yavaag foreign ge?" (When are u going to)

Got this mail a while back.. a funny yet realistic outlook
on the aunts and uncles who sometimes.. become a tad bit bothersome
to the indian techies..



Fwd:
It is lengthy but about our current life….



"....yavaag foreign ge?" (When are u going to
foreign?)


The familiar sentence is arguably one of the most
frequently asked questions, losing only slightly to
the even more grave one "...yavaag maduve?" (When are
u getting married?) 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" (my son 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 ?" (which 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 !