How my salary affected the world order
It was meant to be nothing more than an innocuous prank when I told R that I got the increment letter yesterday, and had a very decent 65% hike( Which was waaay above what one would expect in the normal circumstances). The way the color of his face changed from red to pale to blue, should have given me a warning for the sort of things in store. Ok, here’s the background, he’s leaving the co. and all I wanted was to give him a good shot of adrenalin before he settles down for the mundane. Oh, haven’t you checked lately, the Oxford dictionary has recently revised their definition of mundane. Now it stands like this –
Mundane - mun·dane (m n-d n , m n d n ) adj. a young talented (while in college)
B Tech graduate, now a software engineer, married and (un)settled in Bangalore.
Ok, back to the story. Seeing him undergoing this unbearable pain and neurotic convulsions broke my heart and after a period of 30 minutes of having him in the doldrums, I told him the truth. But the color never really returned to his face. And I thought it was over….
Today:
I was woken up from deep slumber, by the cell-phone ringing. I first thought it was usual 5 o’ clock alarm (which was my way of believing that miracles are still possible with the help of cell-phones), turned it off and went to sleep again. But it won’t stop. So I lifted it, managed to open my eyes and saw that it was Prt. Calling. I accepted the call.
From the other end: “Macha, Good Morning!”
I looked around, yeah its morning, and I am still in my room. “Gloo… (Wiped the drool) Good morning!”
“Pinne what else da macha?”
What’s wrong with this guy? Waking me up in the middle of the night… okay 8:30 in the morning, but what difference does that make? And asking how’s my life progressing from boring to unbearable!! “Dey dey, cut the crap, what’s the matter? Did you ram your car up a truck’s backside or something?”
“No da, heard you got the ‘Ola’ (Mallu jargon for raise-letter)? And a pretty neat raise too, huh? ”
So that’s the matter! Poor soul, tensions are running pretty high in our co. due to this particular white piece of paper. I explained him things and barely managed to convince him and gave him a pep talk (he had begun sobbing, too) and went to look for the newspaper in the courtyard. And started going through the daily motions. I was in the middle of a very pleasing article about unconditional “release” of prisoners in the Guantanamo bay, the phone rang again!
“Hello?”
Baritone from the other side: “Hi, this hand is cold and white ass Can I touch you now Sir? ”
“WHAT?”
“Hi, this is Andy calling from White house, can I talk to you now Sir?”
?!!
“Yes, you can, err, wait a minute”. Sound of flush.
“I may warn you that recording this conversation would be considered offensive and might affect the diplomatic ties between our nations, so can you please turn off that equipment, Sir?”. Duh! With a sense of déjà vu, I turned it off.
“Yes, I have turned it off”. Still trying to adjust to the hyper-reality.
“Sir, we had some extremely reliable sources reporting that you had a recent salary-hike, of about 65% of your current salary. Would you confirm this?”
:-O
“Yes…I mean NO, ….well I guess yes, but what the hell does it have to do with the white house?”
“This is classified, but I can tell you sir, you might just have saved you country from a possible and fatal nuclear fall-out”.
“But how does my salary affect the ties with Pakistan?”
“No, it’s not Pakistan, stupid, it’s the United States!”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Don’t you understand the apparent threat software professionals from India is causing to normal civilian life in the United States? Our first option was to work underground, make Indian companies pay more for keeping employees offshore, and stop them flocking to our country. The second option was, nuke your goddammed country of born geeks.”
“But Andy, dear, legislations against outsourcing should have solved your problem…”( On second thoughts) “…though it might affect the Dollar Vs the Euro in the long run…”
“Shut up! It’s not about outsourcing; it’s about your countrymen turning our country into a garbage-bin. First they troubled us with their accents, and then they started questioning our own accent and said what we spoke was not Kween’s Ingleesh. Then they started hanging their underwear upon their front-windows, playing some sort of Indian heavy metal called Bangra through loudspeakers, shouting through their phones in movies and other public places, wearing sandals to formal dinners, offering bribes to cops for escaping speeding tickets, trying to jump in and out of moving trains and getting themselves killed.... they’re everywhere and they're driving us nuts!!! You know what buddy, maybe we should just have nuked the hell out of you.” I heard terse breathing.
