It was the Forward's fault....

that and all



"Matthe......Yaavag Foreign Ge !? "


The familiar sentence is arguably one of the most frequently asked
questions, losing only slightly to the even more grave one "...yavaag
maduve?" to someone who unluckily happens to be in the IT Industry and in
Bangalore. There was never a better conversation topic for the older
generation to suck every drop of blood the poor bloke manages to save
despite working as a techie.

It's a wave that everyone wants to be part of, and everyone wants to show
they know. The word computer is now a house-hold name. A good relief for
many topic starved aunties and uncles, but our poor techie gets stuck like
a nail that's half into the wood when its head decides to painfully break
lose.

The popular following that IT has gotten in recent years has been more due
to the lucrative travel, than what the techie believes is due to his work.
This time it is the uncles who have the upper hand in making a
conversation, owing to some 'extra' knowledge, thanks to 'external'
contacts. Aunties resign to just asking "...yenappa computer aa?"
(literally means "are u a computer?", but it is supposed to be "Are you
working in the IT field?" One must be ready to field a volley of smirks and
barrage of questions, if the victim answers a "no", though it would be the
right answer for such a question. For if you are not part of the bandwagon,
and then you'd rather term yourself a foolish old crackpot and be happy
with that, than get a loathsome look from the omnipresent aunty.

IT has such a popular following here, most do not know what they are
following, but just drift along to be 'seen'. Our aunty gets into her form,
and asks our techie, "you computer, my son also computer" ...our techie,
just out of a ctrl-alt-tab-enter, has no idea how to respond to this
inhuman portrayal, by the aunty, of her son. He just smiles and says
"wonderful aunty, which company?" and is hardly interested in what he
hears. The aunty carries on. " nun maga sapoo"...the indianised MNC
becomes "sapoo" from SAP, while our techie replies back, "I work for
GE".aunty is a bit concerned on hearing that, and blurts out "is it a good
company ? didn't u get in infosys ?"...techie is at his wits end to
explain; aunty is in no mood to understand. aunt's techie son is blushing
ear to ear.

while the general social understanding of an IT company hovers between
Infosys and Wipro, some good souls give respect to "Vorakal" too. So
aunties are generally happy if one is from any of these companies. The
other companies will only mean a detailed interrogation about the techie's
academic credentials, past criminal record, if any, and a sure minus point
as a prospective groom.

It is the conversation between aunties that is the funniest and amazingly
astonishing. Recently one of my cousins went onsite, and I being the scape
goat, who still 'had' to be in India, was the butt of all discussions.

aunty1: "foreign ge yaavaga ivnu hogodu?" (when is he going onsite?)
aunty2: "gothilla, innenu swalpa divsdalley hogthaaneno" (He might go in
some days!)
aunty1: "hmmm...they say only brilliants (sic) are sent onsite"
aunty2: "that's true!"

I was being murdered inch by inch, neat and clean. My reputation in
tatters.

This is even bearable, but get this, if a techie manages to stumble on an
onsite travel but is cancelled on that last millisecond, and then his
future is doomed, for aunties will have a field day dissecting him and
nailing him for not working well at the office. I have been most
unfortunate in this case, so much so that if I had got a call to abort the
travel 2 seconds later than what I got, I might have had to jump off the
plane mid-air.

aunties started flowing in from early evening that day, some trying to stay
oblivious of the situation, some trying hard to keep a straight face, and a
few more giving their own versions of my story, which by the way I never
told anyone!...well one aunty even had the nerve to ask me "did you have a
fight with your manager?". well I was kind enough to say "no aunty, project
got scrapped ", only to realize that the aunty had no idea what a project
meant, and instead pressed me to agree that I had indeed done some
mistake...finally she let me go when I blurted out "my manager had a fight
with the airlines"....well that was enough for me to roll over on the floor
and laugh at her, despite the 'humiliation' of not going onsite.

uncles are not far off, and are ever more eager to learn 'computers'. One
uncle was particularly curious to know as to why we guys were paid for
playing computer games !...apparently he was of this view after he had seen
his 9 year old son only playing games on his newly bought comp. I knew
better than to explain, so I told him that it was because if we won, the
company would get money. uncle's spirits rose, and in all probability he
would have gone home and pestered his innocent 9 year old son to teach him
to play games in the hopes of joining a IT company in future !

uncles are a little more "knowledgeable" though. One uncle came to me one
day, when I made the suicidal mistake of attending a social gathering full
of aunties and uncles, and asked me as to which company I worked for, and I
answered him hoping he would stop there. however , uncle had no such
intention and carried on " yaav language ?"...though stunned, i replied
back "c sharp uncle" ...uncle's face glowed and then he said " nun maga
Java , c# bidhoithanthey!" (My son works on JAVA, C sharp has long fallen
from grace) ..In most uncles view, languages are like company shares, the
value of which keeps fluctuating on an hourly basis.

Though salary is something of a sensitive issue, uncles don't give
didly-squat about that and continue questioning the techie on the same. I
was ripped apart when i told my uncle that my gross was 25k, to which my
uncle in suspended euphoria exclaimed that his son earned 2.5 lakh per
month at onsite. Having no room to argue, i kept mum, when my uncle went
off again "why don't u ask your manager for a raise".... I told him i would
consider his advice and ask, though my manager was bit of a dragon, unlike
my uncle's son's manger, who was a saint just short of a halo!

Even weirder is the funny way in which people take those mails managers
send to techies and their team, as to the good work being done. one of my
cousins who recently joined my company got such a mail from his manager,
and he thought it was a good idea to take a print out and show it to his
father, a folly he still regrets to this day. My uncle not only read the
copy, but made a hundred photocopies and distributed it as pamphlets to his
near and dear ones. My dad got one too, and i had to field some intense
questioning at home, since i had not managed to get one such letter even
once ! i had even gone to the extent of thinking about printing one on my
own just to escape the 'humiliation'.

while it's often funny to listen to the weird misconceptions people have
about IT, it gets irritating if it goes too far. It would be a boring place
without the aunties and the uncles, but it would be a wonderful place, if
they knew better than to draw conclusions about one's work, of which they
know so less about !