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Funny : Yavaag foreign ge? :)

 
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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 !
 
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nice...
 
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Funny but somewhat true
 
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Good one.
 
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Originally posted by Rajaji Nagar:
Good one.



 
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Verrry funny
 
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One other aunty-speak to add here: "hudgi computer madkondiddale" - literal meaning: the girl has done a computer. They just mean she's learnt to use a computer: word processing, languages, who knows. It boosts the girl's value in the marriage market if she's done computers.

PS. An update for the curious: I am in the UK now - the land of Angela Poynton and other Javaranch luminaries. I work in central London - where women tend to stand with their legs slightly apart, simply because they've been travelling on the Tube during peak hours for too long
 
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hey, long time!
just curious to know if you visited the famed ( why on earth ?! ) Trafalgar square. I was disappointed big time.
 
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Originally posted by soumya ravindranath:
hey, long time!
just curious to know if you visited the famed ( why on earth ?! ) Trafalgar square. I was disappointed big time.



Well Trafalgar Square is famous for number of reasons but amonngst Indians it became popular after it was featured in the movie Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge . Thats the place where Amrish Puri used to feed pegions and became so popular amongst Indians/Pakistanies that local authorities had to put up a board in Punjabi saying not to feed peigons!

But what made u disappointed?
 
soumya ravindranath
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Originally posted by Amit Agrawal:
But what made u disappointed?


Well, what bothers me is that I don't know why I always had a grand picture of that square and London would always bring T.Square to my mind. When I reached there, I felt, as they say in one of the Indian languages "pichchenisithu" ( ).
Anyway, let me not hijack this thread.
 
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ha ha ha .... that was funny but true

full credits for narration
 
Nanhesru Ningyake
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Hi Soumya - long time indeed. I've driven past, but never visited that place. Gotto check it out.

Returning to the thread... Some of us from ultra-traditional families would be familiar with the ayurvedic Panchagavya treatment for purification after returning from a foreign land. This consists of five products from a cow in various proportions: milk, curd, ghee, urine, and dung. I was given this when I got back from the US last year
 
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Originally posted by Nanhesru Ningyake:
This consists of five products from a cow in various proportions: milk, curd, ghee, urine, and dung. I was given this when I got back from the US last year



Hope it washed your all sins ..
 
soumya ravindranath
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Originally posted by Nanhesru Ningyake:
Hi Soumya - long time indeed. I've driven past, but never visited that place. Gotto check it out.

Returning to the thread... Some of us from ultra-traditional families would be familiar with the ayurvedic Panchagavya treatment for purification after returning from a foreign land. This consists of five products from a cow in various proportions: milk, curd, ghee, urine, and dung. I was given this when I got back from the US last year




Ohmegod! Even now ?!! I remember as a child, running away to wipe it all off after they sprinkled on some occassions
 
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Regardless of the Geography, Aunties and Uncles seem to badger with the same kind of questions ! For example, In Chennai and around you can typically hear conversations in the lines of " Ponnu computer pandra" - literally meaning "Girl is doing computer" - but to be understood as "Girl knows to operate/ is studying some computer/ courses"
 
Nanhesru Ningyake
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>Ohmegod! Even now ?!!
Yeah, sigh. I was hoodwinked. We were in this temple, where my parents had organised a special "welcome back" prayer party. After all the prayers and rituals, we sat down for lunch on the floor, waiting for the food to get served onto the green banana leaves in front of us. And suddenly, we saw this priest giving out to everyone what looked innocuously like Panchamruta (milk, honey, ghee, yogurt and sugar) - and we lapped it up. Only after he had safely passed by, someone revealed that this was Panchagavya that we just had
 
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