I paused for a while. “Ok, cool it, Andy man, count from 1 to 10 and backwards, do you practice Yoga?”
I heard the sound of the phone slamming on the other side. The line went dead.
*****
Courtesy: D,N.
Mundane - mun·dane (m n-d n , m n d n ) adj. a young talented (while in college)
B Tech graduate, now a software engineer, married and (un)settled in Bangalore.
Ok, back to the story. Seeing him undergoing this unbearable pain and neurotic convulsions broke my heart and after a period of 30 minutes of having him in the doldrums, I told him the truth. But the color never really returned to his face. And I thought it was over….
Today:
I was woken up from deep slumber, by the cell-phone ringing. I first thought it was usual 5 o’ clock alarm (which was my way of believing that miracles are still possible with the help of cell-phones), turned it off and went to sleep again. But it won’t stop. So I lifted it, managed to open my eyes and saw that it was Prt. Calling. I accepted the call.
From the other end: “Macha, Good Morning!”
I looked around, yeah its morning, and I am still in my room. “Gloo… (Wiped the drool) Good morning!”
“Pinne what else da macha?”
What’s wrong with this guy? Waking me up in the middle of the night… okay 8:30 in the morning, but what difference does that make? And asking how’s my life progressing from boring to unbearable!! “Dey dey, cut the crap, what’s the matter? Did you ram your car up a truck’s backside or something?”
“No da, heard you got the ‘Ola’ (Mallu jargon for raise-letter)? And a pretty neat raise too, huh? ”
So that’s the matter! Poor soul, tensions are running pretty high in our co. due to this particular white piece of paper. I explained him things and barely managed to convince him and gave him a pep talk (he had begun sobbing, too) and went to look for the newspaper in the courtyard. And started going through the daily motions. I was in the middle of a very pleasing article about unconditional “release” of prisoners in the Guantanamo bay, the phone rang again!
“Hello?”
Baritone from the other side: “Hi, this hand is cold and white ass Can I touch you now Sir? ”
“WHAT?”
“Hi, this is Andy calling from White house, can I talk to you now Sir?”
?!!
“Yes, you can, err, wait a minute”. Sound of flush.
“I may warn you that recording this conversation would be considered offensive and might affect the diplomatic ties between our nations, so can you please turn off that equipment, Sir?”. Duh! With a sense of déjà vu, I turned it off.
“Yes, I have turned it off”. Still trying to adjust to the hyper-reality.
“Sir, we had some extremely reliable sources reporting that you had a recent salary-hike, of about 65% of your current salary. Would you confirm this?”
:-O
“Yes…I mean NO, ….well I guess yes, but what the hell does it have to do with the white house?”
“This is classified, but I can tell you sir, you might just have saved you country from a possible and fatal nuclear fall-out”.
“But how does my salary affect the ties with Pakistan?”
“No, it’s not Pakistan, stupid, it’s the United States!”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Don’t you understand the apparent threat software professionals from India is causing to normal civilian life in the United States? Our first option was to work underground, make Indian companies pay more for keeping employees offshore, and stop them flocking to our country. The second option was, nuke your goddammed country of born geeks.”
“But Andy, dear, legislations against outsourcing should have solved your problem…”( On second thoughts) “…though it might affect the Dollar Vs the Euro in the long run…”
“Shut up! It’s not about outsourcing; it’s about your countrymen turning our country into a garbage-bin. First they troubled us with their accents, and then they started questioning our own accent and said what we spoke was not Kween’s Ingleesh. Then they started hanging their underwear upon their front-windows, playing some sort of Indian heavy metal called Bangra through loudspeakers, shouting through their phones in movies and other public places, wearing sandals to formal dinners, offering bribes to cops for escaping speeding tickets, trying to jump in and out of moving trains and getting themselves killed.... they’re everywhere and they're driving us nuts!!! You know what buddy, maybe we should just have nuked the hell out of you.” I heard terse breathing.
I paused for a while. “Ok, cool it, Andy man, count from 1 to 10 and backwards, do you practice Yoga?”
I heard the sound of the phone slamming on the other side. The line went dead.
*****
Courtesy: D,N.
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-Anne