The Humanoid… An experiment that failed

Autobiography of a Humanoid……

                                            -1-

Deathly hallow in the Valley of death

It was a period of intense isolation.

The young couple were desperate. Their offsprings should perform. Especially the male ones should out perform others. They had their unique idea of parenting. For them, any movie, any friendship or socialisation had a corruptive influence on a student. All classmates were taken to be bad unless certified. The society on the whole was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Vacations were Time wasted which meant Life wasted. There were no holidays. Every summer break was spent in advance learning the next year’s syllabus. No wonder both of the siblings had unparallel academic excellence in the school till…. Till they were exposed to the big big but bad world.

Add to it, the house was on the fringe of the village open Crematorium, the burning place for dead. There was no street light. No rickshaw puller will come to the place after sun down. The house neither visited any relatives nor receieved any. Nor mix with the handful neighbours around. This added a deathly hallow to the house.

Like the Russian gymnasts trained from infancy the trainees were let loose in the olympics of college education at the age of 15.

After initial faltering in entrance examination the elder of the two blazed the trail. Once ‘SUCCESSFULly LAUNCH’ed, he blasted through the contemporary academic milieu of NIT, IIM-A, Texas & went on & on to perch himself in USA as a teaching faculty. That was supposed to be the pinnacle of success in those days. Soon he was out of orbit & promptly disconnected with the launcher. Last the couple heard of him as an unique faculty member in an American University- erudite, an astute planner, a time table personified, yet not adored by his pupils.

……..well he had an handicap. He lacked the EMPATHY button. He outperformed the computer modules that he designed. Yet his social achievements were not that extraordinary. he had failed in all other fronts : family, social, relationship. His wife had to take up a lot of PRO activity on his behalf for it.

                                                             -2-

  For my parents education can end in two fields only. A successful Doctor or an NRI engineer, nothing less. It was that middle class set up of India in seventies. Nothing else  appeared in their horizon.

So it fell on my shoulder to fulfil the other end- to become a Doctor..

For me meeting a stranger is like crossing the Valley of Death. I will draft, redraft letters, send feelers & rather do all possible round about things but meet him in person for 10 minutes. A ring of telephone or chime of a calling bell triggers a sharp palpitation in my chest. That is an Intense form of Stranger Phobia.

Yet, medical field needs strong empathy with another person, Moe often you have to interact with total strangers. This needed an enormous dose of social empathy and emotional intelligence. Our system does not test your emotional and social qualifications. Instead it  requires blackening of a set of MCQ papers. I cleared every single exam paper brilliantly & soon became a certified clinician.

Another ‘SUCCESFUL LAUNCH’ from the valley of Death.

                                                       -3-
____There the experiment failed.

You can not treat a person without empathy. The diseases do not obey the whips of text book guidelines. You have to accept failure gracefully in spite of 100% correct clinical input. I was helpless with each misbehaviour of disease & they are quite often. That made me an eccentric, ill tempered physician with sparks of brilliance few & far between.

   The singular experiment ended with two Humanoids with brilliant design, true to the specification but poor field performance.

A system failure to generate & detect manufacturing defect of Emotional Adequacy.