aditya kumar's weblog

A friend I know, one of the many programmers in the city, told me over dinner that he is facing problems with his job.

What kind of problems I asked.

The company he works for has barred the employees from using the Internet. It is common, of course, network administrators keep on applying policies to block certain websites, I said.

No, they have not restricted the access. They have completely barred access to the Internet. Any website. Even Google is not accessible.

According to my experience, this happened, well, maybe 5 to 6 years ago. Mostly for cost reasons. I must admit I was surprised to hear this from him.

As a programmer, I realise how important it is for me to connect to the Internet while I am at work. There are a thousand serious reasons, even after you exclude the Instant messaging to your friends (Yes, that too, is serious, to an extent).

The prevalent thinking in his organization is that a programmer should be able to program without referring to the Internet. S/he should be capable of that. In a way I am glad that they have such faith in the people they recruit for the job, but beyond that, it is, well, stupid.

Companies like these need to realise that 1980s are gone. When the only programming languages used were C++, Perl, Cobol or the likes. When you could use a single programming language for the whole project and you could buy a big fat book of C++, keep it with you while at work as a quick reference. And that was all that was needed.

Today technologies are changing with the speed of light. There are at least three entirely different technological aspects to every project, however big or small it may be.

While talking about this, even if I dare to keep aside the aspect of technology, the fact remains that there is always more than one way to do a thing. How is the programmer expected to know that?

So where does a situation like that lead us, in the long run? The programmer is stuck for longer time on problems that could be solved in a matter of seconds after a Google search. S/he tries to convert a String to an Integer to feed it into a method when s/he could have called the same method directly with the Integer. But for that to happen, one has to know that the method supports Integer as an input as well.

It takes more time. It goes on to increase the frustration for the programmer and the people involved in it. Whats more, the programmers reputation is at stake!

One of the reasons why companies come up with stupid policies like these is that the people who make the policies for a company (which has 80% of its employees as programmers) have never written a single line of code in their lives.

In contrast to this, if you have ever worked in an organization which has been founded, nurtured from its beginning by a bunch of techies, you will feel that issues like these aren’t an issue at all! These are small trivial things. The focus should be on getting the job done without writing trashy code. That’s all.

But it’s very rare.

Why did the police arrest my (north-indian) friend living in this city, at mid-night from his house for no proper reason? Why did the house owner tell the police that the people living in the house were not vacating it, when the rent-agreement stated a month long notice before asking to vacate the premises, and when no such notice had been given?

Why did the police officer ask him if in North India he wasn’t able to get a job? Why did he accuse (north indian people like) him of ‘spoiling the culture’ of Bangalore?

Punish him if he has been a nuisance but why be hostile to all north-indians working in the city?

If the Government has not made it illegal to work in another city within India, at will, then what is the problem?

So Bangalore, let me ask you, is your success, yours alone? Am I, a north-indian by birth, not a part of it? To make the case interesting, I must mention, my project team consists of a Punjabi, a Kannadiga, a Telugu, a Bengali, a couple of them from Orissa and one from Tamil Nadu. We are all programmers and we are good at what we do.

Or do you choose to accuse me and my friends (barring the kannadiga of course), of spoiling your culture.

And why does my house owner, though a very nice person, sarcastically puts forward his case of the high costs of day-today commodities in Bangalore and ends it with, ‘all because of you people’ ?

But why does he fail to say ‘all because of you people’ when I pay him a mind-boggling amount of money for a single room?

I have faced these ‘whys’ before, I think. After spending almost a decade in Bombay and Pune, when I once heard that Maharashtra is for Maharashtrians, why did it hurt me?

The Indian coffee house at MG Road offers a glimpse of the mixture of cultures that Bangalore is.

The place has its own little world and it starts opening up as I find myself a vacant table. A college couple, oblivious to the crowd around them and maybe also to the fact that their coffees are done with, continue to chat. Another guy, in his late twenties maybe, having his french fries along with the coffee. The table, full of his treasures. A latest cellphone, an Mp3 player to mention a few. He chooses to keep his sunglasses on though. One can safely claim — in the coffee house, he has travelled back in time.

Then of course, there are the people I usually manage to strike up conversations with. The middle aged men who are absorbed in their newspapers and while not at it, quietly observing around them. Quite often, their solitude is short lived for they usually find someone of their kind soon enough. Friendships are renewed, greetings exchanged. Discussions take place, politics, cricket, trigonometry and even aviation. These relationships are formed here, in the coffee house and mostly end up within these walls.

Two Tibetan monks walk in and order coffee. With them they carry an air of peculiarity. They share the table with the sunglasses guy, the gadget-man. There is a contrast of sorts. The monks, in their red robes while the gadget-man, as if almost adamant on showing off his prized but earthly possessions, still decorating the old, odd wooden table. As evident, the common thing between these two cultures, the coffee, sharing the space of whatever is left.

The big glass paned window, the biggest witness of all to the change of times, gives a view of the multicultural sea of people on the outside. Like waves, groups of people pass by.

Look at it one way and it is just a place serving coffee. Look at it another way, in fact, any other way, and there is so much going on that I start to wonder, is this really just about the coffee?

This place is stuck in another time and it wants you to oblige as well. For some, it could even get addictive. Trust me, there are people like that.

Enough for the day, I say to myself and leave.

Do you know what happened on 9-11-2001?
Me:No

Two planes crashed on the Two towers, America

Me: I see

Do you know what a human bomb is?

(I am startled but I want to continue the conversation)

Me: No, what is it?

It’s when a man tries to touch the feet and then presses a button and blows himself up with a bomb. Thats a human bomb. They did that to Rajiv Gandhi…

Me: Who told you all this, beta?

My teacher.

…Conversation with my seven year old cousin, who happens to be studying in second standard (grade) in school. Is this what they ought to be learning in school, seven year old kids? Do they need to know how a human bomb works, what a human bomb is? Is it required, they know what happened on 9-11, in America? Forget 9-11, do they need to know America? Until they are not told about India, no, they do not need to know about America.

And which school is this? Frank Anthony, Bangalore. A wee bit too ‘frank’, dont you think?

And for good reasons!

:)

(Link via Sujatha)

…Or do they just don’t want to meet each other? I am wondering, it’s been almost an year since Bangalore bloggers did a meetup!

This is what happened to Bangalore when veteran actor Rajkumar died.

These pictures came via an email forward.

I am scared of this. I have never seen this face of Bangalore.