The 145;inscrutable146; American

For all the complaints about American jobs migrating here through outsourcing, few Americans have thought to follow them. Seven months ago, Josh Bornstein did. He quit his job at an investment banking firm in Los Angeles and came to Bangalore. He pays 110 a month to share a two-bedroom apartment with a Japanese roommate. He takes the company bus to work at the Infosys campus, as lush and large as Microsoft8217;s in Seattle. He has Indian, European, Israeli and Asian friends, and he has become a familiar figure on this city8217;s thriving pub scene.

8216;8216;Everyone talks about globalisation left and right,8217;8217; he said. 8216;8216;This is the way the world is moving.8217;8217; Perhaps so, but he is the only one of his friends in the United States who even considered going to India for work after college.

He has become a member of a cosmopolitan village that has formed as multinational companies flock here, and Indian companies try to become multinationals. The city is full of foreigners8212;10,000 to 12,000 are registered here with the office of foreign registration. At some bars, the crowds are so mixed they look as if they could be in London.

The foreigners are staffing multinational companies, filling five-star hotels to overflowing and on Sundays packing the all-you-can-eat Champagne Brunch at the Leela Palace hotel, where the executive chef is, naturally, French. Those here for longer stints are filling exclusive housing colonies and the international schools springing up to cater to their children.

Few Americans are among them, even though previous generations of young American graduates have pursued literary careers in Paris or tried to take capitalism and democracy to Russia and Eastern Europe. India would seem a logical next choice, given an economy that grew by 8.2 per cent last year, a software and services sector that grew by 30 per cent last year and the way outsourcing is rewriting the rules of the American and the global economy.

But most Americans still feel India can teach them more about spiritual practices than business models. Not Bornstein. On his first weekend, he met a Westerner who said he came to India because his guru told him to. 8216;8216;I can8217;t really relate to that,8217;8217; said Bornstein, who was raised in Chicago.

He first learned about Infosys through its summer global internship programme, which this year received 8,500 applications for 75 spots. Bornstein ended up being one of them in 2001 when a summer job in San Francisco fell through after the hi-tech economy tanked. A friend told him about Infosys, and he figured it could be his only chance both to go to India and to get a summer job.

The uniqueness of the experience helped him collar four job offers after graduation from Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. He chose an investment bank in Los Angeles, which he found too hierarchical. Miserable there, he got in touch with his old boss at Infosys, and soon had a job in Bangalore.

He works in corporate planning, helping seven units hone their business plans, and regularly sits in on meetings with Infosys chief executive Nandan Nilekani, and other senior executives.

Infosys is one of many companies whose gain has been American software programmers8217; loss in this era of outsourcing. Bornstein extends his sympathy but wonders why Americans so readily accepted the 8216;Made in China8217; label when that cost 8216;8216;thousands or even millions of jobs8217;8217;.

He does not see himself as taking sides, but gaining experience. 8216;8216;It is impossible I would have a similar experience in my life at this stage in the United States,8217;8217; Bornstein said.

He knows Indian culture places a high value on experience, and he is lucky that his height masks his youth. 8216;8216;I8217;ve lied more about my age here than I ever have,8217;8217; Bornstein said. 8216;8216;Honestly, I don8217;t know if Nandan knows how old I am.8217;8217;

As it turns out, Nilekani did not. 8216;8216;How old is he?8217;8217; he asked. 8216;8216;My God,8217;8217; he said when he heard.

Bornstein does not dwell on whether his American identity has allowed him to leapfrog to a higher position than would be available to a 23-year-old Indian, and neither does Nilekani. As he sees it, Bornstein8217;s attributes of intelligence and a positive attitude are supplemented by his cultural perspective.

The company wants to become truly multinational and multicultural, able to win business in any country. That requires interaction with other nationalities, but most of Infosys8217;s 650 or so foreign employees work in the company8217;s offices abroad. 8216;8216;When the bulk of the working population is here, we also need to create some diversity here so people are comfortable in working with different cultures,8217;8217; Nilekani said.

He said he would clone Bornstein if he could. He has a boy-next-door appeal, a studied pace of speech that suggests a brain at work. He brings adaptability: a curiosity towards, but no critique of, other cultures.

Bornstein works 10- to 12-hour days, but lives well. His salary is less than a third of what he earned in Los Angeles but he is still able to save a few hundred dollars a month and afford the Champagne Brunch at the Leela, where the French chef is a friend. 8216;8216;I8217;m enjoying myself,8217;8217; he said.

8212; The New York Times