Wednesday 2 September 2015

H-appily ever after


Imagine. 

Our much loved fairy tale characters, armed with apps. Would the stories have taken a different turn? Let’s put 5 of them to the app-test and see the stories, h-appily ever after.

Poor Hansel and Gretel had the misfortune of being lost in the big, dark, forest. Now, if only Hansel and Gretel had been armed with google maps, they would have never had to strew breadcrumbs on the trail back home. As for the poor hungry bird who ate up all the breadcrumbs, a food technology delivery app like Swiggy would have got her all the bird-feed she needed before she could even tweet her distress.

What about Cinderella and the fairy godmother? Ever wondered why the godmother had to ask Cinderella to return by the stroke of midnight?  Did the magic spell broke then or maybe it had something to do with return policy of the things she procured for Cinderella? Valid for only 6 hours? Now, if only fairy godmother had access to Amazon or Flipkart on her magic wand smartphone, she would have dressed up Cinderella to the hilt and Cinderella could have partied away all night without losing her hair or shoe.

Now, Sleeping Beauty had a different challenge. Falling asleep for 100 years and waiting for the Prince to wake her up. How boring it must have been for the poor Princess. As for the Prince. Why wait for a 100 years? Maybe the Prince was fighting traffic challenges of a different kind. Well, one click of Uber or Ola and the Prince would have been delivered to the doorstep of the sleeping, bored, Princess. And while he was waiting for Princess to wake up, he could have read her stories using the latest Kindle app. Till it was time to wake up to the new mobile wake up alarm.

Let’s peep into the tower of Rapunzel combing her shiny, long hair with hundred painstaking brushstrokes, yet to realize the hair would soon disappear. And that the poor Prince would not have her braided tresses to make the ascent to the tower. Well, one clap to Urban Ladder and a new, shiny ladder would have saved the duo much drama and the evil witch would have been able to take a nap in between her wicked spells.

What about Rumpelstiltskin? The queen went to so much trouble, sending her loyal soldiers all over the country to search for the name of evil Rumpelstiltskin. Well, a crowdsourcing app to get answers from multiple people; Quora.com or such, would have crunched time and money; not that money would have been an issue in those pre-double-dip-recession days. But yes, the ending would still have been the Queens’ victory, with crowdsourced intelligence.


Alas, our fairy tale characters, had to work much harder in those days, without the tell-tale apps of today to click on their hearts’ desire.


App in hand, they could have been singing these stories, h-appily ever after.