Phunctional Phiction: The CET Chronicles, Folio - II

The CGPU

Founded by Prof. Felip Varkhovsky in 1937 as a sister concern of the Ob'edinennoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie (OGPU, predecessor of the KGB), the Career Guidance and Placement Unit, the CGPU, strives to select the vilest knaves CET has to offer and release them into the shady world of crime and IT… i.e International Terrorism.

What?! The name doesn’t strike fear into your mortal hearts? You know, we borrowed this very useful concept from Orwell’s seminal classic, 1984. Here the most brutal organs of the tyrannical police state are given innocuous or even benevolent sounding portmanteaus or nicknames. For instance, death camps are called JoyCamps, the War Ministry (note, it ain’t *Defense* Ministry) is called MinPeace (from Ministry of Peace), the ministry that fabricates lies, propaganda and obfuscates everything is called MinTruth! The funda is explained by real world terms like Gestapo and Comintern. While the term COMmunist INTERNational evokes obvious images of fear and repression in most people with those thousands of red flags, lusty slogans, demagogy par excellence, goose stepping soldiers, Triumph of the Will vibes…… the contraction term doesn’t do the same. Ditto for Hitler's GEheime STAatsPOlizei, which means “Secret State Police”. Parallels can be drawn to the milquetoast term RAW, Research and Analysis Wing, which sounds like some department of the Planning Commission but the title hides the true nature of the efficient, ruthless and professional spy force.

Oh, here I go rambling AGAIN! But get my drift? :P

Our founding father, former Director Lord Prof. Varkhovsky is blessed with a Sarumanesque talent for selling ANYTHING to even the smartest prey…. the veritable Archsalesman who could sell a shipload of ice to the Eskimos. It was due to his sterling efforts and cultivation of contacts in the InjiNeering and above said IT realms that put CET on the global map, with CETians earning packages from 1.5 lakhs per annum plus two second-hand camels on incarceration to 25 Lakhs plus 72 houris on “termination”. The companies and the organizations and the brotherhoods/sisterhoods started to trickle in at first and then tuned into a torrent by the mid 90s…. the word soon spread into international circles. In the bylanes of Gaza, the gullies of Heera Mandi, the slums of Bradford, the piers of Corsica, the badlands of Bihar and the Ghettos of America, hushed whispers and secret scraps spoke-“There’s a new gun in town!”. So much that the perennial enemies of our shady trade,viz. 007, Inspector Vijay, Gigastar Balayya from Guntur, Vaijayanthi IPS, Padayappa, Captain Prabhakaran, Sunny Paaji and Gunmaster G9 have turned their malevolent gaze towards us. But fear not, our sleeper acolytes toiling endlessly for global domination in entities like Ghengisys, Tamerlane Consultancy Services, Galactic Empire of Emperor Palpatine, General Ecclestic, The Illuminati, Asian Born Bovineannie, Vaallmart, Wipe-Off RAW, Jihadman Suxxx, The Borg Collective, Asathyam, D Company etc cannot fail to bring us to final victory!

To understand and appreciate the recruitment process, let me give a few examples of the no-quarters-given interviews that take place in every season.

Case 1:

Bull Klinten Corporation, Arkansas (K) on the desk.

Ms. Incontinentia Balconi , IQ = 38+24+36, S-7 Civil Engineering (B) in the hot seat.

K: Ms. Balconi, explain with a simple example how recurrence relations simplify algorithms.

B: Urrrmmmmm….. errrrrr….. duhhhhh.
(Idea strikes) Ohhhhh….veree zimble onlee Saar. As the name suggeshts… (drops her pen).. Ooops! (bends down to get it, stops abruptly and looks sheepishly and coyly at the boss.... as his eyes focus and go glazed and beady into that-which-must-not-be-stared-at-by-true-gentlemen.

K: (whispers hoarsely) Monicaaaaaaaaaa! (Regains composure.) By Kenneth Starr! This one's an all-rounder!

B: Shirrr? Shomething wraang shirr?

K: Oh, nothing….. go ahead, go ahead! Do take your time. (Makes big tick mark across this candidates name)

Eight hours later, results are out. She's in.

Bystander 1 (scratching his head): “Aliyo, how the hell did *she* get in?! She’s got 2 supplees (supplimentaries) and just 64% uluva!”

Bystander 2: “Hush, a$$hole! Look ….. she’s bending down to pick up her shoes and her books. Golden chance machan!

(Their eyes focus and go glazed and beady into that-which-must-not-be-stared-at-by-true-gentlemen. The world is true. Cycle of Karma is the ultimate truth. Neti. Neti. )

Case 2:

Half-A$$ Techie(H1) and braindead HR dork(H2) from KlaxonNet on the desk.

A Thampuran (Lord) of Thallu(“Snow technique”/Bullshit) from S-7 Applied Electronics(A) in the hot seat.

H2: So, what are your career objectives in the long run? Where do you see yourself in the system…..

A: Wait, wait, wait! You see, the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the haemoglobin in the atmospher because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity!

H2 and H1 rise up and applaud: “Wah, Wah, Wah!”

