Last night, as I finished a conf call with my US client, my wife very subtly commented on my fake American accent. It kept me thinking as to why we always drop our natural speech and hop onto some weird foreign accent whenever we find ourselves conversing with someone from America or Britain or any other English speaking country. I have observed this phenomenon very frequently in the so called geeky world of Indian Information Technology. Sneak into any software company, eve-drop on a geek holding close to his mouth the microphone of his headpiece or receiver of his desktop telephone, and you will be able to hear some very weird enunciation of English words. Rarely, you will find something you called a perfect diction. But if you call the same person yourself, you will miss the same accent. Why? Because now he/she is talking to a native, an Indian.
I can’t infer any logic behind this trend but it is so prevalent in my industry, that people from outside of this geeky world, occasionally laugh at it. But the Indian IT brethren never notice this thing in their cubicles during their daily nine to five stint. May be our IT Gods i.e. our bosses and super-bosses and super-duper-bosses will notice this anomaly someday and do the required cure. After all, we are amongst the few working men/women who in their 20s are drawing big bucks. We definitely need to have some class.
