Friday, December 19, 2008

A Pinch of History for Techies?

Jameel ,an employee of MICO, Bangalore was arrested and had to undergo a grueling session of interrogation before he was released after couple of days with a clean chit from the cops. They said he had nothing to do with terrorism. That means he, just like you, me and billions of others in the universe who just happened to be happy that, the honorable President of United States of America got a less hospitable treatment in Iraq. But Jameel was little louder than us in his celebrations to create tremors inside his post-mumbai-traumatized colleagues to such an extent that they did not think twice before dialing for police assistance.
You can rule this out as an accident and comfortably ignore the amount of mental torture and social isolation he probably went through with cops browsing through all his personal email communications, call records, ripping apart the last bit of privacy from his rather serene home and family.
Times of India, most read daily in Bangalore came out with a usual stunt next morning. They had few IT techies reacting to the incident in different ways.
Question was, “How do you suspect someone as a terrorist in your office?” or of similar meaning and the reply was kind of unanimous except one answer I remember. Most of them said, “We talk about America or its president at coffee time, but casually as we have nothing against America. Then why should someone be emotional and so happy on this incident? He has to be a terrorist.”
I have seen people of similar mentality in one of the office I worked. One person just reacted saying ‘Sadham is a criminal’ overhearing our conversation in the lift. I was sounding skeptical about the cold blooded execution of Sadham by American dummies. When I intimidated him asking what he knew about Sadham, he preferred to answer me with a stupid smile and walked away.
These groups of xenophiles are widely seen in Bangalore, wearing American flags on their attire, mimicking American accent when they talk, or being passionate about the Americanism and even praising their warfare with abundant respect to their political policies, culture. Sometime I felt that they see Harrison Ford in George Bush, and America for them is what they see in Hollywood movies whose president will be just in time to protect mother earth from an alien invasion.
Let that be this way as America is the Lord for IT, but I feel it’s better for the techies to include a pinch of history in their reading along with their ‘Mastering’ and ‘Complete Reference’ series of bread winning skill set. And this would possibly help in saving Jameel’s from being victimized for the expression of freedom.
I even have a shortcut for this tri colored Bush fans.
Why don’t they sit and watch ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ for a change?

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