Tremors at Technopark
By Suneetha

Technopark, Trivandrum is one of the best IT locations in India, and popular among the industry names for its cost-effective operations, highly trained manpower and good infrastructure. It is one of the dream destinations of the IT savvy young brood of the country.

Yesterday evening, Technopark reeled under a mild seismic shock. And no, it was not another major company playing bridge with pink slips. It was Mother Earth reminding us of her existence. At 6.45 pm on September 18, calm ostensibly non-seismic Trivandrum heard a boom sound, accompanied by a slight shivering which most of the people did experience.

It had been raining heavily in the late afternoon, and so many attributed the sound and feel to a heavy peal of thunder in the distance. It lasted for about 2.5 seconds. But a few people had the premonition of an earthly interference and cleared out of their buildings. A few minutes later, there was official confirmation that it really had been an earthquake, with its epicenter about 18 Kms from the city and measuring 3.5 approximately on the Richter scale, which is mild and not really any danger. There have been incidents reported of walls and glass cracking, but that’s all about it.

Kazhakkuttom, the location of the Technopark was one of the areas which felt the tremor in full, and the IT guys still at work are reported to have vacated the work place for some time and stood outside till an after-shock was ruled out. There is no damage reported anywhere except to the fragile senses of security that a human being has of his life.

Understandably, the blogs were agog about the rare incident and in about 3 minutes, the tweets started on twitter about the earthquake at Trivandrum. The phone lines were jammed and net clogged immediately, due to the high incidence of traffic that happened in consequence.

Abhiram Sarat, a techie at the location waxes philosophical about how ‘we define the space around us in a way different from normal people’ and say how the tremor was felt at IBM, TCS or Infy….instead of at Pattom, Vattiyoorkavu or Kazhakkuttom. He also talks about the ‘humour rumour’ grapevine news that ‘some stoic project managers and team leads have asked the teams to meet the ‘dead’ line before they leave today’.  He also makes a humorous comment about how some sites plagiarized the ‘earthquake content’ on his site within a few minutes of the incident. Nice observation, Abhiram. 

It is a week end, and the techies are now off to a whole weekend of jokes on ‘tremors in Technopark Trivandrum’ definitely.