Tuesday, July 04, 2006

No panni, therefore only bullshit here

Connaught Place.
A prominent Delhi street? I dunno. I just connaught place my finger on it.
I'm sorry, I needed a way to start off this piece.
I'm breaking off from the regular blogarithmic rules of blatant banality of bratty bflubbertyblfgpludigabbafella.
So this blog is not really a blog in itself but more of an understanding. An understanding that I make when I blog. Did that make sense? Answers need not be posted as comments for this one.
Write a story long enough to keep the story going and short enough to keep it sweet. That's one of those melodic lines that imitate fraud fakirs.
So this one time...at office...I was getting an ip address assigned to my desktop and the technician needed to spell out the computer name to his counterpart on the other end of the telephone,
'L...aww??? L forrrr Lyun.
B. B for...uhh... Boi.
T! T-T. Aishu...T...ah for Thendi.
C-Rrow, Two. Ah...LBT02.'

Speaking of C-Rrows. Do you know I'm from a C-rrow malabar catholic sabha? I knew. The technicality of the topic always created a confusion as to why would anyone name a religious sect Zero for any particular reason unless its doctrines prescribe it to be a community full of people with a strong inferiority complex.
Then I learned. I'm Syro-Malabar. Now try and pronounce Syro any other way you possibly can. 'Sigh-row' does sound cool in some elitist manner. Makes me feel like the evil cousin of gyro. But when you postfix a 'Malabar' immediately after, it kinda loosens the ends.

So anyways, getting back to more plausible conversation, I've just come to realise that bankers really aren't smart folks. They just like to think such extremities. They'd rather confuse poor banking consumers into believing that a banker's job isn't an easy one. People that sit in banks just don't know how to converse clearly and effectively.

So there I am, sitting, one week into the job and I've been approached upon to create an FS - Functional Specs for a new development that's going to be happening to the Vectus application wherein we would be assigning new scoring procedures as per policy lab rules (oh my God, its catching on). I type out the whole piece of lit with atleast 4 paragraphs causing the word 'tenure' to occur thrice in each para. I check it-double check it-proof read-fool-proof read it-edit-cut-copy-check-version it-print it and give it to policy managers for approval.

The Head of Credit Risk Management smiles, asks me of the peculiarity of my name and any possible meaning that it may denote and at the same time reads through the FS, when he suddenly scratches out something on the paper and writes below it and twists his face before passing its comment.

'You've misspelt tenor.'

I'm quite certain I haven't, considering I ran the spellchecker over the whole damned thing twice you crazy butcher of documentation.
'Ok sir, I'll get that corrected.'

I take back the FS, go back to my desk, read it over again. 'Tenure', yes that's it, it's correct. I think about it it in my mind over and over again. A particular term of or period of time - Tenure. There are two spellings to the same thing? I look for past documentation, rummage through old worn out box files of yore that lie at the back of the archive chamber of the retail banking office.

TENOR????

Holy Mary, Mother of God, they've been mispelling 'tenure' as tenor for years now. I go to the policy managers just to find out what I can do. And precious advice has deemed me to be quiet about the whole thing.
'Luciano Pavarotti is a tenor and we definitely ain't referring to him when we're making policy rules'
'It's what's been used for years and it'll remain like that. Its correct. That's how we spell it here.'

I go back to my desk and can't help but sit and sob silently as I see myself murder the English language.