. I did, to an extent, sympathize with him but he also made me sympathize with myself for having to put up with this kind of a client. Steve made me feel truly sorry for him and for many like him.

He continued talking about the various places in U.S. he had lived in the past, his childhood and growing up days, his love for Indian saag and his Indian neighbors who share it with him and so on. We reached the airport in an hour. I said good bye to him and thanked him for the wonderful time I had.

Back home, some people from My Home State in India beat up people from Another State in India because the Another State in India people came to My Home State in India in search of jobs. But the My Home State in India people do not realize that may be someone amongst their friends and families might be the guy who might have made someone like Steve lose his job.

Steve was friendly. Steve was nice. I wonder if it would have been otherwise.

I wonder if Steve would have beaten me up…