Humour

Here today, gyan tomorrow

T A Balasubramanian writes about an IT pro’s encounter with a great gyan tantrik

This is indeed a busy day for Doodh Byramji. Doodh, or Doodhi as he is popularly called, is the fully baffled, and fully qualified design engineer of Baffle Technologies, otherwise called Baff-Tech.

Today, he plans to get some much-needed industry knowledge, also called “gyan” to help him gain what his CEO, Baidyanath Baffle, evidently the founder and owner of Baff-Tech, calls “a competitive advantage”.

Here, then, is the action captured in the diary of Byramji, fully and faithfully updated with every detail.

9:20 am: Dear Diary, forgive my breathless excitement, but I’m on my way to see Guru Billmemore, the renowned industry watcher and guru as well as great gyan tantrik. The IT magazines reverentially call him the “Bheeshma of zero-wait-state future computing”, and “Gyani of tomorrow’s data cyclones”.

Being myself the simple Doodh Byramji, I can’t believe my luck. I have managed to get a meeting with Guru Billmemore himself, to talk about a new technology that I have been developing for the last year. It does not do anything particularly clever or ground-breaking, but it does appear to provide something that IT-baffled people want.

You know, when you get a new piece of software for your PC you often have to type “A:\setup”? My software does that for you. Once installed you will never have to type “A:\setup” or “D:\setup” or “C:\install”, or go looking for setup/install programs on CDs, or anything like that ever again, because my fully configurable multi-drive tool will fully take care of that for you. It also automatically clicks the “I agree” button on the licence agreement screen during the installation without you having to read it. This is a brilliant idea which I myself have had. Don’t you think so?

9:40 am: I arrive in the modern office of Gyani Billmemore & Sellmemore, popularly known in the industry as GBS. Gyani Sellmemore, like his brother Billmemore, is a guru, but they say he is a bio-technology marketing guru. The office is very posh, very sexy, as my spouse says. Once GBS used to be called Technology Watchers of Industry Trends, or TWIT, for short. But apparently their marketing department thought they should have a more personal, yet more memorable name in line with current trends.

10:00 am: I am approached by a tall, scholarly man with dark hair, and a big smile. I smile back in return. “You must be Doodh Byramji?” I nod. “This way please.” We go to a conference room with a table big enough for thirty people.

I am feeling supremely confident, until I realise that I am actually going to have to say something to impress the great man within a very short space of time. He starts to talk.

“Forgive me for not offering you coffee, Byramji, but I am a little behind schedule today. Now, first things first, do you or your company subscribe to our Gyan Management service?”

I shake my head. He looks puzzled.

“Do you fully understand what our service has to offer?”

“I think so, Guruji,”

I mumble, “current trends, vendor analysis, future technologies, and categorisation of the industry by application area?”

“Indeed, that is correct, Byramji. And do you see no value in this service? Might you consider this service in the future?”

I’m getting confused. Were we not here to talk fully about my amazing technology? I look out of the window. There is a long silence, while I desperately try to formulate a suitable reply. Eventually I clear my throat, and shake my head, looking at the table. I feel that I am letting the Guruji down, but can’t think of anything to say. He stares coldly at me for a second, treating me to a slow, lizard-like blink, before continuing.

“I see. In which case, this will take less time than I thought. Now then, please describe your product or technology for me using our standard classification system. For example, what technology does it use? Is it a content management system? Network-enabling technology? Data mining? Information deployment? Virtual screensaver? N-th-generation development tool? Virus? What?”

“Well, Guruji, I don’t really know. Since I am not a subscriber you will just take what I say and write it down?”

“Don’t be silly, Byramji, we probably won’t even write it down. And if we do, we’ll also rate your technology as having average vision and less than average ability to deliver.”

“Based on what?”

“Based on the fact that you are not a subscriber.”

“And if my company fully became a subscriber you will analyse us fully?”

He flinches slightly, and his voice becomes icy. “Mister Byramji, of course we analyse the industry, just not all of it. That would be an elephant-load of work. We do some first class research and analysis here, supplemented by information and expensive dinners from the key vendors like AFF, with whom we maintain a very close relationship. How else would we get the deep gyan, or the inside knowledge, when there is so much going on?”

10:15 am: This logic seems irrefutable. Despite the fact that I cannot see much point in carrying on, I start to describe my new product. Downcast, I let my words fall into the silence like pebbles into a dark, deep, still pool. Plop... plop... plop.

Lo and behold! A strange transformation is taking place on Bill’s face as the ripples from my speech spread through the room. Hostile indifference gives way to irritable boredom, which melts into puzzled anticipation, surprised relaxation and finally jocular fermentation. He really is quite excited now.

“Byramji, this is quite, quite incredible. Excuse me while I compose myself. This is how Columbus must have felt when he discovered America.”

Well he does look a bit like a sailor at the moment.

“What you have just described belongs to a class of application that we had predicted but so far have found no examples: Basic Application for Babies, or Object Oriented Neophytes (BABOON). It seemed obvious to us that if you had baby-level users using a dumb operating system you would need some baby-level infrastructure to support it—your product fits that description perfectly.”

And so he goes on, making improbable connections and planning a series of seminars called “Introduction to BABOON” to launch my, or rather, “our” (now that Guruji has seen the light) breakthrough technology.

10:45 am: I tiptoe from the room, with my head full of new gyan. I don’t feel that there is much more to add. As I leave the building, I reflect that Gyani Billmemore certainly lived up to his name, providing instant gyan and a suitable bill that I now have to present to my CEO, Baffleji.

I am sure he will sign the cheque fully without asking for any details at all. After all, Baff-Tech fully needs more such gyan to survive in the future. You agree?