Skip to main content

Tech Support Caste- Khidakayas

The Onion has the new word of the moment - Khidakayas . The caste, "varna" or "jati" they talk about has been refered to elsewhere poignantly and memorably as the e-slave

Having been part of e-slavery operations in India not too long ago, I would have to admit that tech support personnel, call center executives, medical transcriptionists and the like are a sub-cultre or "varna" just like Onion says. A few years in the business and they morph into unrecognizable forms. To that extent they form a caste by evolution.

A large number of their tribe came to exist after the dot-com boom had ended and with that prospects of a career in the First World. The uber-slave more often than not is a prodigal returned home after years of working in the US and elsewhere around the world. I used to be an uber-slave once.

The client uses one such as myself as the conduit of information back and forth between on-site and off-shore teams. We may be bestowed with the appropriately vague title of "Project/Program Liaison" which in English translates to "Sundry Fix-It Person With Very High Work Releated Stress." Back in the day they did not install emergency defibrillators outside the war-room like some companies do now. Highly recommended for the older uber-slaves back in India.

I have even been asked to influence a man's wedding plans because he was putting dates in jeopardy as he readied to tie the knot. I am ashamed to admit that I tried - my excuse being I needed to keep my job. The man quit and HR had a very serious conversation with me on flagging team morale and employee attrition. What gives ?

The e-slave is well heeled, flush with cash, rents a nice place in the nice part of town, drives a Ford Ikon at least if not much better. For some odd reason more men than women have the ridiculous blonde streaked hair. I never got that one. Needless to say they know more about Americana and baseball trivia than someone like me. The neatest skill they have is the ability to turn that cute accent off and on at will.

There is something terribly schizoid about their life - about being Ramalingam by day and Ron by night, living in a virtual space and time zone. After a while we all lapse into Ron for ease and conformity and more than an identity is lost in the process.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

buckwaasur said…
After a while we all lapse into Ron for ease and conformity and more than an identity is lost in the process

>>>wow...that was an awesome expression...:-)

rotfl @ khidakayas...trust the onion to come up with this stuff...:-))
9:01 AM
Mindsurfer said…
About the losing identity bit, that is so so true. This profession probably causes the deepest work-related wounds.
5:17 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...
Post a Comment
Read more