‘Oh, sorry, I forgot. Ms. Lavanya is telling a story. I don’t want to miss a word. I’ll stay quiet.’
‘If one pressed a number, the machine sent a fake signal to her brain that she was eating with enjoyment and to her full. Number 1 was for ice cream, for instance, number 2 was for aloo tikki, 3 was for French fries and so on. It was a boon for the old lady. She never felt so replete with the kind of tastes she enjoyed and the sense of satiation.
‘Her family was very happy. They saw a lot of improvement in her health. Her weight reduced, body fat came down, and blood test results showed much improvement. Suddenly, one day, the doctor got a message that she had died. He was puzzled since she had recently showed such tremendous improvement. He thought a heart attack was very common at her age, so she might have died of heart failure. When a post-mortem was carried out he was astonished to discover that the cause of her death was starvation.’
‘The doctor had suggested she eat less but not to stop eating altogether. But the last week, the lady became so involved with the machine, and pressed so many of its buttons, that she forgot to eat for nearly three days at a time and died. The machine was giving her a fake feeling that she had eaten her fill, but in reality, she had not eaten anything. So, Mr Pinto,’ Lavanya concluded, ‘I hope you get my point. Don’t spoil people.’
‘I’m not responsible for what improper use people put a tool to. A person can use a car for transportation or it can be misused to kill a person. Would you stop building cars, then? Society had to create a system, such as traffic rules, so people would be discouraged from misusing vehicles.’
‘So invent whatever tools you like.’
‘’Then you should help me as a partner,’ Pinto reminded her of her wifely duty.
‘Sure, but what am I supposed to do?’
‘The usual stuff, research the topic, give me ideas.’
‘Do you realize how much you depend on me?’ asked Lavanya, looking up through her lashes flirtatiously.
‘Not really, I was only thinking that if you spend time with me on this, you’ll spend less time and money on shopping,’ Pinto couldn’t help saying, before he got down to the serious part of their conversation. ‘This is what I was thinking: in the course of doing your daily housework, you move things around a lot, so what you need is something that moves those items for you.’
‘Hmm, you’re right,’ said Lavanya reflectively. ‘Another hassle is where to place the articles you’ve displaced.’
‘I’ve a solution for both. We just need to assemble things together. For moving articles within the home, we use chutes again. So let’s have tracks installed connecting every room of the house. Bins will run on tracks to carry articles to and fro.’
‘That’s a beginning, but what about what I said about where to place those articles?’
‘Good point. I’ll ask my friend to develop a few robotic arms for different tasks,’ said Pinto.
After three months of hard work and running a small pilot in his garage, Pinto had a pretty good design layout for his house. He hugged Lavanya in his excitement, ‘Darling, I’m ready to take on the automation of my house.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, but you’ll have to support me.’
‘Of course, but tell me how, Pinto.’
‘I need a different type of support this time.’
‘You’re being cryptic again.’
‘I’ll install tracks around the whole house, everywhere, from living room to the bedroom to the garden. It’ll need several aesthetically unfriendly changes around the home. So don’t get mad at me.’
‘I promise not to, but make sure that you do it carefully, without damaging our precious possessions.’
‘I’ll try my best,’ promised Pinto in turn. ‘Who knows?’ he said dreamily. ‘This could be the future of housing! When people build homes they will soon install tracks as automatically as they do concealed wiring!’
‘You always think about the future,’ she pouted. Make sure that you don’t spoil my beautiful house… my present.’ Pinto knew he had Lavanya’s permission to go ahead with his experimenting.
He created distribution stations at various convenient locations such as near the couch, near the dining table, by his study table, near the kitchen sink, gas oven, and similarly, one in every room. All these stations were given an identification code.
Now, the next step was to build shelves in the pantry and store-room which were ‘robotic arms-friendly’ and containers which a robotic arm could grab easily. He decided to shape five types of containers: one large, one small for solid dry material, one medium container for liquid, and two rectangular type containers for books and miscellaneous items. Virtually everything important in a household could be kept in these containers.
