An Italian in Shanghai

‘Have you told your wife that we are coming over ?’ , Massimo asked normally .
‘No , I said , a little surprised . Though it set me thinking .
‘Oh , you must always call up and inform .’
‘I’ve never done that ‘. And why haven’t I , I wondered .
‘ In Italy , it is normal practice to call up your mate before you go home . It saves both a lot of embarrassment , in case she is with a companion ‘
‘ Massimo , what are you saying ! ’, I smiled nervously .
‘ Happened to me once . Found Marie with someone else in our house and we had to big fight and separated .’
An interesting concept , I thought .
‘I trust my wife ‘, I said .
‘Aha ‘, said Massimo .

Massimo Guantieri could easily be described as a handsome , dashing , young man . As Director – international sales , he was , in essence , the first foreigner that I spend a considerable amount of time with , just about close to two years.
Thirty two year old Massimo was tall and lanky , and had hair till his shoulders , which he would constantly dig his hands through pushing them behind his years . He wore well-designed clothes , stitched to fit and was pretty aggressive for an Italian . Through him I learnt much about Italians including bits and pieces of the language , even though it was Mrs. Bergero , wife of the operations director who formally took my Italian classes at eight every morning for over eleven months . And Massimo was quite intelligent , could talk on a variety of subjects sports , politics and most of all ,women . He was pretty blunt and direct too , mincing fewer words .
‘You still drive this ‘ he laughed , on day , pointing to my fiat .’we had Fiats around the world war . This is a forty five year old car ! ’
‘Hey , lacs of cars are used as taxis in Mumbai and on other towns like Pune , lot of old businessmen still drive the fiat . We have only three cars , the fiat , the ambassador and the maruti . For the rough and tumble of Indian roads , Fiat and Ambassador score hands down ’ I had said then .
Massimo Guantieri , Managing Director – Solatalco ,read his card from the ‘other life ‘ . The Solatalco , was a largish discotheque in Turin , hundred miles south of Rome . I could visualize the scene – Massimo , standing in the first floor abbey overlooking the wild below , smoking his cigars . As the Disc jockey would rattle out his numbers , Massimo would prospect for a companion for the extended Italian weekend . The reason why he had started free rueda lessons each evening was to have the largest crowd every weekend , in fact the place was packed and sweaty every Sunday . Young couples preferred the Solatalco to the others like chez nous or patio , primarily due to these free classes that were the brainchild of Massimo .
Turin was a historic roman camp which transformed itself to become the first Italian capital , which is the reason for it numerous museums . It also has some great wines and chocolates . It has eighteen kilometers of arcades that criss-cross the city centres keeping one away from the hot summer sun and the rain .
‘ One has to be thin in Turin , women there like it that way and can strike a friendship with you on the beach easily .’, said Massimo when I asked him why he didn’t eat much . Spicy Indian food would make him sweat like crazy , and he would only eat small morsels from small helpings .

Sicily and the south of Italy , which was Massimo’s sales territoty , houses the notorious mafia .Some of it has been made famous by Mario Puzo with his Don Corleone and co. Massimo used to describe vividly the sales calls he would make with the businessmen there , particularly the one about a small trader of industrial pumps tucked inside one of Sicily’s numerous mini-localities .
Massimo would come in his stark red Porsche car and screech into a halt just a couple of metres from the shopfront , enough to make an impact . As he would emerge with his briefcase in a smart suit with an aggressive demeanour , the businessman would be forced to take notice of Massimo inspite of any other customers present .
The first reaction would be the pulling out of a gun and placing it on the table . An average Sicilian is always prepared to face the mafia . In this , they are pretty much like the Indians , lots of taxes , lots of black money , lots of corruption and lots of political masala . In fact , the current prime minister of Italy , Sergio Berlusoni was our competitor then . But since then , he has bought over large television and radio networks and become a large media baron . With his becoming the prime minister , he is the media and he is the minister . Known for his unscrupulous business acumen , he can quash a competitor at his own free will now that he is the politician and has interests in many industrial and commercial businesses .
So, the businessman would keep his gun back only when he was reasonably assured of the fact that the visitor was harmless , didn’t want to collect taxes and didn’t want his customers or business .
Massimo would then kickstart his sales spiel , effectively using all the tools in the trade and attempting a conversion of the business to a client .
If, at the end of the entire exercise , the businessman was still not convinced , Massimo would try his brahma-astra , the ultimate weapon .
He would get up from the table by dramatically pushing his chair back .
‘Hey listen , if you don’t advertise with me , I lose one customer , that is you . I still have one thousand five hundred customers this year . But , you will surely lose the potential thousands of customers out there . The equation is pretty imbalanced , as you can see , with your loss being greater than mine . I will still drive a Porsche ,keep a great job , get a good salary , but you may just lose the opportunity to reach many new customers with your product message , have a better choice of customers , make more money and more profits . I leave the decision to you , you can think about it for a minute and tell me .’
Must say this is one of the most radical sales pitches I had ever seen and Massimo was very good at demonstrating the effect it would have on the Sicilian businessmen , who would typically drive around on a scooter , struggling to build his business .
Massimo was quite an aggressive charmer and they don’t make them like him anymore .

