Whenever you visit an old friend, especially if his family had been blessed with a longish respite from you, one scene plays out without fail. The patriarch would demand that all the hapless youngsters in the family line up to apprise you of personal developments and answer your inane questions. Just like the military parades held for visiting Presidents, who go about the job with a crick-in-the-neck bearing, trying to look for curry stains on the uniforms or a random unzipped fly! Even the rebels amongst the children decide to co-operate, out of pity for the entreating father, on the condition that no such parade is held for another dignitary for one year. This scribe was the beneficiary of such an honour recently. During the informal pow-wow that ensued, one felt empathy welling up for the Duke of Kent coerced annually into having significantly meaningful exchanges with ball-boys/girls at Wimbledon. It always looks like the Duke has been warned to keep his hands to himself and not pat any boy or girl on the back, the Royals' reputation being what it is. So, the Duke's already strained demeanour is further stressed as he mouths banalities like `grass is green eh?', `Slazenger balls are good, right?' etc. I felt I was in a similar plight. The friend's offspring seemed gainfully employed, but fashionably unhappy about their jobs - as every youngster nowadays is. One kid, however, caught my attention when he said he worked for a company making apps for mobiles. Ah, the neo-normal! It looks like every lane in Bangalore has an app-making start-up, with every family in the neighbourhood contributing to the manpower required for the ubiquitous endeavour.
My dear wife recently admitted to me that in her work-place, populated mostly by boys and girls in their early 20s, she felt a bit odd primarily for one reason. This is an earth-shaking admission coming from an individual who is seldom willing to be outdone in anything reasonable. This major oddity tending to make her feel an outcast, was the number of apps she had on her mobile, which was a single digit number, whereas the other kids averaged a few thousands. She elaborated that there were some sixty apps per head for ordering breakfast (different apps sourced bulls-eye and scrambled eggs), one hundred and fifty for lunch and some two hundred for dinner. Obviously every commercial establishment feels the floor-boards slipping under its organizational feet, if it did not have an app at the minimum. The youngsters happily labour under the wrong impression that they are milking the mobile phone for all they can, while the truth is that the mobile phone is quietly running all their lives, more so, with all the apps. What struck this author was that in all this bedlam, there should be some really useful apps the industry could conjure up and offer to the society for overall betterment. So, he has made an attempt at thinking up a few. May not be the best, but here goes.
The most useful app, as traffic-harried city-dwellers would vouch, would be the one which helps untangle the Gordian knot of jumbled up vehicles at chaotic junctions. The chaos is compounded by the infinitely wise authorities, who strategically leave such junctions unmanned and without traffic signals, just so the general populace can indulge in some gas-fume-filled-fun, as a token of gratitude from a government collecting huge amounts as Road Tax from the citizens. We Indians have this irresistible urge to unifocally wade into any traffic tangle where vehicles from all directions inexorably converge and stop only when physical contact becomes unavoidable thereafter, the point of no-return having been reached. The idea is never to let anyone get out easily, so every inch of available road space is taken, the last bits by the leanest of two-wheelers. Now that there is no wiggle-room for anyone, all the satisfied participants smugly sit back and start gazing around, waiting for a messiah to emerge. Some villains in the piece spoil the fun by shouting generally or by honking repeatedly. Now, the app screaming to be developed, should be able to use the strategically placed cameras on the nearest tree-top or light-pole top, analyze the confusing mass of vehicles below, identify which one should move first, by how many inches in which direction and communicate this via a public address system, so that people can start wriggling out of the mess of their own malevolently willful creation. It is entirely possible that people, with their inexhaustible penchant for fun on the roads, will jostle and the wrong vehicles might move in the wrong direction, further complicating the mess, but that is a chance we have to take, you cannot blame the app for that.
A couple of other useful apps relate to the food-delivery mechanism, involving the restaurants and the seemingly permanently-starved segment of the population. One app should be able to track the delivery-boy on his vehicle, using GPS, right from the time he departs from the restaurant, through the maze of bye-lanes he has to traverse, till delivery. This ensures that the hungry customer does even less work than before (because some thirty minutes are spent in looking at the mobile phone, deriving immense vicarious pleasure from the sight of the delivery boy in a real-life race situation, racing against time and, for good measure, violating a few traffic rules like riding on the pedestrian side-walk if not a few pedestrians), while all the time he or she has the food in sight and mind. And salivates. A truly satisfied customer in all respects, in the end. A related app could be that which a pedestrian, who would otherwise end up being a fatal statistic in the above cathartic meeting of the food supply and demand sides, could use. This app will keep him out of harm's way, warning him to stay in-doors until all the menacing delivery boys move elsewhere, leaving the erstwhile killing fields safe for navigation on foot.
Two other apps are mentioned here; neither of them probably can avoid loss of some kind to the user, but is of immense informational value and could also bring the balm of solace in times of stress. One should use all available historical data relating to delays in Air India flights taking off and predict what could be the next three possible hilarious reasons for delay. We have to accept a wider choice here, since narrowing down to one single reason might be too difficult even for the most intelligent computer. Who could have guessed accurately that one flight would be delayed because the engineer and the pilot were fighting a pitched battle inside the cockpit?? Another somewhat similar app could be for telling investors why the stock market really went down suddenly, immediately after they invested. Otherwise, these poor sods not only lose money and sleep, but suffer the ignominy of remaining clueless as to why. Currently all kinds of reasons are bandied about - from Euro zone crisis to ISIS taking Palmyra to a bunch of people urinating in the Himalayas thereby melting the snow a bit. Losers, there will always be in stock markets because otherwise the less gullible cannot make money; but clueless losers suffer a double whammy and they deserve somewhat better! Another app could try to predict which of our eminently bright politicos would come out with a gem to hugely embarrass the party, the country - well everyone, except the `gemmer'. This will be very useful to the party managers as well as family members, to either start building up defenses or to seek hiding places.
If you thought all these apps mentioned above are disappointingly frivolous, what about this one? An app, which could use past behaviour of a spouse and indicate the possible reaction to yet another stupid situation of one's making?? This could help prepare the erring party to either stand bravely up and smartly deflect the attack or scurry into a rat-hole for the next few days. What? You are saying past behaviour can never be the basis for prognosis, when it comes to an angry spouse?? That rings true. That would mean this will probably be the most sought after app, if it could be rigged because the application for this app is universal, no??
