Our Flat Neighborhood

Tom Friedman, in his much-touted book, “The World is Flat,” starts his story by recalling advice given to him on the first tee of the KGA (Karnataka Golf Association) golf course in downtown Bangalore, “Aim for either the IBM or Microsoft building.”

The KGA golf course and the Embassy Golf Link (EGL) Technology Park, where the IBM and Microsoft buildings are located, are separated only by a thin wire fence along an access road.

The KGA golf course, IBM, Microsoft, EGL Technology Park, along with Fidelity, Dell, Intel, Oracle and HP are neighbors of ours in this incredibly shrinking world. Upon our initial arrival in Bangalore, we choose an apartment in a complex called the Diamond District. To get to our building, we walked part way down the KGA Road that terminates at the golf course, spied the IBM and Microsoft logos over the golf course greens and turned right into our apartment complex. The “wonder” in Friedman’s golfing hint seems far less mysterious when you are in the middle of this globalization phenomenon.

Jay’s new office building, which opened on 6-April, is in the same office complex as IBM and Microsoft.

The opening of this new facility is one of the reasons we are in Bangalore. Jay’s company, BearingPoint, had previously opened a facility on the east coast in Chennai, but wanted to expand operations in the boomtown of Bangalore. We were fortunate that BearingPoint selected Bangalore. The climate here is temperate compared to the searing heat and humidity in the coastal cities. Bangalore is also the most cosmopolitan city in Southern India.

Just a few weeks prior to the opening, Jay visited the office. The office was more a construction site than the home of a cutting edge global player. Dust swirled about, women carried construction material on their heads, workmen poured concrete and an army of others chiseled, scraped, nailed, sawed and wired to make things right. Expecting all this would be completed for the planned opening seemed hopelessly optimistic. However, we continued to be amazed at the results derived from the industry of the Indian workers.

On opening day, a small pooja, or worship service, was conducted to consecrate the opening. With the gleam of a new office, Jay has a renewed sense of the aura that has been the rapture of Bangalore since the early days of the IT (Information Technology) boom.

The world is flattening, but we think Friedman got two things wrong in his book. First, the KGA golf course is not in downtown Bangalore. On the contrary, it is on the southeastern boundary of the city near the airport. Secondly, the world has been flattening for some time. We have walked the beaches in Goa upon which the Portuguese landed in the 1490’s, toured churches built by Italian architects hired by the Portuguese in the 1700’s and continue in our everyday conversations to speak the English the Brits left behind. The world was flattened many generations before us. It is just now our time to navigate the terrain.