Walking down marine drive in downtown Mumbai in the middle of the night is always a great experience . On one cold December night with an India-pakistan day-night cricket match being played in the nearby Wankhede stadium , Massimo, the dude , enlightened me in more ways than one .
The match had crossed the half time limit and was nearing the end of the second innings with India batting . Pakistan had made a very large total of over three hundred and fifteen runs and India needed to cross that total in the fifty overs . A tough task , but has been done before by many teams and could now be done by India too . They had begun well with Sachin Tendulkar having crossed a fifty run mark milestone and an ecstatic crowd egging him onto a century . Vinod Kambli was supporting him in a hundred run stand . Runs were flowing and everything seemed to point to an Indian victory . Television telecast on the screen above and the floodlit match could be seen live at a distance from the revolving restaurant on the rooftop of the Ambassador Hotel where we had finished a quick dinner . We then decided to walk around the area , consuming some of the Mumbai weather and spirit .
‘Lot of gays in India ?’ said Massimo suddenly . It was a strange observation and I had never thought about it before , so I thought for a minute .
“How do you say that , Massimo ?
‘Look at these people . they are all holding hands and walking . Look at that green shirt .Look there at the white shirt . See the guys on the bike , they share a cigarette , the pillion’s hand is on the rider’s legs ’
I looked around . Sure , these guys were holding hands and the pillion on the bike had his hand on the thighs of the rider and the white shirt twosome had arms on each others shoulders . It suddenly dawned on me . They couldn’t be gay .This is normal here . People physically touching each other without malafide intent .
‘In Italy , you wouldn’t hold another man’s hands ‘less you were gay !’’
‘Good observation , Massimo . But , here , I guess , we have a nation of a billion people and urban centres are crowded . Your Turin has a population of less half a million while Mumbai is fifteen million . Why , even Pune is a good three million . So this holding hands and using shoulder support is just a gesture to confirm a state of belongness in these big cities . And the pillion on the bike is just making sure he holds onto his seat by clasping the rider . Nothing more , nothing less .’
‘ Aha ‘, said Massimo.
Another set of five –six guys broke into our scene and there was a lot of back slapping , camaraderie and loud laughter .
Massimo observed them intently . Though he didn’t say a word , I could make out that he was re-adjusting his definition of such behaviour in his mind .
We had walked now for a good fifteen minutes when suddenly , there was a surge of people on the marine drive road . In fact , the crowd swelled and swelled .
‘ Is the match over ?’, I asked someone
‘ No , Sachin is out and so is Kambli . We will lose the match ’
‘What happened ?’ said Massimo .
‘We are about to lose the match and since it is already one am , people are heading home to sleep . Tomorrow is a working day again ‘
‘I don’t understand ‘
‘The average runs that India needs per over is very high . So there is no chance that we will win . And Sachin , who is the star batsman , is out . ‘
‘Aha ‘, was all Massimo said .
As more and more people started onto the streets , Massimo couldn’t but help comment .
‘When our team is losing , we cheer them more . We want them to win ‘ he said gesticulating with a clenched fist .’ We don’t leave the ground till the last minute . Another attempt , another goal . How can you leave the team alone when they need support the most ! ’
I smiled . How strange , I thought that he should observe this .
For us , it’s normal to abandon cheering or supporting our struggling team and attributing the blame to anything and everything . We are , by our very nature , not a sporty nation and use scarcity as a survival tool .
A land of plenty makes one think of opportunities as infinite and therefore develops one to live a life accepting failure and encouraging re-attempts at success . A land of scarcity , of opportunities , of wealth , of infrastructure develops survival instincts in each of its citizens , ready to abandon failures and condemning the failed .
There’s the famous crab analogy . A bucketful of American crabs needed to be sealed with a lid , while a bucketful of Indian crabs could be transported without a cover . While American crabs would help each other and climb out of the bin , the Indian crabs would constantly keep pulling each other down , making sure none of them was free ever. Sheer survival demands it .

Massimo’s email came like a bolt from the blue .It’s been ten years almost since he had left for an assignment in Spain and we had stopped communicating .
‘Massimo ! you’re in China .’ , I shouted into the phone , calling him on the number he had given in his email .
‘Yes , friend , teach English here ’
‘English ! Man , you learnt a lot of it from me ‘I rejoined excitedly .
‘I write to you to acknowledge that fact , friend . Remembered our days together ‘, Massimo was a quintessential public relations guy too .
‘Send me royalties !’ I laughed out .
I can vividly picture Massimo , the tall and lanky italian , with shoulder length hair standing in front of a class ful of short chinese men and women with small eyes , all wanting a piece of the global action ridding themselves of the lack of English knowledge , the one thing standing in between them and capitalism .

Teaching English in China is probably the best money making opportunity in today’s world . For Massimo Guantieri , as always , and as the Sicilian businessman probably thought about later , the equation is again loaded in Massimo’s favour .