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Saturday, January 30, 2010

ITPL - Technology meets Tomfoolery!

In recent times the IT bosses of corporate India have been peeved with IPL Commisoner , Lalit Modi. A little digging (which included completely legitimate methods such as hacking the gmail accounts of some of the IT bosses) revealed that these bosses are unhappy about being dethroned by Lalit Modi as "India's sleaziest boss".

However our resillient leaders would not give up that mantle so fast would they. An insider just let me onto the happenings of a top secret meeting between the head honchos of the IT companies. The three hour long meeting , with a 2 hour , 22 minute lunch break (Working lunch ofcourse!) and a 27 min tea break had a very strategic agenda; "Genesis of ITPL - Indian Technologist's Premier League". Presiding over the meeting was former head honcho Bandhan Lalkini (Henceforth referred to as BN) , who took time out of his rather busy schedule what with his "not happening" Unique whatever number project.

It was decided that while the basic elements of the IPL would be retained such as playing poor cricket and hyping the event beyond reason , the ITPL would strive to create a radically differnt format and outmaneuver Lalit Modi at his own game.

"Let's go global" said one of the leaders reasoning that India's IT footprint is truly global. When asked to elaborate he furrowed his eyebrows and was seen frantically sms'ing his PR officer. Sensing his discomfort BN promptly announced lunch , exactly after 4 minutes of starting the meeting. After dilly-dallying for the entire first hour of the lunch break , the leader eventually said let's have inter continental matches. (Strange how people's brainwaves are preceeded by the ominous sounds of a phone vibrator going off!). Said the leader, Each of us will represent a continent and the players of each continent will play each other once in an 18 ball match , stressing on the extreme efficiency of an 18 ball match. This was met with overwhelming cheer and overall consensus with the expected exception of Wiconn! and Infomiss. With a frown on his perinneal frown covered face , the head of Wiconn! said "But who gets North America" unwittingly lettting on that all his company's revenues come from North America. After a few minutes of mature dialogue , which included starting at each other with mouth fulls of Malai Kofta (Slurp!) , Wiconn! won the battle by sheer virtue of their boss' voluminous tresses.Infomiss grudgingly took Australia and then suddenly smiled smugly as he realized he's going to get the best "phoren" players.

An impatient BN suddenly urged the IT leaders to move on to more important things like team names. TDS (Tada Data Services) went first and announced that it's team would be called TDS Technologists , re-inforcing the widely held belief that TDS does nothing innovative , except for structuring employee compensation. Wiconn! went next and announced that their team would be called Wiconn! Workaholics , unwittingly letting on its work culture. After a bout of unimaginitave naming , recently formed company Mandira (Not of Mandira Bedi fame!) Satyum was asked to announce its team name. In a rather ironic twist , they named their team Mandira Satyum Mega Scamsters , displaying a panache for thier new found honesty.

Sly old Wiconn! tried suggesting that the foren players be from different sports such as baseball. However the other astute leaders called Wiconn!'s bluff by saying that even if Wiconn! chose to get cricketers all they could get is sorry wasted baseball players. IBUM India suddenly came up with an innovative idea. They proposed that the referral system be replaced something more representative of the IT Industry. They then went onto explain how they have spent the last 14 years and 3 months perfecting their product "Bug's Bunny". On questioning , it was found that the Bug's bunny had the ability to take a close look at the camera replay's and decide if the batsman was indeed a bunny (Out!) or not. A batsman who is out would get the message "Fatal Error" and a batsman who is not out would get "Salary". However Bug's Bunny seems to have just one small bug and every referral seems to return "Honey Bunny" as the output. The ETA for resolving this bug is 2018 subject to resources available in Turkmenistan.

"What about cheer leaders?" said the woman leader of IDONTC Infotech , sensing a chance to have her more glamorous staff shake their booties every now and then. The more right wing leader of Hyper Choleric Limited , responded by thumping his rather meaty fist on a non existent table. Said he , all in one breath , "We shall not allow silly things like glamourous women and equality of sexes to ever percolate our Industry". Our cheer leaders will be giant size advertisements of our IT products such as our lap breaking notebooks and super sized room computers and we will display our new age features such as Wi-Fi and Inbuilt speakers." Another staring contest between the two leaders ensued and the winner is yet to be announced.

After a lot of friendly banter about the inflated annual results , the commitee moved onto the last item of the agenda - Awards for winners. The more pragmatic leader from TDS announced that his company would sponsor the the player of each match award - The player of the match would get a Rolodex organizer worth $ 35. He stated that this award would be consistent with the kind of salaries his company pays. Not to be outdone by this the leader of Wiconn! announced that the player of the tournament would get a fully paid three days,two nights vacation in a place of their choice and the only condition is that the place has to be within 100 miles radius of it's headquarters Bangalore. This gave them an array of choices to choose from such as Hosur , Kolar and Hoskote. Golgol India agreed to sponsor the award for the winners and runners up for the tournament. Each of them would be awarded one steroid operating system phone and a 1 gazzillion byte sized mailbox. Suddenly , from the corner of the room came a small mousy voice "We will give the bottom placed team 1000 share's a player". The voice was traced to the mousy leader of Lehlady Infosystems India Ltd.

