Saturday 24 May 2014

Pout-detector Selfie-taker


Pout – verb - push one's lips or one's bottom lip forward as an expression of petulant annoyance or in order to make oneself look sexually attractive.

Pouty - adjective, I made.

My parents never understood my pouty behaviour since I was three. I think they got me all wrong. All along!

In class five I would pout at the head-taller guy from next door who got us home-made pickle instead of my favourite candy and they got the pout all wrong. I would go to the club and pout at one uncle’s drummer son, class seven, playing a lifeless tune and they misunderstood my pouty lips. Again and again, and countless number of tender-aged times. Finally, packed me off to a convent, where the hems of skirts met the elastic of socks and skin was a bad four letter word, after ‘pout’ that is. Oh, I didn’t stop pouting! In an all girls’ nunnery convent there are more reasons for a 15 year old to pout than God will ever know or Heavens get to see. 

What a bad childhood.

But all that seems to be from a Stone Age past. Today, much like the Blue Stocking Movement of yore, the lips have found their own revolution. Say, the Red Lipstick Movement. It has spread like jelly set wrong, or not set at all. The camera in the phone holds the mirror up to your soul lens up to your mole, and all you have to do is click. Save Share that DIY Selfie face for viral eternity, often making such luscious expressions even the camera battery gets wet dreams. So, just like the British suspected trouble the moment two men collected to pee and discuss politics on the road-side, so you can expect a pouty selfie soon as three giggly girly lips come together, posing in front of a phone camera I mean. But all this you know already, if you too, like me, live on FB (activation-deactivation-‘where is he?'-grand comeback included!)

Lets talk technologi technologee technology, not really my forte but I do know the green wire stands for peace on Earth and black one to remind me I’m a live wire even with my black dress on. Hear on! 

Young India is not just collared and wired and earning fat bucks (and voting and posting pictures!). The youth of today is always in the fifth gear. The B/W picture of Contentment (man sitting on an arm chair in his verandah in a baniyan, scratching arm pits and hearing flies flutter) no longer pleases them. They compete till kingdom comes, hard! Cutting throats for not just plum postings, corner offices and cushy cars but even to declare to the world’s winds in Alia Bhatt’s voice that ‘I love my baby lips muah muah’ and that I am always ‘Lakme selfie ready!’ Posters for ready reference below.



Therefore, due to such competition the selfie situation is quite tensed, and all cameras and phone batteries are feeling the heat, listening to ‘lens lens in my phone, who’s the pouty-est on the globe’ and God forbid if the answer is as unsatisfactory as the pseudo-elevation of a push-up whose straps have lost elasticity. God forbid, but then, it always is. 

In such days where pouts are vying to occupy selfie space, necks sprained into kamasutric positions to make nose hair hide itself, eyes going smoky and doe-like and windows to a thirsty soul, we need our two hands free to come to our self-service. (Oh not that way, no! You get me wrong!) No longer should we need to finger the camera button. So, I speak to software developers to create what we can call Pout-Detector Hands-free Long-lasting Selfie-Taker (dictionaries can revise their meanings of ‘selfie’!) Much like a smile-detector, but who is smiling? So, the moment the lips start moving towards your own image in the phone camera, the phone takes a picture. It is the highest form of self-love, the aspiration to kiss your own image (and God won't mind for man was created in His image) and look good doing it too. This deserves the biggest brains ever born to work on it. 

And when this software is invented and installed, what larks! 

Here is my phone resting between my floss and my tooth-brush, and there it detects my pout and clicks me in multiple poses – hands in just washed hair, hands in hair combed front, hands in hair combed back, hands cupping the cheeks, the chin, the … you get the point! Or when you are cooking pao bhaji, trying to get yourself in the frame with mashed potatoes drowning peas all bubbling in the pan, you place the phone on the steel utensil rack, pouting with a buttery intensity. It will love your bebbe lips, and hands – holding ladle, holding the two handles of the kadhai, closing eyes and smelling aroma. Clickety click it will go, detecting the pout on its own. 

But then, what about Equality, our favourite idea? 