H2 whispers to H1: Such munificent, bodacious, magnacartacious, gnathonic, goobledeegookian effluvia of verbosity! I bet his IQ and EQ must be somewhere in the Troposphere! You know, Troposphere…. the highest layer of the atmosphere?

H1: (Grins sheepishly) Oh yesh, yesh, yesh… but now we got to check his technical knowledge.

H1: Wokay, what is your perspective on the errrr… ummmmm….Viterbi Algorithm.

A: Oh, you mean the Siffredi Algorithm? By the famed mathematician Rocco Siffredi of University of Tuscanny….{Sucker!}

H1 (Looking unsure, speaking to himself): {Hey, wasn’t that the name I read in Outlook? Or was it in The Hindu? Damn, was it Viterbi or Siffredi?}

A (thinking): {Hah hah, I knew I could get away with it! This loser doesn’t watch thundu!}

H2: (Wakes up from dozing) Hey, even I have heard that name somewhere before…… it was sooo long ago. Now where was it….

H1 (looking for a way out): Yes, my mistake. Heh heh. I mean, Siffredi algorithm!

A(thinking): {Heavens! For a moment I thought the HR guy might call my bluff… Anyway, which orifice shall I now pull out a grand new algorithm from?}….

Results out in 24 hrs, A gets into KlaxonNet beating 99 colleagues to a 4 lakh per annum package. Rumor is, he made a HUGE impression on the interview board…

Case 3:

Grizzled veteran from Albert ‘Al’ Zawahri Assosciates (A) on the desk.

Biker Demon from S-7, ME. (B) in the hot seat.

B: ….. and that was the time Tom and I crashed this Enfield into a Paandi Lorry full of cows, and got away with it! The driver had a cow! You get it? He had a cow! He had a cow! NJAHAHAHAHAHAHA…..

A: Interesting. Interesting. {Son of a mangy dog... spawn of a molting vulture, won’t you ever stop yapping?!}

B: You know dude, there was this time I was high on brake-fluid and arrack cocktail and….

A: Wait, wait, wait, my son. Patience is a virtue and heaven awaits those who are patient.

B: You da boss, dawg! Whatever you say!

A: You like SPEEEED? (Voice rising to shrill levels)

B: Does J-Lo have a killer bo*ty?

A: Eh? Oh ok…. I get it. But I would prefer my goat Pakeezah (Zah Zah) though! Anyway. (Husky voice now) You like to CRAAAASSSSHHHH into things?

B: Rev me up, Megadeath on my iPod, juice my ride, lemme crank up the speed and I’ll wreck friggin’ Planet Jupiter and his Aunt Sarah!

A: (Dials a number on his secure satellite phone) Pervez, Osama, Li Peng, We have a winner! Alhamdulillah!

The ones that make it through the gruelling process which seperated the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, the FLUTES (subject matter for another folio) from the Mexxx, the women from the Ladies Hostelites and the awkardly feminine from the possibly Civilian (i.e Civil Engineering).........(with due respets to Dodgeball movie), have to pay a Hafta of approx 10000 (Nepal) rupees. Sher's share of this Hafta goes into the bulk orders for Rapidex English speaking course booklets for the teaching staff in charge of the CGPU, always selected for his command over Parassala dialect of Malayalam (think Rajamanickam times 10)...... another chunk into our clandestine bio-weapons program at the Ladies Hostel and the rest into the "relief" fund for the CGPU student representatives from each branch.
In my days, we had Sid, Harry, EP and K..... two guys and two gals(?) respectively from E1 and E2 divisions of my branch. Equal equal for political correctness, "just for a horror" as the wogs say! Grrrrrrrr. (PS: One of these is an on-off blogger of no mean skill). Poor things did a good job, including successfully threatening a globetrotting IT giant to admit students with one supplee, dusting the cobwebs, sweeping the CGPU floor, fix the plumbing, hauling the furniture around, getting 440V shocks from the Edison era equipment...... and at the end of the day gets pummelled by their own classmates for the tiniest shortcomings. You see, we are an organisation that does NOT tolerate the smallest infraction. After the recruitment season, most reps become wrecks of human beings and walk around with a glazed look, dive for cover and yells for fire-support whenever they hear a sudden noise, goes into convulsions if they see anyone in formal wear.... tch, tch. Suchapity. Here's looking at you, brave martyrs for our cause..... you shall always live in our minds! :P

This, my friends, is my brief intro to our eternal, glorious opera that is the CGPU.... and her dramatis personae. May she live a thousand lifetimes!


Footnote: As for my personal experience with CGPU, I invoke the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution- "I refuse to answer on the ground that the answer may tend to incriminate me". Let me just tell you that the techie who had the misfortune to inteview me abandoned all worldly life and now teaches orthodox Shunyavada at a Tibetan monsatery...... the HR guy was last seen "gone junglee" and swinging creeper to creeper a la Tarzan, by a Serbian mercenary in Zaire.
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PS: Civilians and Mexxx and assorted effluvia who have been mentioned here, Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar.....