Focus on the fundamentals.
Underwood Samson operates on the highest levels of professionalism, focusing exclusively on efficiency and productivity. What Changez discovers, however, is that working by the motto "Focus on the fundamentals," one has to suppress much of one's emotional sensitivities and broader political awareness.
The ruins proclaim the building was beautiful.
While visiting Valparaiso on a business trip, Changez finds that the melancholic atmosphere of the once great but now declining city exerts a strong attraction to him. At odds with the American corporate disdain for the old and the obsolete, Changez displays a love for things not in spite of but precisely because of their decline.
What did I think of Princeton? Well, the answer to that question requires a story.
In the beginning of his conversation with the American, Changez deftly pivots from small talk (asking about where he is from and where he went to school) to storytelling by saying that he requires greater elaboration to answer the question in full—even though this is not exactly what his questioner was wondering about in the first place.
Looking back now, I see the power of that system, pragmatic and effective, like so much else in America.
In describing his wide-eyed first experiences of Princeton, Changez begins to hint towards a later change in perspective; here he only lets on to the fact that he recognized American culture for what it is—and more specifically, recognized Princeton as one of the bastions of this culture—without revealing the critical stance he would take towards it.
That, in an admittedly longwinded fashion, is how I think, looking back, about Princeton. Princeton made everything possible for me.
Changez spends the entirety of Chapter 1 telling the American man of his story of Princeton and his recruitment to Underwood Samson as an answer to the latter's question about how he, Changez, felt about Princeton. Changez admits, however, that as indebted as he felt to Princeton, he knew that his university experience would never make him forget his Pakistani background.
They were ferocious and utterly loyal: they had fought to erase their own civilizations, so they had nothing else to turn to.
The story of the janissaries, as told by Juan-Bautista, functions as an admonition to Changez, pointing out how at the roots of his seemingly perfect work ethic is the emptiness of having lost his cultural belonging.
Does it trouble you to make your living by disrupting the lives of others?
Juan-Bautista attempts to plumb Changez's moral conscience by presenting him with the consequences of the work he does. Changez tries to side-step this by referring to the apparent neutrality of the valuation work he does, but Juan-Bautista's point is made.
Given that you and I are now bound by a certain shared intimacy, I trust it is from the holder of your business cards.
The last line of the novel seems like it could open to a scene of violence; it is not certain whether Changez is being ironic about the intimacy he shares with the American man (since he, Changez, may have been lying the whole time) and the business card holder (since Changez has expressed his criticism of corporate culture).
Over the years I have developed the ability to take quick stock of a person—an ability that, I would be remiss to not point out, is in no small measured modeled on my former mentor, Jim.
Changez repurposes the people-reading skills he learned at Underwood Samson, where he would use them strictly for money-making purposes, for the sake of organizing anti-American protests.
Often, for example, I would rise at dawn without having slept an instant. During the preceding hours, Erica and I would have lived an entire day together.
After coming back to Lahore, Changez finds that the one part of America that has stayed with him the most is the memory of Erica. Even though she is presumably dead, she still has an unavoidable presence in his life.
