Robiotology

“At last” Ram sighed and looked at Lakshman.

“Yes, at last” Lakshman echoed immediately.

Both were quite happy at the outcome.

— — — — — — — -

It all started when Ram started this toothpaste company 20 years ago. It was a humble start in a nondescript town. He could easily get a lot of labour and was able to set up the assembly line quickly.

Workers from all around that place men and women reported to work early in the morning and went on with the filling in of the toothpaste manually after blowing it through a tube stuck in the nozzle. Further down the conveyor there were people closing it with a lid and putting it in a pack and passing it down which was further packed in cardboard boxes for shipment.

There were plenty of people and getting labour was not even in the list of top issues to worry about.

Ram had expanded his empire into cosmetics and hired Lakshman to initially help him oversee the operations as a General Manager. Soon there was competition that brought in much better technologies to scale up production and flood the market. Ram was stuck with the people who were not able to match.

That’s when he heard of Robots that can be used to automate the assembly line. He made several trips to Japan and the US along with Lakshman and struck deals to get his whole assembly line automated.

— — — — — — -

“How did he feel?” Ram asked Lakshman.

“He was almost on the verge of breaking down. I had to comfort him by taking him to the best bar in the town and make him gulp a few pints. He became al right then and talked for a while about the time he joined this company and see it grow”

“Did he say anything about all the robot stuff ?”

“Yes, he said he was awestruck when we brought in the robots to do the production and the way they did the job flawlessly. It seems he was happy to see his pay cheques doubling with the incentives on higher production and sales. But he did not expect that he will also be replaced by these robots. He thought marketing and sales would be difficult to replace as it involved meeting people”

Ram interjected “Yes, true until we could get that AI program which mimicked humans. Guess that was the final nail in the coffin”.

“Yeah…it was a cool piece of technology. But you know I never would have imagined we are taking it this far” Lakshman sounded a bit upset.

“So what are your plans for the weekend?” Ram switched the topic.

Lakshman took some time. He was recollecting the words the marketing guy spoke in the bar. “You need to be careful with Ram. With age and moving around with machines he seem to have lost the friendly way with which he used to treat us.”

“What did you ask?” he just turned around from his monitor to look at Ram.

He saw Ram’s steely eyes staring at him. For a moment it was unnerving. He has never seen Ram like that. “You meant the weekend plan right ?” Lakshman tried to sound normal. “Well may catch up with some old Hollywood movies..”.

Ram kept his gaze on Lakshman “You know what Lakshman. I have to tell you that without you I would not have gone this far with all this robot stuff. You helped me get to this point. Now we are the last two remaining. Everything else is a machine. I am tempted to think even you are not needed any longer. I wanted to be nice to you for all the time you spent here. But you know too many of our secrets. The people whom we silenced whenever there were protests. And it would be just too dangerous to let you go”.

Ram lifted his arm and pointed to Lakshman.

Lakshman knew this would happen one day. He was ready for it.

The next hour went in two robots fighting with each other.

— — — — —

Next day, when Ram entered his office, he saw a pile of electronic rubbish.

He called Lakshman into his office. “You see it happened at last. But never thought it would be so soon”.

“Well it was all your idea to put these two robots looking like us to get the factory automated. You and I could never have done this seeing all the hapless workers lose their jobs”

“Now how do we order these machines out there?”

Back to the future

While crossing the bed and entering the bath, Ram noticed the crumpled bedsheets on the bed.

“Whoa” he muttered and started folding them to put them in place. He remembered the previous night when his son and wife had used them unfolding it , which was folded in the day before by him. Now he is again at it.

The same thing follows now. Bath, breakfast, bye to office, back home and bed. That is why we like watching movies or going for shopping he thought. They seem to occur so rarely in our lives and hold the key to the other part of existence which is all those ‘B’s above.

“When I was a kid, I used to jump at every possibility. And every moment was a possibility. Where did it all go?” He brought in Sita into the fold of his thoughts. Sita had just come upstairs, of course, to keep some toy or something in its place displaced by the kid.

This is a subject that touches the very core of Sita. She has been bitten by this a lot more than Ram. “ Just imagine the millions of folks right now folding bed sheets around the world” she said and laughed heartily.

Ram started laughing and it became uncontrollable, the thought of joining the millions in folding bedsheets. He was now ROFL.

