Chasing the fallen spider
As day light breaks through the heavens for the first time, silhouettes of the distant hills across the agricultural fields appear. The skies around the sun glow. Light spreads quickly through the skies. Any moment the sun will, in all its majesty, break through and make its face shine on earth.
The drone is ready for flight above cotton plants with scattered pink flowers beginning to show up.
God’s sun has now made its appearance over the horizon. It makes it impossible to look at the mountains anymore. The blazing fresh rays tear up the eyes.
And the drone lifts up at the command of the thumb. Makes its flight through the fields. Capturing the sun’s light. Moving fast just above the leaves, almost through them, it’s sharp blades cutting them off.
Suddenly there’s a black out!
The drone is no longer visible. The software announces ever so professionally - “find your object”. The obedient robotic spider has fallen.
The only way is to rush out from the comfort of the balcony. Cut short the delight of viewing the green fields basking in fresh, morning sunlight. Head out onto the road, and jump into shrubs and bushes; cross ditches and hop across bumps, pipes and heaps of plastic and broken bricks. Step into the soft, crumbling soil that has just received the early morning dew. Run amidst the wet leaves.
Follow google map that indicates where the drone may have fallen. Around 750 steps later, google says “your object is on the right”. Except it’s not anywhere in the vicinity.
(Cut to a childhood memory of chasing the tennis ball that just got hit into a bushy area by the gully cricketer. The first boy speeding in the direction turns back signalling - ‘ball not found’. Two others follow and before long, almost half the players ‘beat around the bush’ to search for the missing ball. The smart guy will look at the pitch, and trace the flight of the ball with his eye moving in tandem with his hand drawing the imaginary line of flight. He’ll point his index finger into where he thinks it may have fallen and indicates to the others to look “there”. In a few seconds, the ball will be found and quickly the small crowd disperses back to the field, bringing an end to a long and arduous search operation).
In the cotton fields 160km away from Hyderabad, the Nallamala hills look over, while four men are in search of a fallen drone.
Google has failed them. Look in all four directions, and there are acres of similar looking agri fields. Where would you even begin to search?
Google’s failing is not the end of the world. Enter ‘Apple Maps’. From the precise point, the drone picks up signal and with the joy of a little boy finding his missing toy, the drone is scooped out of the ground.
Removing mud and dew drops. Cleaning the blades. Wiping off the dirt from its body and lenses.
It’s a moment of inexplicable relief, as the drone is fondled and caressed with care.
An inquisitive farmer brushing his teeth with twigs walks up. With a gleeful smile he inches closer to the group. Thanks them for sending the drone over the fields the previous day.
A group of around a hundred monkeys threatening to eat up cotton fruits apparently heard the sound of the flying drone and in a few moments just vanished. He was more than happy and narrated the whole story.
Not realising the drone mishap a few moments earlier, he starts to explain cotton planting.
In between he makes a request that the drone to be flown across a particular area so that for the rest of the day, he doesn’t have to deal with monkeys.
And he sends the group back with enough insight into farming.
But, is the retrieved fallen spider good for flight again? Well, yes…
The hardworking farmer goes back to his field, weeding out the unwanted, and checking every row of planted cotton, like he would, his baby waking up to another day.
The drone is safe in the arms of its exuberant owner, giggling on his way back, seeing his dirty shoes cleaned by the dew of the morning!