I demand equal representation of all kinds of pouts in the pout-detector software. Equal representation. (Remember my childhood I just shared above?) Pouts happen automatically too and so many are asexual in nature. Like when watching TV without specs you may pout. Or when constipated (try!). Or when Arnab Goswami is being his real age, or even AAP? Then the pout we make when we go ‘tch tch’, or the exhaling one when in pain while getting a tattoo. How about the one which delivers lungular smoke up into the clear skies and even the one which we make to remove hair strands from our chin with plucker? The phone should be able to detect and preserve all kinds of pouts - sexy as well as asexy. No sexy-ist bias please.

Okay, I am suddenly all alive with my own brainchild.

I am sending this article to Rajiv “butter skin” Makhni of the cleft chin gadget guru fame. He will understand what I mean. Only yesterday I read this piece by him, recommending best phones for selfie taking. In him I will find a nodding head when he reads this. Perhaps, he will call divert me to the right people who will, like me, see that the next big thing needs to be Pout-Detector Hands-free Long-lasting Selfie-Taker (in whichever order their lips please!)

Muah!  


[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - The next big thing - What will the next must-have technological innovation be? Jetpacks? Hoverboards? Wind-powered calculators?]

23 comments:

  1. Hahaha...selfies sure have gone viral! Every girl worth her pout would benefit with this pout detector app ;)
    Was laughing throughout this awesome post!

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    1. Thanks for reading, Vinodini. I tried to test my pout and I think I am quite worthless. :P

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  2. Hilarious Sakshi.. What an awesome post!! :D

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    1. Good to be laughing together this Saturday morn, Anusree.
      Thanks for reading! :)

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  3. Haha I dont think Arnab G can ever act his age. Thanks for the article on the best phones for selfies :p
    I wont be surprised is some developer steals this idea and makes a camera app for pouts!

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    1. Exactly. He is usually the pouty 3-year-old the nation loves to see. :D
      That article came my eye's way quite coincidentally. I just had to include this divine providence in the post then. :P
      I do wish they give me a free phone with loaded selfie software in that case. *goes to practice pouts in wash basin mirror*

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  4. Off to the bathroom to practice my pout. Arnab makes me grimace, yes the same grimace that comes on the face while enduring a waxing or threading session. These days, so does AAP.

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    1. Such petulant kids, both.
      You have a lovely nature's-given pout!

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  5. Ha ha ha ha :D :D ... This is very very interesting indeed :)

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  6. Funny, funny, though, really, you needn't have bothered with a whole 2000 words post. You already had me at 'deactivation'. :-D

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    1. You know, I had used a 'she' there first, but then I remembered our profound conversation regarding the same and I dropped the 's'. :D I knew there is one person here who will stop and take note there. :P
      Yeah. this was quite long. And I took kasam to keep myself pouting till I finished writing this one so bhagwan ji makes it all funny, funny. So now, I don't know how to stop pouting. :P

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  7. Does this work on men too .. or only girls are allowed to pout .. and hey you better copyright that idea .. lest some clever pouter get it going .. you never know .. the next generation of camera comes with it all :)

    made me smile on this dull cloudy rainy day ,....

    Bikram

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    1. Strangely, when men pout, girls tend to think they are trying to be them. I have not understood this sentiment. :D
      If I do spot it in the next gen of cameras, I will ask for my free faux fur leopard print cover for the phone. :P
      Glad you liked this, B.

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  8. That was hilarious thank you!! Would love to see your pouting image as your DP :)

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    1. Won't happen. :P
      Thanks a lot, Magic Eye

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  9. That's hilarious post.:)) waiting for this technology to enter the market soon.
    Latest on my blog
    Poemsshortstories.blogspot.com

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  10. Ha ha ha...hilarious that was. Pout-detector Selfie-taker! Where do you come up with such crazy ideas, Sakshi? Crazy but extremely enjoyable. :-D

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    1. Thanks, Rekha. I usually get the most creative ideas on the pot. :P

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  11. Enjoyed you post..as always. :) Hey don't forget to patent it!! Seems like its got a pretty good market out there. feeling good after that good laugh :)

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    1. Feeling good you had a good laugh.
      Always a pleasure, Preethi, to see you on my blog. :)

      Delete
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