“This is sheer madness” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“This existence. And the way we have made this out to be” he said.

“So many things have entered our lives, so many objects and so many things to maintain and put it in its place, maintain them, else it becomes a living hell. And the irony is these objects were supposed to help us. This bed is supposed to help us have a cosy sleep, these lights to help us read, these laptops, mobiles, books, printer, TV, washing machines, Cars and on and on..but instead, they all come to torment us in many ways than you realize. They keep failing, we keep fixing them. They keep moving off, we keep putting them in place. They keep lagging behind and we keep upgrading them. There are warranties, service people, marketing calls, emails, financial transactions, and a whole lot that comes with them and enters our lives when all I wanted was to watch a damn Television program.

Don’t you see where this is all heading? This crazy existence?”

Ram paused. He loves to speak long sentences to convey his mind. And often Sita loses patience. So this time he ensured he comes a full round trying to end it clearly without leaving it half way.

“So throw all of them out?” She asked.

“Will we miss them at all?” he asked.

“No not at all. I guess the best thing is to start all over again. Just get rid of everything in your life that seem to occupy a tiny spot in your brain and start fresh all over. As if you just got out of college or something. In fact, if you say yes, I can give many of these to the housemaid and the fellow doing the laundry at the street corner” She said.

Ram thought for a while and agreed it to be the best thing that would help him manage the entropy.

Next few hours went in listing out things into the OLXs of the web and some kept for distribution.

Got rid of the TV. Got rid of the washing machine. Got rid of a old laptop. Got rid of the inkjet printer which had to be repaired twice without using it much. Got rid of cameras that load films, mobiles, medicines. Got rid of a lot of clothes, Got rid of lot of utensils in the kitchen. Got rid of furnitures from aeons. Got rid of a old car, a bi-cycle and a ton of toys. He deleted a whole lot of contact numbers on his mobile.

“I can smell freedom” he chuckled.

Suddenly the house looked quite empty.

“OK. I need to get back to work” he turned on his laptop.

He saw the stock market is doing fine. He logged in to find his stock position. He saw there was this amazing trailer of the new movie. He watched that.

His mobile screamed of a chat message from his friend. He briefly responded to it.

There was an offer on the vacation he wanted to do in his inbox. He could not resist seeing it.

Ram was now very busy. Like he was yesterday. Like he was the day before.

Sita shouted from the kitchen. “Hey Ram, did you see that vegetable cutter?”.

It took some time to sink in for Ram. He then shouted back.

“It was given off in that OLX sale”

The Gate of Love

There were four people waiting before me. We were all seated comfortably. It was quite hazy outside where we waited. Mostly like fog. I was not sure how long it will take for the gate to open. I was slipping into some sort of dream and then waking up to find that we were all still there.

Vaguely, very vaguely her face appeared in one of those dream — wakeup sequences I was going through. I could see a pall of gloom in her eyes.

******

She was not the most beautiful in our batch. But she had the grace and intelligence which I liked when I first saw her. I used to frequent the college library. It was a cool and shady place with lots of trees and a huge building. My haunt was the basement where I could read a lot of old papers. Not newspapers but research papers. I was deep into understanding human mind being a psychology major. It was fascinating. I used to spend all day there sometimes. It was during one of those visits there when I was sitting in that basement she crossed me. I was buried in thoughts but something made me look at her.

She came and sat across me. I looked up and said “Hi”.

She said “Hi”.

That was it. She was into her world and I was. Was I ?

Second time it was the shopping complex which we used to call as SC. She had come with few of her friends and I was alone with a juice. She recognised me and said “Hi How are you?”. I guess she would have stopped at “Hi” but it extended a bit to maintain continuity. There was a five minute exchange of personal details.

She was doing computer science. She was that hard working and intelligent combination but at the same time was very fascinating to have conversation with. We would have met few more times before it became like a regular affair. We had so many diverse topics to cover. I used to talk about Ray Kurzweil and his thoughts on how to construct a mind. She used to talk about algorithms that can be devised to simulate that. I used to talk about politics and the psychology of hoarding wealth and she used to talk about how machines can bring order to this world. It was always like connecting disparate things which brought out completely new meaning. And both of us had a taste for that I felt.

