News & the Garden er... Silicon er... Outsourced City

Bangalore has been the most amazing place that I have ever known. Some could say that it’s because I have never lived anywhere else. But then most would agree that it’s one Indian city that keeps making news all the time. OK, Delhi makes news too, but then we are talking about news of the right kind. Beginning of as one of the earliest Industrial Hubs it’s today one of the fastest growing cosmopolitan cities. Not to forget the amazing number of personalities who have grown out of Bangalore and become champions in fields as varied as business, culture, sports .... Right from its people to the weather, everything has been kind to me. The one time I have been really scared of Bangalore was during my high school days. Some of us had become great fans of Nostradamus and had decided for sure that the third world war was to happen in 1996. We had even decided that the war was to be fought between Islam and Christianity with India remaining neutral. A movie also claimed that the statue of liberty would be the target of the first missile attack on America. One of my good friend immediately indicated that if Pakistan had a chance to attack India, its first target would be Bangalore. And why not! Bangalore had the most number of prime industries then (read HAL, ITI, MICO). That’s when I decided I had to get out of Bangalore to a place where Pakistan could never reach. Who cared if Pakistan had a missile that would travel the distance to Bangalore or not, what was more important was that Nostradamus had indicated a war and it was bound to happen.

Three incidents over the past couple of weeks have suddenly increased Bangalore’s fame. Firstly the Merriam-Webster Dictionary gave a new meaning to the word.
Bangalored: 1. Outsourced 2. to have your work done by another.
There were even guys walking about in the US wearing T-shirts that read “I have been Bangalored”. It certainly was quite innovative of the guys at ‘Merriam-Webster’ to come up with such a thing. But let’s look at the backlash. Suddenly all Bangaloreans have turned out to be the worst possible lot on earth. All we do is get the poor Yankees ‘Bangalored’ and have fun doing their job. Further, our poor kids have another English word that they need to learn and do horrible things like ‘spelling tests’, ‘dictations’, ‘sentence construction’ and what not. However newsmakers are having a field day going about announcing that we are only the second city in the world to have our name as a part of the English language and that it’s the most prestigious thing that could have happened to all of us living in Bangalore. Being the true bangalorean that I’m; I want to correct these claim makers on two accounts. Firstly, it’s not the first time that Bangalore has been a part of the English language. The term ‘Bangalore Torpedo’ has been in vogue right from the pre-second world war days. Secondly, the only other city that is a part of the dictionary (Shanghai) has a meaning-
Shanghaied: to put aboard a ship by force often with the help of liquor or a drug.
Anybody claiming that the whole thing is prestigious for Bangalore, needs to be shanghaied and sent to the top of Statue of Liberty during ‘Nostradamus’ Third World war’.

The second Incident that came into light recently was the American Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry’s claim that Bangalore was the best wired city in the world. Infact his statement went like this “If Bangalore in India can be completely wired, so should all of America”. Let’s all forgive the poor man for saying something as absurd as that. The American presidents generally have very little quotients of Intelligence (or anything else for that matter). Mr. George Bush during his run-up to the presidency did not even know who the President of India was, when questioned by the media. And you certainly don’t need to be the smartest person on earth to say with absolute certainty that he still wouldn’t know. A president before him was dumb enough to use his own office for some of his adventures with his secretary while his army was on theirs in far-off Serbia and Montenegro. Mr. Kerry’s statement is certain to have made most Americans decide that Bangalore is the place to be in. They are probably imagining Bangalore to be a completely Wi-Fi zone with the entire population carrying Laptops permentantly connected to the internet. Bangaloreans, for them must be the most hi-fi people with each one carrying a satellite phone enabling constant connectivity. We must probably be carrying out every activity of our day, right from shopping to education through the internet. I bet they think that power and telecommunication failures are unheard of in Bangalore. Little do the poor souls know that clearing the CAT exams and getting into an Engineering college itself takes half a year at good old Bangalore. And talk about an international airport!!! Well talking is all that we have been doing for over ten years now. Anyways let the world live their fantasy and we will live in our reality.

The third news about Bangalore that hit the headlines was the IT bosses’ including Mr. Premji’s announcement that they wished to move their operations out of Bangalore. Now when the announcement talks about moving from Bangalore to places like Kerala and Orissa, it’s time to realize that something is seriously wrong. Mr. Premji’s claims were the following- Bangalore had very high labour costs, very poor technical infrastructure and very little developmental plan. I could never disagree on any of their points. Only the other day I left office to get back home and realized that if only I had moved the other direction on Hosur Road, I probably would have reached Salem, in the time I took to reach home. The traffic situation in Bangalore is the worst I can think of. Traveling on the roads during evening hours could come only second to watching Saas-Bahu serials in terms of self inflicted torture. As for the high labour costs, the IT moguls themselves are to be blamed for that. They after all started the trend of poaching and offering bizarre salary packages to get hold of quality manpower. Now when they realize that the employees’ demand is getting beyond their reach, they are getting on to the blame game. Nevertheless these public statements made by some of the reputed companies are definitely a cause for concern and we certainly hope that the powers responsible act swiftly to take care of the infrastructure and developmental requirements of these job providers. Else there would occur a time in the near future, when half of Bangaloreans job would be Bangalored.....

P.S: I made an error in saying that CAT instead of CET exams are cleared to get into engineering colleges. With regards to the word Bangalored; the information is courtsey 'Times of India' and a lot of other sites on the net that can be found through Google. I had also checked the online ‘Merriam-Webster’ dictionary before posting and had realized that it was not updated as yet. - Anyways thanks Nikhil for pointing that out.