The robotic arm would have a camera and a barcode reader. Each container would have a barcode to identify what was in it. These containers would be kept in bins. So much for the infrastructure.
Now to find the perfect means to control and monitor the movement of articles in the house. For that, Pinto needed some tooling, which was easy. He created an application on his smartphone. And now the system was ready for demo.
Pinto installed the application on Lavanya’s phone. Lavanya could hardly contain her curiosity, ‘How does this work?’
‘First, ask the maid to bring me some potato chips. I’ll munch on those while explaining.’
‘Mira, can you get the yellow packet of chips?’
Mira ran to get the chips but came back soon, looking undecided. ‘Madam, there are two yellow packets. Do you want the lighter or the darker one?’
Pinto laughed, ‘Forget it. I already have it.’
‘Amazing, how did you do it?’
This was the moment for bragging Pinto had been looking forward to. ‘Here is the list of things in your app,’ he showed Lavanya. ‘You just need to drag it to your nearest distribution station. The robotic arm will pick the item up from the right bin and container and send it to you.’
‘My God, I can’t believe this! But how do I put it back?’ Lavanya was now taking all miracles for granted.
‘Even simpler. Put the item in the distribution centre and just drag it to pantry. The application will choose the bin automatically. You don’t need to know where the item is stored. The system would know that. So, what do you think?’
‘I think this couldn’t be for me alone. It’s probably your next business idea.’
‘You’re right, as usual. Let me call Imran. By the way, you are the naming expert.’
‘Automation in Hindi is swachalan. Can we name it Swachalan?’
‘Sounds a little long but I’ll go with that. Your names have been lucky for me so far. Did you decide your own name as well?’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. Only intelligent persons can understand my jokes.’
***
The doorbell rang. Mrs Verma had come to invite them to her birthday party.
Lavanya felt like showing off. ‘Come inside, Mrs. Verma, I want you to see something. You like almond cookies, right? Let me get you some.’
Lo and behold, a metal arm emerged from nowhere bearing a plate of biscuits. Mrs Verma’s eyebrows shot skyward. ‘H-h-how did that happen?’ she stammered.
Lavanya proudly explained how Swachalan worked. ‘So, what do you think of it?’ she said, leaning back in her sofa to enjoy the fat lady’s reaction.
But Mrs Verma had irritants mixed into her blood. ‘It’s nice,’ she said, suddenly looking unimpressed. ‘But, you still have to buy the cookies. The machine can’t make them.’
Lavanya was upset. She didn’t respond.
Mrs Verma understood that Lavanya didn’t like what she’d said. She stood up heavily, ‘I just wanted to make sure… nothing else.’
After she left, Pinto turned towards Lavanya. ‘Why on earth did you show it to her?’
Lavanya was furious, ‘You’re right, I shouldn’t have. She’s a stupid bitc
h... always finding fault.’
‘I’m not talking about Mrs Verma but in general. Humans are never satisfied, no matter how much is given to them. But this desire for improvement keeps the world moving, it keeps people motivated, and encourages innovation.’
‘But she could have shown a little appreciation,’ Lavanya fumed. She’s like… you invent a machine for ironing clothes by itself, and she’ll look at it and say it was all very well, but would have been much better if you could feed it raw yarn at one end and get ironed clothes of your size at the other.’
Pinto laughed uncontrollably.
Lavanya cooled down. ‘You keep laughing to yourself. Let me play with Swachalan.’ And she played, as enchanted as a five-year-old with a new toy. A couple of hours later, she was back, all excited. ‘You’re not the only one who can innovate. I can too.’
‘I never said you couldn’t, but show me your latest invention, anyway.’
‘See, this is what I did. In your app I just created a group of items for some of my recipes. So if I need to prepare potato curry, I don’t have to select all the items separately. I just choose ‘prepare for potato curry’ and Swachalan brings potato, tomato, onion and all the spices I need for that particular dish.’
‘Fantastic.’ Pinto knew that users would expand upon his creations.
