The Moo-ral of the Story is…

The Woman from Madras Musings, some readers may recall, is in the process of building a home. Well, her Better Half is, anyway – her role is chiefly confined to providing constructive (and sadly, sometimes vexing) criticism. The responsibility includes making regular trips to the site to inspect progress. It was on one such survey that WMM and the B.H. recently encountered an adventure.

The inspection had been uneventful to the point of tediousness, save for a short-lived debate about the balcony – a large flowering tree across the balcony leans into the space, and opinions differed on whether it should be welcomed or not. In the end, it was decided that the balcony would have grills anyway, which put the matter to rest. While leaving, WMM was thinking that they had had a rather boring day when she bumped into a cow outside the gate. Alright then, not literally – but the cow’s nose was much closer to her than she would have liked; readers must consider that WMM is of short stature, after all. WMM leapt back in reflex, this time literally bumping into the B.H. who was close behind. There was not much to do but hotfoot it back into the construction site. This was harder to do than you might think, dear reader. WMM realized that one had to be quick without displaying the sort of hurry that often invites pursuit from animals, so both she and the B.H. had to make a decidedly silly walk-run in full public view.

They had barely entered the site when WMM spotted that fearsome wet nose nudging the gates open. The B.H. wouldn’t believe it, at first – why, he asked, would a cow want to visit the construction site? But there it was – the gates creaked open and the cow stood there, nose and all. WMM and the B.H. attempted to retreat to the stairway, but the movement was interpreted as a red carpet welcome of sorts – the cow took a few steps forward, too. WMM, it must be admitted, was terrified. One reads much in the paper about angry cows attacking pedestrians and passers-by – what if this were one such cow? There was nowhere to run, either – the doors had not been fixed in place yet. WMM was wondering whether a certain iconic Tamil film song might soothe the situation when a construction worker poked his head from the window above. “Is it here?” he asked. “Is what here?” replied WMM, adding that a cow had entered the premises. “That’s what I asked,” replied the chap and came barreling down. He walked straight to a tool pile and extracted a large bucket. He then fished out a hose connected to a water source and began to fill the bucket. This was a friendly cow, he explained, one which visited the construction site every day to drink water. So this was what the cow had been waiting for – she was thirsty, poor thing! The cow walked over to the bucket and drank. One bucket, then two, then three. It was amazing how quickly she had it, too. The B.H.’s heart melted, and so did WMM’s. Neither was brave enough to pet her, of course, but they asked the construction worker to do the honours, which he did. The cow had just had her fill of water when the maid who worked next door popped in. “It’s here already, then?” she remarked and walked straight to the cow. To WMM’s amazement, she gave it a huge stack of rotis, which the cow proceeded to eat. The construction worker signalled that this was the best time to slip away, and B.H. followed suit with WMM in tow.

The moo-ral of the story, then, dear reader, is this: not everything that appears terrifying is bad, even a cow’s nose at eye-level.

Is WMM anAI ­Model?

In this Age of Artificial Intelligence, distinguishing between human and AI-generated text is getting harder by the day. And so, The Woman from Madras Musings – seized by the spirit of learning – decided to educate herself on the matter. As it happens, there’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that there are words, phrases and punctuation marks that are dead giveaways for AI text. The bad news is that WMM uses many of them. Like em-dashes, for instance – those charming little marks that WMM depends on to accommodate her often wandering flow of thought. Or common words and phrases, like ‘a testament to’ and ‘navigating the challenges of’ and ‘it remains to be seen’ and ‘holds promise’, and even comfortingly banal vocabulary like ‘embark,’ ‘crucially,’ ‘remarkably,’ ‘however,’ and ‘renowned,’ to name a few examples from the depressingly long laundry list.

WMM is left shaken, to say the least. The captcha, as they say, appears to have turned – except, how is one to provide proof that one’s writing is original and not AI-generated? WMM attempted, in the spirit of the Frenchman Perec, to write something devoid of these red flags. Perec appears to have had it easy – he only had to forgo the use of the letter ‘e’. WMM, on the other hand, found the exercise severely restrictive – upon identifying and removing words, phrases and punctuation marks of offence, the text was reduced to a redacted mess that any intelligence agency would have been proud of. WMM is finding it impossible to write a convincingly human piece. Could she be an AI model, after all?

Dark times indeed, for artists and writers. Why, these are dark times even for WMM. Maybe one ought to throw in a spelling error or to to make a display of ones humanity. There’s not much to do beyond that but hope that editors and audiences retain faith in familiar bylines.

What’s in your bag?

The Woman from Madras Musings was cleaning out her handbag last weekend. She retrieved an assortment of objects, not all of which belong to her – it appears that B.H., the Eternals and others have taken to using WMM’s bag as a sort of convenient mobile storage when the group is out and about. Some of the things she fished out are:

  • Several packets of kumkum and vibhuti, as well as assorted pictures of gods and goddesses, from temple trips.
  • A pair of eyewateringly bright blue sunshades.
  • A fork and a spoon, both thankfully spotlessly clean.
  • A tennis wristband.
  • A guitar pick.
  • An assortment of visiting cards belonging to people whom WMM has never heard of.
  • A sewing kit.
  • An old debit card that B.H. once turned the house out looking for, and ended up blocking.
  • Three ID proofs, each belonging to a different person
  • A wad of cash that sadly did not belong to WMM.
  • Pieces of paper with hastily written phone numbers and nothing else. These are objects of great curiosity, but WMM doesn’t have the courage to call and investigate.
  • A set of keys that don’t belong to the house.

WMM and B.H. are now sorting out the material to return them to their rightful owners. Does this sort of thing happen often to MM readers, too?

– WMM