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 !