Imran entered their living room. ‘What’s fantastic?’
‘Look, Imran, just look at Swachalan!’ Lavanya pulled him by his wrist. ‘This is Pinto’s most useful tool so far.’
‘That’s why I’ve come here directly from the airport. I had a feeling you had pulled off yet another magic act. I told my investors that Pinto was sure to be upto something great, and that they should just wait and watch.’
Lavanya gave the demo. Pinto asked Imran at the end of it, ‘So, do you think you can develop some business out of this?’
‘It’s superb,’ said Imran. ‘Nobody has this system—in our country, at least—so it’ll sell like hot cakes. But I think you can do more with it. That way, nobody will be able to copy it quickly.’
‘You’re like Suresh.’
‘Who is he?’
‘A character in a story.’
‘I love your stories, Pinto. Tell me.’
‘Suresh, a small-town guy, visited Delhi. A friend had cautioned him that most of the shopkeepers in Delhi were cheats, and that he should be very careful in his bargaining. They said, whatever the given price, just negotiate for 50 per cent off. So, he went to an umbrella shop and asked the price of one.’
‘“Three hundred rupees,” the shopkeeper responded.
‘Our man offered, “How about a hundred and fifty?”
‘The shopkeeper was in a good mood, “Okay, but only because you are from my hometown. Take it.”
‘Suresh mentally thanked his friend for his advice and again, quickly proposed a new price, “I’d rather offer seventy-five.”
‘The shopkeeper was really annoyed and told him angrily, “Don’t be stupid. If this is the way you bargain, don’t bother to offer anything, just take it for free!”
‘Suresh was good at maths, and soon enough, he came up with a new proposal, “Will you give me two of them for free?’’’
Imran chuckled, ‘It’s a bit much, comparing me with Suresh!’
‘But you’re like him—always wanting more!’ Pinto replied. ‘So,’ he went on, ‘from your perspective, what’s missing? It so happens that I’ve done some more work on it but let me hear it from you.’
‘Don’t get angry. Everything doesn’t have to be there in version one, but if you can add some automation for cleaning and gardening, that’d be awesome,’ Imran counselled.
‘Good that we are on the same page. For cleaning purposes, I’ll integrate the app with my robotic vacuum cleaner app. It’s available commercially. For lawn-mowing, I’ve already given an order to a design shop to create something similar to a robotic vacuum cleaner. The design team is also developing flexible roller brushes which can be installed around the toilet bowls hidden behind the outer trim. Whenever you flush the toilet, these brushes also roll from top to bottom, scrub the toilet, and then go back to their original position.’
‘Also integrate the app with lights, fans and curtains, so that they can be open and closed at desired intervals.’
‘As that technology is already available, it’s an easy task. In fact, I’ll also add music and TV automation. One more thing… I want to dedicate this project to Lavanya,’ said Pinto
‘Good thought,’ Imran congratulated him.
One day Pinto asked Lavanya to make some traditional Punjabi food for dinner that night. She looked exasperated. ‘There will be only one maid tonight. Lately, you’ve had so many demands. Why don’t you automate cooking too? That’ll make my life also easy.’
Pinto acknowledged it as a great idea but admitted it couldn’t be done without Lavanya’s direction. ‘I hardly know how to cook,’ he reminded her.
Lavanya smiled, ‘If I teach you cooking, it’ll be like how you taught me driving. Remember how much we used to fight?’
‘Why don’t I hire a chef intern… the same way we hired an instructor for your driving lessons?’
‘I think that’d be better.’
An attractive young lady, Sonali, joined their staff. ‘Sir,’ she asked when she was told what was expected of her, ‘how will you invent a cooking machine?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Pinto frankly. ‘Let’s start with something simple. Tell me, how do you make masala chai?’
Sonali laughed, ‘It’s so simple. Boil water, add sugar, ginger, cardamom and tea leaves. In the end, add milk and strain the mixture.’
