The Idea Factory

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Many of the innovations and inventions that we see around were first imagined by people like me. We writers and thinkers have the enormous responsibility of conceptualizing ideas—big and small—and disseminating them for the benefit of humanity.

Racking the Brain
Let me tell you that I have been highly ingenious since early childhood. I spend a great deal of time, contemplating, ruminating, and evaluating new ideas for useful products, but when I share an idea with my family or friends, I usually find out from them that it is already available in the market. Had I been born a century earlier, I would have invented or discovered a lot of things. It seems like there is not much left for me.

Still I am going to keep racking my brain and share my ideas with everyone. After that, it is up to the manufacturers to pick up any of these gems from here and send me royalty checks in the future.



1. Saftey Suits: SOS! Need help! Scientists, innovators, and R&D guys, this is an urgent message for you—please, we do not want advanced weapons of mass destruction or fancy luxury products for individual happiness. We want safety suits to protect us from the impending disasters, be they waterborne, airborne, or the worst and most horrible of them all—Dominique Strauss-Kahn-borne. I don’t know what is going to hit me next.

The safety suit should be a portable capsule with provisions for long-time survival. When needed, the capsule should be able to provide a full body protection with the press of a button. Human bodies are relatively vulnerable despite being on the top of the evolution tree. Even lowly creatures like bugs and turtles have better defense mechanisms than we do.

2. Edible Objects: I am a writer. I sit before a computer surrounded by newspapers, magazines, books, and piles of junk mail. There is enough food for my brain, but every once in a while—four or five times a day to be precise—my body goes on hunger strikes and compels me to walk to the kitchen, which I absolutely detest. To appease my hunger, and to solve the problem of trash piling up, I want edible newspapers, magazines, and books, which can be savored with maple syrup or hot chili-garlic sauce. Similarly, if somebody started making edible utensils, the problem of dish washing would be solved.

Arms and ammunitions should be edible too—flavored according to the culinary customs of different regions. Many poor countries receive more military aid than food aid, so when this military supply would percolate to the terrorists, they would be more interested in eating the flavored, vitamin-fortified guns and bombs rather than killing. This will single-handedly solve the widespread problems of terrorism, malnutrition, and hunger.

3. Pain-O-Meter: Each one of us suffers from some sort of pain—from temporary aches to chronic pains. No one understands your pain unless he or she has gone through the same. And what about the indescribable heartache? Dil hi to hai na sang-o-khisht dard se bhar na aye kyon? It is now proven that getting a burn and getting dumped feels the same. I hope someone starts developing the much-needed pain-o-meter.

4. Pain-to-Energy Converter: With such abundance of pain among our own kind, we should devise ways to convert it into energy for useful work. Pain could be a source of clean and green energy, allowing us to leave a better world for our future generations. Although when such converters become common, we would have to be extremely careful, because like many other inventions, this would be prone to abuse too. The stronger ones could cause pain to the weaker ones to generate energy for their own benefit.

5. Silicone Dolls: Now this was my original idea, until I found out from Wikipedia that these life-like dolls have already existed for past many years. What I can further suggest is that these dolls be made easily available at affordable prices. While all normal people should be able to buy these, the judiciary should make it compulsory for the high-profile as well as the pedestrian sex offenders to own them. In India, the government should sell such dolls at subsidized price with a kind request to stop abusing living beings, who could be scarred for their whole lives once attacked, which is worse than killing someone. I see a huge market for such dolls in India in the near future, since there will be a scarcity of women due to rampant female feticide/infanticide.

6. Rosy Glasses: Enough of hunger, pain, and abuse. Let us make our world a happy place. Somebody please invent rosy glasses. Whoever wears them should find this world a beautiful, wonderful, fantastic place full of love, warmth, trust, empathy, and truth. Enemies would start loving each other. Terrorists would become social workers. Husbands would find their own wives beautiful. Wives would find their irritating husbands extremely charming and delightful. When you walked out of the house, the garbage dumps would look like flowerbeds. Only, I hope you people won’t start wallowing in the flowers….

Thank you, thank you, and thank you! I can hear the applause. But I think all these wonderful inventions can wait. What I need urgently is a safety suit. Is anyone listening? There is a thunderstorm warning tonight.

Check out some more inventions by fellow Indians:

This article was written for News That Matters Not a humor and satire website run by students.
Picture Courtesy: 10 ways to sharpen your brain activity

18 comments:

  1. Okay, so if everything including weapons became edible, then how'd people fight? Burps? :P

    Cheers,
    Blasphemous Aesthete

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  2. Thanks Sadiya :-)

    @Anshul: They will find a way by the grace of God!

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  3. I want my safety suit with a red lady bug design and that should not be edible ...i know the people in my country would try and eat it ASAP.

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  4. I actually said during one of my presentation that the said dolls should be sold in the open market and boy the reactions i got, horrible!!!

    Edible thing was really creative and pain to energy convertor, i bet i can light up a whole city right now:)

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  5. Perhaps, you could solve major problems of the world

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  6. What a great list of things you have 'invented!' Hope someone picks them up and gives you royalty too. What is the point of inventing something when you can't make money out of it? :)

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  7. Congratulations on Blogadda pick :) I thought this post was about our great inventions in the past, but looks like now Indians have started eying the future. Do we have to book in advance for the Safety Suits???

    LOL @ Sangeeta's genuine and valid concerns about the edibility of the safety suits :D What else does one expect from a food blogger? :)

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  8. @Sangeeta: Your concern is genuine! Safety suits should not be edible.

    @JE: You can light up a whole city? That is a lot of pain! Kuchh lete kyon nahin...?

    @BKC: I can only devise ideas. Scientists and manufacturers have to concretize my ideas if they want to solve the world problems :-)

    @Zephyr: Sigh! Someday I would be make a lot of money….

    @IHM: Thanks! Yes, Indians have started eying the future. Let us not stunt independent thinking among our youngsters by forcing them to follow the rotten traditions :-)

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  9. Awesome post as usual!

    Not a safety suit but check out the "Claustrosphere", a dome-shaped habitat in which all water, food and air is endlessly recycled in a completely closed environment, the central piece of Ben Elton’s novel This Other Eden, a highly recommended read!

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  10. Wonderful post!

    After safety suit, I would like to see pain-to-energy converter. We have huge stocks of pain and FCI has not come up with new warehouses to take care of those stocks!

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  11. Thanks for the link, Gargi!!

    @Shiv: :-) Thanks! Until then we all will keep wasting this energy. I am going to take a Disprin now....

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  12. Nice!!! I wonder what would happen to the world if this becomes reality!!!

    Btw, edible utensils would be awesome! And, I want a safety suit which can be customized according to my hair, makeup and footwear!:-)

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  13. @Akanksha: Ha ha ...we women do not want to look disheveled even during disaster!

    @Blognostic: If you stand up and walk around your brain will get more oxygen and nutrients....

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  14. Okay I read this way back, never commented though. You totally deserved the pick!

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  15. Hi Giribala,
    Good to see your interesting and informative blog.
    In this piece in many areas i could very well relate. I liked idea No 2, very interesting and thought provoking too,
    I am joining in, hope you find little time to drop in
    Best regards
    Ariel

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  16. Congrats for the BlogAdda pick. Totally awesome! :D

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