What does it take to wake you up!!

Interesting! Very interesting indeed!

Just a couple of weeks ago, on my flight to Italy, I was reading a book on Global cultures and trying to get to know something about Italians. After all, I was enroute to meet a supplier and was expecting some areas to negotiate upon. As I was reading, I was reminded of the Global Leadreship elective during Cranfield MBA.
While I remained conscious of "stereotypes", the reading was indeed very interesting. Armed with some basics, I was watchful of what I saw during my two day stay and even applied a couple of learnings from the book. After all, cultural senstivity isn't just meant for books.

The book had ignited enough fire in me to check out what it said about India. So while it used the Italian Opera to explain about Italy, India was explained through the Dance of Shiva. I must admit, I wasn't as convinced. However, this is not what I wanted to highlight here.

During this trip, it occurred to me that I do not hear about or see this "cultural senstivity" in Britishers or Europeans. But then I can't blame them. I myself never felt any cultural sensitivity while in India - perhaps the most varied multi cultural society in the world. And I was asking myself - "Sandeep, you never realised that you were amonsgt Bengali's, Punjabi's and Pandit's while you were in India! Then why this talk about this cultural sensitivity now?" And the only answer I could think of was "Well, I am awake now!"