Meanwhile, at the Sikkapatte Important Company of Karnataka, also known as Murthy Angadi, Sowcar-ru‘s main trip in life these days—to lecture the world on how everything in life, including and beyond the country, can be run like Murthy Angadi—is placing sikkapatte pressure on his chelas, chamchas, and cheddi dosts.
It’s one thing for sowcar-ru to kuyyi the proverbial piteel in his post-1993 American accent on values and ethos and standards in the air-conditioned comfort of the television studios. But it’s quite another to implement it on the ground, somewhere between Northwest Hebbal and Southwest Hootagalli.
In the vast food court that has sprung up to serve the girakis who throng Murthy Angadi, there are a dozen vendors, selling everything from juices, ice-creams, coffee, and pizzas, to South Indian, Punjabi, Andhra and Mughlai meals. And some of them are paying a very high price for the high-falutin’ standards.
If a vendor is found serving food without gloves, the Angadi chappies slap an on-the-spot fine of Rs 1,000. No shoes? Rs 1,500. No apron? Rs 5,000. So much so that one vendor paid up as much as Rs 40,000 in fines last month. The only consolation is a voucher that comes in the name of the foundation run by sowcaru-ru‘s hendoru.
No one knows on what basis the fines are fixed, and the standard answer to all queries is, “Ask MD 3.14159.” Only one vendor has been spared the ad-hoc fines, but that’s because he enjoys Prince Charles‘ patronage.
Recently, one vendor’s staff was found serving without an apron. A fine of Rs 5,000 was promptly lagao-ed. Except that the apron had been misplaced by the in-house laundry. Matlab, it was the Angadi at fault. Only a stern refusal by the vendor to not pay a fine for a goofup that she wasn’t reponsible convinced the chappies to relent.
Otherwise, the vendors live in fear of the midnight knock.
Disclaimer: All hendors and vendors mentioned in Murthy Angadi are the figment of a colourful imagination. Any resemblance to characters alive or dead or somewhere in between is entirely coincidental and unintentional to the extent that libel laws permit. (3.14159, of course, is the value of Pi, and has been for a couple of thousand years, if not more.)
14 March 2007 at 2:04 pm
Good one! Mahatma 3.14159 is even better, given his first name :-)
14 March 2007 at 2:28 pm
I can only sympathize with the girakis, imagine how bland the food might be if the cooks and the suppliers are also clean :))))
14 March 2007 at 2:37 pm
3.14159 – now that was really nice :)
14 March 2007 at 2:43 pm
OK..who is prince charles..more clues at least please ?
14 March 2007 at 3:07 pm
3.14159 = Mohandas Pai?…that was good one
14 March 2007 at 3:53 pm
Pi…..LOL…awesome !!!
I hate to watch your Murthy Angadi soap….sob story all the time….But your screenplay is too good and I don’t want to miss out on that ;)
14 March 2007 at 6:16 pm
Brilliant!
14 March 2007 at 9:23 pm
KP
This is a brilliant sketch! I almost died laughing. 3.14159 MD is very funny. A sad commentary on the Angadi being run at breakneck speed to meet the ‘kelagina gerey’ aka bottomline:)
14 March 2007 at 9:23 pm
Q) Name the two persons pre-occupied with Murthy Angadi
A) H D Deve Gowda and Churmuri
Another open-ended question: Any guess why? Public interest!
14 March 2007 at 10:47 pm
I don’t know if this is a coincidence or what, but March 14—which is today—also happens to be World Pi Day. Check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day
14 March 2007 at 10:48 pm
PP
Why not? M Angadi is a public Limited co and we all need to know what’s going on. Is that enough for you?
15 March 2007 at 8:49 am
KP,
Brilliant, as usual.
BTW, how come Murthy Angadi has not had a Chairperson of the Board of directors since Sowcar-ru retired? Is any kaapi brewing on this??
15 March 2007 at 10:19 am
DB
Your interest level in Public Limited companies will take you much ahead…
Just read it and forget. No need to show your interest in Private and Public companies. Gossip monger!~!
15 March 2007 at 7:52 pm
Rama
What is your point? Swalpa thagolli saar!
And you are?
