chakravyuha

I am a regular user of a vision substitution software called the vOICe. It is a free program downloadable from http://www.seeingwithsound.com.

One question that often gets asked is what besides mobility are the practical uses of this program? Which is an indirect way of asking what are the practical uses of vision? Yes, it gives one a lot of ifnormation about one’s environment but what does one do with vision besides moving around? Most other things can be done via other senses so the challenge is to come up with an application which would excite everyone and can be demonstrated in say 5 minutes.

Careful now..you never know whose banana peel you might step on. The unintended consequences of the littlest of actions can take one by surprise – like the surprise I felt when I saw a pirated CD in the innards of Connaught Place’s Palika Bazaar. There it was, being all innocently round and shiny, with a little printout listing the names of all the songs it contained through a not-so-innocent process of illegal downloads and mass CD writing. The printout itself was not surprising either, but what was surprising, was the fact that it had a song by my band…

Didn’t know what to do, so I left the offending object there and moved on with life. What struck me was that a song that was created some random evening by two souls fed up with the scheme of things, inside a little hostel room with a 60 watt bulb and a day’s toil behind them would end up here. Funny. The songs can be accessed at:

http://www.jammag.com/rock/show_rock.php?article_id=66

(No prizes for guessing which one found it’s way into the CD)