Friday, August 9, 2013

Annelida Indica

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"When I left IIT Kanpur for Paris in the early '70s, India was seen by most foreigners as a pitiable place, but now, the world expects India to be one of the leaders to solve global problems"

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That is a quote from the boss of an Indian bellwether company.

When I first read the word 'bellwether' (applied to his software firm) I didn't know the precise meaning of this charming word...I looked up my online Webster and typed:

bellweather

and was roundly rebuked...one lives and learns...that it is a goat or sheep...I can't tell them apart.

This good old gent in the RKN mold retired sometime back and got reemployed. 

He was addressing a flock of young Hyderabadi IITians breaking out of their chryalises. 

I then recalled that he waded into a row with a celebrity IITian author a while ago...I mean celebrity author...not necessarily a celebrity IITian.

He (the bellwether) called the current crop of IITians no good...at least not as good as the grain of his own Kanpur crop all those decades ago... 

This riled our celebrity author...he was not of the proper vintage and not from IIT Kanpur...not even from IIT Kharagpur ;)

And he was outraged enough to call the bellwether a lead body shopper who pretends to be a technocrat.

This was so much masala for our journos that they pestered our celebrity.something about it.

And he asked them to go and chill...he has to ship 500000 books by the weekend and so has no time for them.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/eavesdropper/856349/

Implying that, with all respects to him, the good old Kanpurian never had to ship 500000 books authored by him...not even User Manuals...his bodyshoppees would do it for him.

I am immensely tickled by that figure 500000. Because I just now counted, word by word, how many words I had blogged so far.

And the total came out to precisely 500000.

Amazing these coincidences are! 

They are meant to teach us something I don't know what. 

Then I recalled a good old Telugu saying which went like this:

"When an AGM of all snakes was announced, an earthworm gatecrashed"

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