Life has never been better for Pankaj Srivastava, a tall, soft-voiced insurance manager. He surpassed his business targets and has been promoted twice. His company sends him to conferences all over India and is rewarding him with a three-day vacation in Dubai.
But the faster he rises, the more anxious he gets.
“I am in the big league now. But everybody at this level speaks English, and I don’t,” Srivastava said in a mix of Hindi and broken English. “I stay in hotels where even the waiters speak English. At the conferences, I stay quiet because I don’t want them to laugh at my English.”
So for the past week, he has been attending a conversational English class at an establishment here called Uma’s English Academy.