The ITPL commitee has announced that the first match will be played between TDS Techonogists and Wiconn! Workaholics in Si-Ki-IM , China. When quizzed about the choice of the venue , he blushed and said "You see China is one place where none of us have any presence" and then suddenly looked into his laptop and said "I am sorry , the correct answer to that question is that we want to improve Sino-Indian relationships and spread the game of cricket to hitherto unseen territories such as China and Togo"

On hearing the announcement the Pakistan Interior Minister has urged all Pakistani establishments from doing business with Indian IT companies including hacking Indian websites.

PS : I have great respect for the IT companies...after all i get my share of end of the month "peanuts" with astonishing accuracy!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

True Blue TULU (Huh!)

I have a confession to make…I speak TULU at home…there I said it…the cat , the mouse in the cat’s mouth and the flea on the cat’s fur are now all out of the bag. I repeat I speak Tulu…not ZULU…not JIGLOO (The non-existent language that the non-existent igloo land superheroes speak)

Now one may ask…okay you speak Tulu…so what big deal…but then someone always says “Hey…Remind me again…who else in the world speaks Tulu”...and that’s when the dilemma really starts and my cheeks turn a shade best described as “crimson red”…you know who speaks tulu…one Ms. Rai…the one and only BIG Bahu…the one who in recent times has been found constantly clinging to the BIG PAA, MAA and HA! (I knew the last clue would crack it open for you!)

Oh yea and the HA! here is certainly Abhishek Bachan…if you thought I hold him in contempt then you are definitely mistaken…I scorn at him only for being a flea bag always working for big banners and grinning stupidly when posing for a picture with the above mentioned Ms. Rai. From time to time he redeems himself by acting in a world beater movie like Dhai Akshar Prem Ke Guru!

Allright Allright I ramble!

Satanic Salm 1 (The P is non-existent!) : Thou shall not ramble…not even if your entire blog sounds like one big ramble!


What can be worse than being associated in the same clan as Ms. Rai…well…think hard…you are also immediately associated with a certain “Oh I love the queen though I am too thick to understand what she says” Ms. Shetty (Ouch!) or a certain “Can’t Act, Can’t Dance , Can’t Emote and Should not exist” Mr. Shetty (Very Ouch!).

The perils of being a TBT (true blue tulu! – heck if laugh my ass out can be LMAO then true blue tulu can be TBT) does not stop with the aforementioned references. Some of us have also been lucky enough to have some “good buddies” from that distant planet Venus who conveniently forget that we speak Tulu and not Zulu. This trend has been especially noted when the above mentioned buddy is about to introduce you to pretty people of the Venetian kind. Privileged “good buddies” who are sometimes referred to as wives, take the extra liberty of saying that in addition to speaking tulu you also belong to the Zulu tribe and some really privileged good buddies (Wives with a wicked sense of humor!) describe you as a sword brandishing, leaf wearing, Zulu swearing mass of dark skin living in the jungles of…er…we will come back to that in a while!

There’s also the standard question “Where are you guys originally from?” This question when asked has the astounding effect of raising the questioner’s eyebrows in suspicion and simultaneously wrinkling their nose as though there’s a bit of horse dung on their recently shaved/waxed moustaches. Of course the answer is very straight forward and the average TBT would either say Mumbai or Gelfu (said in a True Blue True Blue Tulu accent!). However the lesser mortal TBT’s like me have a real challenge answering that question considering that I spent all my formative years in Tamil Nadu. If I risk saying Tamil Nadu then I have to be prepared to be called a “Curd Rice eating pseudo intellectual Madrasi”. Some people may even assume my name is some paradoxical thing like Chatur Buddhulingam Iyer. So I quietly say “Bangalore” leaving it sufficiently vague!


And there are names…okay I admit I don’t have a name as complex as Venkatachalapathi Rastafarian Hingolipalli or even mildly difficult such as Tenzin Gyatso (The Dalai Lama’s real name in case you care!). However, a name that has a Shibaruraya attached to it cannot be dismissed as a petty pawn in the war to find the most difficult to pronounce Indian names. The distortions to my last name have ranged from the mildly disconcerting “Sbraya” to the heart-attack inducing “Shibabababa okay I give up”.


Alas…being a TBT can’t be a fun thing…and being a TBT married to the Really privileged good buddy is no mean feat. But hey there’s one really bright (Not yet gained the sheen of silver!) lining on this rather nebulous cloud…there are only about 2 million people in the whole wide world who speak my language…which means I can swear at a good 6.5 BN people and they won’t even know about it…take that you snooty “marle’s” who speak a more common, easy to understand, well documented language with infinitely more acceptance. Sigh…the travails of being a True Blue Tulu!

PS: I made up that bit about Jigloo…really!

PPS : The jungle that I talked about…Bangalore is what you need to look for…see I caught you napping and not paying attention!

PPPS: Before you get your “kill that plagiarist” swords out, I confess part of the Chatur Buddhulingam name was inspired from our very own Chatur Ramalingam!