Siri O siri !

I'm neither tech savvy nor am I a gadget freak but after years of not yielding to temptation, I bit into the apple in the garden of gadgets and for once Eve had nothing to do with it. Basically bought it for the I too factor. So when the iOS 6 was launched I joined the bandwagon of self proclaimed apple quacks in comparing and commenting on the new software even though I had absolutely no clue on its predecessors.

People talked about the Siri every where I went. So before I could pass my expert opinion on it, I started to test it myself. But the only problem was that I was suffering from a severe bout of Pharyngitis which made me sound funny, even to me, but what the heck I was meeting Siri for the first time and thought I’ll impress her with my hoarse, deep and heavily masculine voice. I was instructed that I could say something as simple as Polar Bears and siri would return loads of info on Polar Bears and I went ahead and said the same. It returned Lopez. Guess it recognised the later part of Polar and the first part of Bear in my pharyngitis infected voice. Any day, statistics on Lopez is far more interesting than those on Polar Bears and even more, if it returns images of Lopez's campaign against furs. But my worry was Siri wasn’t working.

I tried something simpler…Recipe for Biriyani I called out.

Cleared my throat and said Recipe for B I R I Y A N I.

Siri: Can I get the recipe for Beady-eyed-me!!! How about a web search

Me once again trying to be clearer

Siri : Can I get the recipe for BNE !!! How about a web search

Realised I was missing the point, after all Siri understands American English and then once again said B I R I Y A N I with an accent of one of the call centre boys back home and tried to execute it like, I had a hot half baked potato stuck to my upper jaw.

Siri : Viviani!!! How about a web search!!!

I realised that both Siri and me were getting there. Fabio Viviani was a well known chef and in fact had a recipe for an Italian Wedding Soup. I settled for that recipe instead.

This does make me wonder if apple should really start contemplating a version for Indian English as a tribute to one of our very own code crackers and name it Suri for the Indian tongue.

Now Siri from a different context, Siri also means to laugh in Tamil and with minor phonetic variations means the same in most other South Indian languages. During my recent visit to India, noticed Dental centres were out numbering normal clinics and the kind of services being offered was interesting. Smile enhancement & smile design were a few of the exotic services being offered. Guess they had de-linked happiness from smile. The only treatment I needed to enhance my smile would be the dentist taking over my EMI’s for a couple of months. Grew up reading laughter was the best medicine but we live in days when medicines are prescribed for laughter. We will soon see dentists prescribing portable nitrous oxide filled cylinders (If you were reminded of Osho it was not intentional) which could be controlled via your I-gadgets and you could simply tell siri to bring a siri to your face. If this has brought one to yours, then my experiments with siri has paid off.