Freedom - not a freeware

In Tamilnadu, cell phones are banned in the colleges. They are not allowed to dance for film songs in the cultural festivals. Not sure whether they will be allowed to sing film songs. A lot of ladies colleges have brought rules that the students should not come in jeans or skirt. Already our colleges are backward compared to other parts of the world and now new rules are pulling us backward. Most of the colleges still think that strictness and discipline are the only ways to mould a student. The path of creativity and freedom is looked like a forbidden fruit.

When I was doing my undergrad, I marketed a software idea called e-wife in some technical competition. I felt it was a great idea and thought that I did a good job in marketing that. I bagged the first prize in the previous years for not-so-good products such as magnetic computers. So I was confident of appreciation and prize that year. But it turned out that my entry was black-listed and was thrown out of the competition. I was said that it was a vulgar presentation.

No … No … I didn’t tell anything about how my software would replace real wife in satisfying the sexual desires of husbands. Actually it’s a lady who questioned me during the presentation who is to be blamed. She asked me whether it is necessary that e-wife should be used by only one person. I don’t remember the exact reply I gave but my entry was thrown out of competition.

Leaving that part, e-wife was a well designed product. It was a combination of entertainment software (though most of the married guys disagree, wives do provide some entertainment in addition to the obvious one) and Jini technology, which was hot at that time. So e-wife will wash clothes (talk to chip enabled washing machine), wash dishes (yes, chip-enabled dish washer) and do almost everything a wife can do.

There were also feminists in the class who protested to the name e-wife and asked me to change the product name as e-servant. I explained to them that e-servant is obliged to do work but my e-wife doesn’t. So when you ask for a coffee, you might not get that day just because your e-wife is mood-out. When you switch on your comp in a hot mood, she might disable access to all porn sites as you didn’t get her the favorite antivirus she asked.

My college professors were not willing to let go the little vulgar part which was there for humor and appreciate the concept. I can’t help comparing it to the skit I did at My MBA School - ISB. The skit was criticizing the school for exorbitant fee and making fun of the Dean and Asst. deans for their meaningless rules. Asst. dean was the judge and she gave us the first prize. When Tamilnadu colleges are banning film songs, ISB is thinking of opening a bar inside the campus.