11 April 2007 at 6:32 am
Dear KP & the gang spewing venom at Narayan Murthy +Infosys,
1. why are you so jealous of murthy?(Kailagadavaru mai parachikonda haage!)
2. have you asked for clarification on his controversial remarks?
3. are you being sponsored by “other” president candidates in the waiting, to defame murthy? (especially the likes of Moily-namma jilleyavaru)
4. having money, making others rich – are they crimes? (according to left/naxals-yes)
5. in this piece of article you write about some vendors at food court being fined…whats wrong? they applied for those jobs and they sould abide by rules! would you like to be served unhygenic food???
6. in a discussion on national anthem related controversies, stick to the issue, and get views from all sides rather than go just for Murthy bashing…
11 April 2007 at 1:03 pm
Murthy Angadi redeems itself only by being occasionally funny.
We are happy to bag all those IT jobs and the goodies that come with it… and indulge in such trivial intellectual pursuits. How Cool yaaar!
It really is a case of sour grapes… and brings out our strong Indian trait of pulling each other down.
20 April 2007 at 7:42 pm
The value of Pi is not 3.14159 . This is as stupid as saying the value of Pi is 3.
Pi is an irrational number. I guess you do not know what an irrational number is,
in that case do not publicise your ignorance.
25 April 2007 at 11:01 am
As far as Ethics & Moral values are concerned, I think no one atleast in karnataka should be pointing their fingers at Mr. Narayana Murthy.
I would like to know how many multi millionaires has the writer created?
& just open your eyes to real world & you would see how many has Mr. Narayana Murthy created that too with the highest degree of Morality.
25 April 2007 at 11:28 am
Dhruba
It is fair to say you could be the square root of Pi
Jordan
It is always a delight to find people like you!
25 April 2007 at 12:30 pm
Krishna Krishna…
DB: with your comments, you seem to be a lieutinent Moderator of Churumuri!
30 April 2007 at 9:55 pm
You may want to check out today’s (4/30) NYTimes article on H1-B visas, salaries, and a curious cross-firm difference in a key ratio of H1-Bs to green cards. The article also mentions a related published reserach paper.
30 April 2007 at 10:20 pm
Continuing with my last post.
Here is the weblink: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FA0F13F7385B0C768DDDAD0894DF404482
Requires subscription to TimesSelect.
ECONOMIC VIEW; Parsing the Truths About Visas for Tech Workers
By STEVE LOHR; ANAND GIRIDHARADAS CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FROM MUMBAI, INDIA.
Published: April 15, 2007
Quoting from the article:
“ …. when asked about the visa program for skilled workers, the H-1B. … (Bill) Gates said that these workers are ”uniquely talented” and highly paid — ”taking jobs that pay over $100,000 a year” — and that America should ”welcome as many of those people as we can get.”
“But that is not how the H-1B visa program as a whole is working these days, according to an analysis by Ronil Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The median salary for new H-1B holders in the information technology industry is actually about $50,000, based on the most recent” USCIS data.
“Yet salaries, according to Mr. Hira, are only part of the story. He says … companies have a different agenda. The H-1B visa program, Mr. Hira asserts, has become a vehicle for accelerating the pace of offshore outsourcing of computing work, sending more jobs abroad. Holders of H-1B visas, he says, do the on-site work of understanding a client’s needs and specifications — and then most of the software coding is done back in India.”
Supporting data:
“Microsoft, it seems, is paying its H-1B holders quite well — a median salary of $82,500 for new visa applicants, whose wages over the subsequent three to six years could well rise to about the $100,000 Mr. Gates mentioned. And in fiscal 2006, Microsoft applied for 1,181 green cards and 4,471 H-1B’s, a ratio of more than 26 percent. For the leading Indian outsourcing companies, the ratio was less than 1 percent.”
The article may merely confirm what many would have suspected or known anecdotally. But the difference in the ratio above, across firms, is staggering. It certainly puts to rest any notions of these visas serving to build/drain long-term human capital in the U.S./India.
12 June 2007 at 10:17 am
The lifeline for this blog is bashing Narayana Murthy.
And, most of the chamcha-responders are “Kelasavillada Badagigalu”!
12 June 2007 at 12:57 pm
NRN is a Bengali
9 August 2007 at 8:21 am
http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/aug/09info.htm
Meshtru, sawcararige hosa tale novu.