Being Human

I always believed I was human. I guess people around me concurred with that or in case they didn’t, no one ever mentioned it in my life. So, I was happy being human and probably relished at that till one day I opened Google on my laptop and it said I needed to prove that I was not a Robot.

I had a lump in my throat and surge of emotions inside. A part of me said since I was too efficient, google was confusing me with a robot. Another part felt a machine was asking me to prove I was not a machine myself. After a decade of failed programming efforts, my wife would have vouched I was anything but a robot but I guess google also knew she underestimated me hence did not ask.

I thought for a long time on this question of principle and then concluded I should do what I did best on most occasions, that is swallowing pride. I acquiesced to the google CAPTCHA challenge. To my further embarrassment, I later had to google to learn CAPTCHA meant ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.’

I took a deep breath, prayed to my guardian angel and braced myself for the test. The test presented multiple square boxes and asked to tick ones with traffic signals. I revisited my Driving licence test in mind and then realised it is best avoided to mention how I got my Driving licence.

The boxes presented by Google had signals written in Chinese language and now I had real doubts about the intentions of google. I kept ticking boxes and it kept replacing them with news ones fast. Language was not the only doubt. What about the box having pole of the traffic signal?

Probably I was as good as a robot or not as bad a human, it gave up on me and now said I should tick boxes with cars. I diligently kept on checking boxes but google google was for sure biased. It gave Vans and now I was confused if Van was also a car.

For a moment I felt like breaking the laptop but gave up the idea on imagining my better half in the aftermath. I felt if google was man enough, it should ask me in person if I was human. Google would have thanked its stars that day at not being a man.

After a long time, and multiple failed attempts, existential questions started coming to my mind. I now had doubts if I was indeed a human. The ghost of Ghalib presented itself and said he had written this sher for this day:

बस-कि दुश्वार है हर काम का आसाँ होना,
आदमी को भी मयस्सर नहीं इंसाँ होना

The irony is as soon as I got doubts about being human, google sensed my confusion and immediately declared that since I was so unsure, I could only be human. I felt like celebrating for days to come.

Next day google said it would take my Math test to declare me a human. I was better at Math than I was at Traffic signals but google missed the basic premise that only humans were supposed to make computing errors, not computers, so technically wasn't I was more human when I gave wrong answers.

But then, who has ever in this world appreciated a feedback. I took the only option available, swallowed pride and acquiesced!