‘Wow! So this is the algorithm for tea-making. ‘When I was in the 10th grade,’ Pinto told the young woman, ‘one of my seniors designed a basic but impressive tea-making machine’.
‘How did it work?’
‘It was just like the old-time scales that had a glass container on each side. These containers were connected by a pipe. On the left side was a heater below one container. Everything was added together into the container above—like water, sugar, milk and tea. As the container became heavy, the scale tilted to the left. When the container lowered towards the heater due to its weight, the heater was turned on by a switch which was aligned with the tilting of the scale. Once the tea had boiled, it went through the pipe to the other container on the right through force generated by steam. The right side had a built-in strainer so the tea leaves were separated. Now, the right side became heavy, so the scale tilted toward that side. With that movement, the heater was switched off.’
‘Cool, sounds sexy,’ Sonali interrupted admiringly.
Lavanya didn’t like Sonali, a good-looking girl, using words like ‘sexy’ in front of Pinto. ‘You should be careful how you choose your words,’ she said reprovingly.
‘Sorry, ma’am,’ the girl said.
Pinto was deep in thought, saying the occasional words out loud absentmindedly. ‘If this is sexy, how would you describe the food machine? The food machine would be way more complicated... ’Apparently Pinto didn’t hear the warning Lavanya gave Sonali. He continued his thought process, ‘The first thing to do is to create storage in the machine... There should be multiple compartments of different sizes to keep cooking ingredients such as spices, flour, rice and lentils... ’
Sonali interrupted again, ‘Sir, shall we name the machine first?’
Pinto smiled, ‘Why not?’
‘Sir, how about FoodGini?’
‘Nice.’
Lavanya gave both Pinto and Sonali a strange look. ‘Is she going to attack or destroy the food?’ she snapped caustically. ‘Useless name! Why don’t we call it FoodMaster as it’s the master of food?’
Sonali tried to say something, ‘But ma’am—’
Pinto interrupted, ‘Very good! FoodMaster it is.’ And he turned to Sonali to quickly change the topic, ‘Sonali, for this week, I give you two assignments. You need to make a list
of various methods of cooking such as baking, microwaving… ’
‘Grilling, heating, deep-frying, pan-frying, sautéing, folding, mixing, chopping, grating, peeling, squeezing, kneading, grinding, rolling, steaming, pressure-cooking and tossing,’ Sonali rattled off the list.
‘Goodness, you are fast,’ commented Pinto.
‘What’s the second assignment?’ Sonali asked briskly.
‘Write down detailed steps for some basic dishes such as boiled rice, puri, chhole, potato curry, and soon. I’ll try to convert that to an algorithm and then implement it on the machine.’
Lavanya interrupted, ‘Where is the machine?’
Pinto smiled, ‘I’m building one in parallel to our research. There are going to be multiple chambers for cooking by the various methods listed by Sonali. The software application will be capable of calculating the interdependency of various processes in such a way that chambers can be used one after another when needed to serve multiple dishes together.’
‘Like what?’
‘If you need to make puri and Punjabi kadhi together, the same frying chamber will be used to fry pakori for the kadhi first and then the puri.’
A basic machine was ready in a couple of months. Pinto loaded various simple recipes into the machine and tested it. He kept on adding motions peculiar to certain preparations—such as when dry curry needed tossing—so he added a motion to rotate the closed pan upside down to mimic that process. Scraping was kind of tricky but after a few trials with various materials and shapes of tool, it worked.
One day, when Pinto was testing his machine, Lavanya came up to him and said, ‘I want to confess something. I was not in favour of hiring Sonali.’
‘Why?’
‘I thought, a pretty girl without much experience, what use would she be? But she is a hardworking person. In fact, her help with Western food has been tremendous.’
Pinto smiled, ‘I’m happy to see you jealous even after so many years of being married. A sense of possession is very important to a successful marriage.’
‘I know you are not like the others who have a good time with other than their wives.’
‘What do you mean? I can’t even have an affair? That other women won’t be attracted to me?’
Pinto Has An Idea Page 19