WASHINGTON, JULY 25, 2004
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

Bangalore may have become only the second modern city in the world to be turned into a verb after Shanghaied - a word that broadly means to force thanks to the outsourcing controversy.

An online anti-outsourcing website is marketing a T-shirt sporting the legend 'Don't Get Bangalored', suggesting the loss of one's job to outsourcing. The T-shirts, available in two designs, are priced at $15.99.

The word has already found a place in online discussions. "I am a software developer who is about to be Bangalored. Fine. I am not going to pout about it," a participant in the forum Technewsworld wrote this week.

"The media write that we are in a global economy, so deal with it. Okay, I will." If the word sticks around,then it will quite likely make the annual addition to various dictionaries.

Although there have been other geographical places that have been turned into words (called toponyms for example, Frankfurter, Marathon, Balkanisation, Finlandised, Detroit), few cities have taken a verb form.

Bangalore itself is already associated with a torpedo which was devised by a British army captain in 1912.Bangalore Torpedoes were used to clear barbed wire entanglements in World War II, especially in the D-Day landings, and are in use even today.

But Americans are being ribbed even while trying to make a few bucks of the outsourcing controversy. On one website, an Indian named Harish joked that $15.99 was too high a price for a T-shirt and suggested the manufacture be outsourced.

A website of American infotech professionals sells an even pricier T-shirt ($19.99) that reads, 'My Job Went To India And All I Got Was A Stupid T-Shirt'.