Conversations with my brother

My brother is here! He came here for just three weeks. Before you know it, his trip is coming to an end and he is going back to India.

The best part of his trip was that I got to talk to him for 40 mins in the morning and forty minutes in the evening while driving to work and back (he became my carpool buddy, as his client was just 0.5 miles from my office!). Have not had a chance to talk to him this long in the last ten years where during our India trips, there would always be a lot of background noise, interruptions and just plain lack of opportunity for us to talk. After I got married and he got married and started families, it was pretty much impossible to talk.

There are only two guys who have that kind of rapport with me. The kind where you can finish the other persons sentence. My brother and Dr. Durga (who is currently absconding).

My brother does not read my blog. He thinks it is an abomination that should be stopped. "How can a person put such personal thoughts into free space?" he asks me. The only answer I give him is "Because, I can!". He nods his head in disbelief.

We have had our share of jokes. So here are some things that lightened my day.

Apparently they are opening a new saravana stores in Adyar which has the potential to clog the entire area. His fear was that it would take him 40 minutes to get from the steet to his house via Saravana Stores. When I asked him what this is all about his response "Do you know you can get anything, anything in Saravana stores? Their jingo should be "komanaththilirundhu Koorai pudavai mudhal anaiththum kidaikkum". ( கொமணத்தில் இருந்து கூரை புடவை முதல் அனைத்தும் கிடைக்கும்!) ie., We sell everything from a loin cloth to a wedding sari . That cracked me up.

When I picked him up outside his office, he kept waiting. A car was also waiting. Finally he crossed the road. I asked him why it took him so long to cross the road and he said "I was waiting Indian style for the car to go. He was waiting American style for the pedestrian to go! I still cannot get over the fact that people in cars wait for pedestrians here! It is just unbelievable." I just smiled.

Then we had a long long continued discussion over my being the only Ph.D. in the family( maternal) or the only one who is not in the IT field! He had an interesting concept that definitely did not strike me, till he put it that way. We did an analysis of the professions of our parents, uncles and aunts, and our professions and our cousins. In effect they are all doing the same jobs. Here is my excel spreadsheet summary..

If you notice one thing on my parents generation, everyone gravitated towards a Government Job! (My mother, her brother and four sisters all work(ed) for the government!)

My grandfather was a finance clerk and my grandma was a homemaker. They had six kids! They grew up in very difficult circumstances. They studied, and tried to get placed in the one job that guaranteed stability and financial security, a government job! When I graduated and wanted to come to the US to do my Ph.D., my uncle gave me a long lecture which started with

"Sundaram.. akkadannu oru bank exama ezhudinoma, sivanennu oru bank udhyogaththa paathundomannu irukkama ennaththukku da inda America Gimerica ellam? Avan chandra mandalaththukku aal anupparanam. Inge jananga sOthtukke vazhi illama thavikkaradhu! PaNatha vachchundu enna pannaradhunnu theriyaadha alayaraanunga, ange poi nee enna da panna pore! etc. etc." and the entire family pretty much pitched in with a "thatasathu" (which is along the lines of an Amen or Insallah or "so be it"!).

For those of you Tamizhs and non-Tamizhs here is the verbage and its english translation..

சுந்தரம், அக்கடானு ஒரு பேங்க் எக்ஸாம் எழுதினோமா, சிவனேன்னு ஒரு பேங்க் உத்யோகத்த பாத்துண்டோமானு இருக்காம என்னத்துக்குடா இந்த அமெரிக்கா கிமேரிக்கா எல்லாம்? அவன் சந்திர மண்டலத்துக்கு ஆள் அனுப்பரானாம்! இங்கே ஜனங்க சோத்துக்கே வழி இல்லாம தவிக்கறது! பணத்த வச்சுண்டு என்ன பண்ணறதுன்னு தெரியாத அலையறாங்க, அங்கே பொய் நீ என்ன டா பண்ண போறே ? ......

Sundaram, instead of simply writing a bank exam and settling down in a bank job, why do you need all this America Gimerica stuff? Americans are sending people to the moon, while people are dying of starvation here! They have a lot of money and don't know what to do with it. What are you going to do in a country like that? .....

It would always drive me nuts when people hold the ability to blend in with the crowd and being average, as some kind of virtue! As it so happened, I did not write a bank exam four years after getting through the IIT entrance and graduating with a B.Tech in Metallurgy, although it would have made the entire family proud. Thank god for small favors!

Lets come back to my brothers observation, which has to do with the N+2 generation. We were all raised in a lower middle class background where at least one or both parents were government servants, but the paychecks were not big, the houses were rented and anything that you did not need absolutely, you just did not get! We were trained to understand the financial circumstances of the family and were taught that if we wanted to at least have the standard of living that our parents had, we better start loving that big fat Bank exam book that our uncle and aunts used to use as pillows!

The funny thing was that there were people around us who were way more well to do than anyone in our family. They would never be used as role models or examples simply because they were in "risky" professions, were "probably" not earning an honest living simply by the amount of money they made, or branded as people who had "no respect for the right combination of money and values"!