******

The man in the front, I have seen him somewhere. Though the face is not all that clear because of this fog, I could make out from his features that he is known to me somehow.

But this stupid state of mine moving between some sort of dream world and this haze all around. My God, what a crazy state to be in.

My mind slipped again I guess.

*******

It was on a rainy day in front of the beautiful lake inside our campus that I told her about my wish to be with her forever. It was quite dramatic I thought. I had been with this thought for a long time and went sleepless over it. But the previous night was one of those best nights when I got a solid sleep and fresh I was out of bed like a flower. All this gave me the courage to call her out. She was sort of liking me which I was sure of. But the thought of living with her is not something that I would still dare to tell her directly. I thought there is a small chance that she might reject it and it will bring some sort of awkwardness. But when we went to the SC, got a juice for ourselves and started walking around the lake, it was spontaneous. The conversation was like this..

‘What happened to you..Didn’t see you for a while’ — She

‘I had called you several times…you do not seem to respond’ — He

‘No…oh my God, I had a trouble with this phone, just got the firmware updated’ — She

‘You look fresh today’ — She

‘Yeah, had a good sleep after a while’ — He

‘Why ? Slogging for the exams?’ — She

‘Yes sort of, but you know you were also responsible. I had to spend more time because you were occupying my mind as well. Will you marry me?’ — He.

It was quite sudden for me to go there. She was silent. I was kind of imagining what went on in her mind ‘Take off for higher studies, new people, new environment, broader life’ and where I fit in into that equation.

And it is hard to find answers for all that as answering this question means answering all of that. Which is hard.

Stupid me. Knowing all this and I still popped out something nasty I thought.

********

The man in the front was trying to get up from his seat. After great difficulty he went and knocked on the gate. The gate was as before silent and still. When will it open ? Why am I waiting here? Who is that guy?

*********

When I went back to my hostel, I was sure the relationship had broken. Several days it went like that. I was busy with some presentations. The fellow next door was quite noisy with his rock music. It used to be like that. But now I was hearing it. I went and knocked his door when he was listening to ‘Doors’.

‘Hey man, nice music’ — I

‘Hey, what man come on in, long time’ — He

‘Wow, you have a living out of this place man’ — I

He had a refrigerator, music system, TV, nice cozy bed, air conditioner, bean bag and a lot of big posters of grown up women around.

‘What happened to the girl’ — He

‘Nothing..just a brief hiatus’ — I

‘You look depressed. I have never seen you like this’ — He

‘Yeah, a bit, but I will get over it’ — I

‘Why don’t you have a gulp’ — He

He opened the fridge and poured a bottle of something and gave me a glass.

I badly needed one and I gulped. It went on.

At some point everything was slowing down around me. I saw him hand over a glass of milk. I gulped that too.

I am now watching him talk something. His lips were growing big by the minute into something monstrous and uttering those words.

It had become dark everywhere.

‘Why don’t we go for a ride?’ — He

‘Sure..’ I was not sure if I said that.

We both walked outside the hostel. His super bike was parked outside.

Next moment I felt the rush of fresh midnight air whizzing past me, sitting behind him.

He was talking something which whizzed past. I guess he asked me ‘You enjoying the ride’. I nodded my head.

We had a cup of coffee in some distant road side shop. The folks around were staring at us and our bike.

On the way back, he missed slowing down over a couple of speed breakers. I was still flying high with all that that went in. But I could see a bit better now.

There was this truck coming against us. He took to the side and the next moment we both were flying into the sky.

***********

Now a man dressed in a black overall and a hood had come out of the gate. And I could see him, my next door friend talking to that man. He was shaking his head heavily for some of the questions asked by the man. He was taken in and the door closed.

************

I woke up and smelt hospital.

I saw her. It appeared like she had been waiting for me to open my eyes. A smile appeared on her face.

‘You are alright’ — She

‘What happened ?’ — I

‘You are alright. Thank God, Thank God…’ She kept repeating.

‘What happened , why am I here ?’ — I

‘Don’t worry just take rest’ — She

I felt weak.

When she came back bringing a doctor,

‘What happened to my friend’ — I

She looked at the Doctor. The Doctor was not in a hurry to answer that. It appeared he was working out within himself.

‘He is fine’ — Doctor said and looked at my girl.

***********

I knew he is no more. I no longer waited at the gate.