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'.