E-mail IDs

E-mail IDs are simply the online addresses of people. Addresses to which electronic mails can be routed. Such a well intentioned invention has now become a major source of embarrasment or a perennial source for some fun, depending on which side of the ridicule you are, at my work place.

I work for HCL technologies' Network Products Division. The most important customer for this division is Cisco. There are close to 1300 people working on Ciscos projects alone. The relationship between HCL and CISCO is a very strong one and hence all employees of HCL who work on Ciscos projects are given Cisco e-mail IDs. This is were the problem starts for most people as Cisco has got a weird way of making e-mail IDs. Typically the E-mail IDs are "firstname"."secondname"@"domain.com", atleast in many companies like Infosys, CTS, TCS etc... But Cisco does not follow this pattern. Instead it feeds the first name, middle name and last name to a software and that software returns an e-mail ID.

As a result of this we get some really hilarious e-mail IDs i.e. as long as it is not your own. Sample some of the e-mail IDs.

Gnanashekaran Gnanapandian - gngnanan

Rathneswar joshi - ratjoshi

Madhneskar yadav - madyadav

Supraja Pandiarajan - suppandi

and the clincher......

Badhrinath Soundarajan - badsound

There are other IDs like karamamu, aragotha, aguggili, etc... which are definitely funny but not on the same league as the above mentioned ones. I am sure there are many other interesting IDs that are yet to be explored by me.

Imagine your state if you have to say your e-mail ID to your friend/fiancee or whoever as badsound. Shit..... This would also be printed prominently in your business card. Now if e-mail IDs were to be just that, online addresses to which e-mails are routed, then the embarrasment would be limited. But unfortunately the culture at CODC (this is what they call the centre in HCL that works for Cisco - Cisco Offshore Development Centre) is that people rarely address you by your first names. This is true even for people who know you well. Everyone addresses you by your e-mail ID. So the embarrasment caused to those who have those extremely funny IDs continues for a long time.

There are a whole lot of places where e-mail IDs are used.

1.) Your customers will address you by your e-mail ID on conference calls.

2.) Youll have to put your e-mail ID on the various documents that you edit.

The list of places where your e-mail ID is used, is endless and hence the sources of fun is also endless. Some people stop using their names altogether and start using their e-mail IDs even when they have to introduce themselves. For a good portion of my first month at HCL, I was thinking my project managers' name was anku while it was actually anand kumar.

I just thought of some names and the resulting e-mail IDs. I guess these are very common names. The E-mail IDs are only my guesses but there is a good possibility of such names actually getting these IDs. Very funny indeed. Sample some...

1.) pulliraj - Pulliman Rajamurugan (remember the popular pulliraja)

2.) yamaraja - Yamini (Whatever second name that can be formed from araja)

3.) aarupanni - Aarumugam Pannirselvam (Aarupanni in tamil means six pigs)

4.) shitami - Shivkumar tamilselvan

5.) kutipani - Kutila Panirselvam (kutipani in tamil means small pig)

6.) korangan - Koushik Ranganathan

7.) gandhand - Ganapathi Dhandapani (First four characters in hindi = .... )

8.) muchakra - Murali chakrapni

You should have got the picture by now.

Sample some conversations that I hear on a daily basis

"Hey badound, what happened to that document"

"Has suppandi checked in that C file"

"Dei ratjoshi, inga vaa da"

Ill be laughing like mad everytime I heard these during my initial days resulting in the aggrieved people giving me some stern looks. But I am kind of used to all these now.

Thankfully not everyones names lends itself to the forming of such IDs. Yours truly also escaped this trauma. I got a rather manageable pkarasan. This was formed from my first name and surname.