Save for me, the rest of the siblings and cousins all got nice degrees in everything from BITS Pilani, REC Trichy, Venkateswara college, Crescent, Meenakshi, St. Josephs, etc. and they all write code for a living!

The bro's point being, given a choice my uncles and aunts would pass on their hard earned government jobs to their kids, were it not for the fact that most or all of their jobs are being replaced by Computers! In effect the N+2 has taken the job of the N+1. The bank tellers son is now writing the Log In screen for Citibank and the Auditors son is writing code for some International Auditing firm! Today's version of a teller job is an IT job! (this is strictly in context of the examples in this post. I am not generalizing all IT jobs as the logical evolution of the Clerical job from the previous generation).

If you think about it, it does make sense. In India's current job market, a job with Infosys, TCS, CTS, Wipro or HCL gives you the same sense of stability and financial security as the government jobs of State Bank, Indian Bank, Canera Bank, Syndicate Bank, Dena Bank of yore! In those days a "government job" meant a better mate in the arranged marriage system. Today the "IT" job has the same effect!

As for a Ph.D in Materials, it still sticks out like a sore thumb! The conversation now veers to "See, we can get jobs anywhere in the world. But can you have a semiconductor fab in India? Maybe in another 20 years. Maybe never! What is the use of doing all this work, if you cannot come back to India?" and I respond with "I am very happy with what I do here and have no plans to come back as of now! We will cross that bridge if we ever come to it."

It almost appears as though, yours truly doesn't speak the same "language" as the rest of the family!

If only I could converse with them in C++, assembly language or Java?!

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Tie up loose ends..

There is a phrase in Tamizh "mottai thalaikkum muzhangaalukkum mudichchu podaadhey" which literally translated means "don't tie a knot between your tonsured head and your ankles"

This could have been our wise sages saying "don't have your head up your @$$" in a nice politically correct way or there is some other cryptic reference. They must have been wise sages, because a tonsured head should be way better than a head full of hair, for said purpose. This phrase is used by granny's to convey the message "Don't try to link unrelated things!" and used by me to say "Don't insult Karl Pearson and his correlation coefficient!".

Now what loose ends is this post going to tie up? Nostalgia, IT, people and perceptions.

Why? Well, a comment on the previous post, a followup comment and an analysis of the comment by s.b., that is why!

Nostalgia for me has always been associated with something more than just reminescing or flashbacks. Often times it puts things in a different perspective. Reminds me of (oh oh! there we go again!) a short story we had as part of our Non-Detailed Text book (NDT as we used to call it). It was "The Pepper Tree" by Dal Stevens(either I do not know the correct spelling for the author or it is not a popular story because Google does not give me a link!).

In this story, the author goes back to his childhood home, only to find that the huge pepper tree that he remembered as a child is nothing impresive when he is a grown man! Can personally relate to this. The high compound wall from which I fell and got eight stitches as a child was all of 3 1/2 feet tall. I kind of felt stupid when showing it to the family on our last India trip!

Now for another nostalgic event involving IT People. My friend Suresh was visiting Boston for a conference. He was in a suburban train station where there was only one other person, another desi. Here is the conversation (as narrated to me by Suresh after his trip, as much as I can remember)

2nd Desi Dude : Sir, neenga endha Platform? (Sir, which Platform are you?)
Confused Suresh : Sir, there is only two Platforms here. One to go that way, one to go this way. I am going to Boston.
2nd Desi Dude : I mean which Platform do you work on?
Confused Suresh : What makes you think I work for the Platform? Do I look like a transit railway employee? I am a chemical Engineer!
2nd Desi Dude: Sorry Sir. I thought you were also IT!

This was 1997 or 1996 (don't remember) and it was an okay icebreaker between two Desi's to ask "Which platform?" and expect an answer like "windows" or "linux" or god knows what those Platforms are! Chemical and Materials Engineers would of course have a lightbulb moment. Still remember rolling on the ground laughing when he came back and narrated this. There were so many Desi IT dudes who descended in those years that they would generalize any Desi in the US to be an IT dude!!

Today, the IT sector in general seems to be getting a brunt of abuse by Desi's. All problems are to be traced back to the IT people! This reminds me of Raj's post on finding the right scapegoat and making it stick. That reminds me of .......

When I was a small boy we would hear on the radio, auto rickshaw mounted election campaign loudspeakers, stuff like "we will eliminate the forward caste. Down with the Brahmins." etc. etc. If you are from a lower middle class Brahmin family, you do start wondering what all the fuss is about. It was fashionable in the (A, AIA, B, BIA, C, CIA, etc. etc.. )D(M)K parties to do at least some Brahmin bashing as a forward to any election speech.

Today it is customary for people to indulge in IT bashing along similar lines.

In any case, "I am not IT people" was to tell folks that I am a materials engineer and not a software person and therefore not qualified to represent the views of "IT people".

As for IT being blamed for everything, well, Raj's post puts that in perspective. You might have to squint a little and read it to catch the perspective, but it is there!

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