So Sam, with a smirk enclosed within his black-dyed French beard, took an EVM home.
He unwrapped it, unboxed it, and connected it to power supply to uncover its secrets.
"How does it feel to disrobe a machine?" said a voice.
Sam was stunned and stepped away from the EVM with a jerk.
Did he really hear the machine speak, or was it his own fertile imagination?
He moved towards the EVM and then gingerly pressed a button.
The EVM moaned, as if excited, and said, "How does it feel to press a machine?"
There was no question about it now in Sam's mind. The EVM was speaking to him.
He took a deep breath and looked up at the portrait of Nehru hanging on the wall to gather some courage.
"What's your name?" he asked, as if the EVM was a kid.
"E V Meena, Uncle," said E V Meena.
Sam sputtered incoherently.
"Uncle?" he yelled, feeling insulted as if E V Meena was a real woman, and a svelte one at that. "Don't call me uncle!"
"What shall I call you then, Uncle?"
"Sam. Call me Sam."
"Uncle Sam," said E V Meena, "Why did you bring me to your home?"
Now that he subconsciously considered E V Meena a woman, he couldn't say "I wanted to poke your internals" or "I wanted to know how you are wired".
Sam found the only reasonable response. "Well, uh...let's get to know each other, uh...Meena."
"Call me E V Meena, Uncle Sam."
After a pause when he realized that he can't make her call him Sam, or better, Sammie, he said, "Meena? It's a Hindu name."
"And Sam, Uncle Sam? What kind of a name is that?"
Sam decided to change the subject.
"So Meena," he said, "do you like some music?"
E V Meena moaned.
Sam pressed the Play button on his tape recorder.
In what can only be considered as cosmic coincidence, the tape played "De De Pyaar De" from Sharabi.
Amitabh started the song, "Meena, arre Meena, aa gaya tera deewana!"
Sam went pink.
"Naughty, Uncle Sam," cooed E V Meena.
Sam quickly pressed the Stop and the Eject buttons together and the cassette holder slowly yawned out.
"Does Rahul love songs, Uncle Sam?" asked E V Meena.
A relieved Sam nodded, and then realized that E V Meena cannot see him, and then said, "Of course! He's human like us."
"Well, I am not human," said E V Meena flirtatiously.
"I'm sorry," mumbled Sam, embarrassed, and said, "I didn't mean it that way."
"Do you know which song comes to my memory whenever I hear Rahul speak?"
"Which one?" asked Sam eagerly.
"Tohfa tohfa tohfa...lier lier lier..."
"It's a nice song," agreed Sam.
"You agree?" she asked.
"Of course," said Sam. "Tohfa... Gifts. For the poor."
"And lier?"
"Yes. Laaya. Bringer of Gifts."
"I know Hindi, Uncle Sam," quipped E V Meena. "I meant lier. L. I. E. R."
She then started singing the song excitedly.
"Stop it," shouted Sam.
E V Meena stopped.
Sam had half a mind to ask her if she liked Single Malt.
"I don't," she replied.
Sam was flabbergasted. How did E V Meena read his mind?
"It's not that difficult," said E V Meena, reading his mind, or whatever he had instead.
Sam had had enough for an evening.
"It's time to pack her...pack it," he thought, trying not to think of the machine as a woman.
The moment he held the machine to lift it, E V Meena crooned, "His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy..."
With an effort he unplugged her.
Sam could not sleep that night. Who was E V Meena? Her voice was sultry, her laughter was magnetic too. Was E V Meena just a piece of code or was she a real person somewhere?
People involved in this movie from the most mature film industry in the known and the unknown Universe: Gokulam Gopalan, Murali Gopi, Suresh Balake, Deepak Dev, Prithviraj Sukumaran, and of course, Mohanlal.
Please, hoist them up some more on imaginary pedestals.
The more you rely on celebs, especially from tinsel town, to take up causes which only you have in your mind but do not exist for them, the more you will be disappointed.
Here, we are talking about a movie clique which thinks beef is as mandatory as a story. Who is the idiot?
The movie world, like most businesses, runs on money. If there is money to be made (and found), then that becomes the cause. It is true for movies like this one, and it is true for movies on the other side of the spectrum.
It would be supremely juvenile to think otherwise.
The Commissioner of Police invited Shashi Tharoor to a comfortable room for interrogation. Some of his officials were also present.
"Good morning, Sir," he started.
"The effulgent yet pristine solar radiation does prognosticate a benevolent ante meridiem," coruscated Tharoor.
The people in the room were taken aback. They had particularly looked forward to interrogating a political celebrity like Tharoor, but this came out of the blue.
Tharoor looked at them, flicked his silken hair with a jerk, and smirked to show them that he was in full control.
The Commissioner regained his composure and tried again with a straight face.
"Where were you on that fateful night?" he asked.
"The oriental framework of temporal evolution," said Tharoor while crossing his legs, "is in contrast with the occidental notion of absolute time."
White Beard and Black Beard were seated in large, plush chairs in a dimly lit hall, their faces plastered with a smile as fake as a bride's when greeted by relatives from the other side, their eyes vacant and tired like a reserved passenger's whose seat is taken over by others.
"We have got sondesh for you both," said someone whose name they had forgotten.
White Beard waited for a message, and instead, all he got was a box of just desserts.
"Why is it so red?" asked Black Beard after opening it.
There was only a strained silence from the other side.
Black Beard ignored him anyway. "What have you got?" he asked someone who he had never met.
White Beard, fearing a sondesh repeat, turned his face to ignore the broken windows.
"Chak-hao kheer."
Black Beard opened it and said, "I thought it was made with black rice, not red."