An interview with Hema Phadke

HP: Welcome Mr. Rahul Thathoo, nice to have you in our studios!
RT: Oh, the pleasure is all mine. Nice to be here actually.
HP: Just to remind members of our audience who might have just joined us, Rahul is a bright computer science student at Stanford University...
RT: Just wanted to add to that.. (looking at the camera), when Hema ji said bright, she was actually referring to my complexion, which btw is actually pale..so I am a pale computer science student at Stanford.
HP: (ahem ahem)...yes, and today Rahul is here to discuss one of his two master pieces in the field of applied sciences. Rahul recently published findings in the renowned science journal "Birds of the Same Feather Flock Together", which have startled the scientific community - and that is probably the understatement of the century!
RT (laughs): Thanks Hema ji! Well yes, the findings have been quite startling and in fact even though I expected something new, I never knew it would be such a stark contrast to what we humans have always believed to be true.
HP: So lets dive straight into your work, what have you been up Mr. Thatoo
RT: (ahem) Its Mr. Thathoo...so basically my work, for the past 2 months, has been on trying to find exactly those places on a piece of clothing, where a person, who had previously worn that particular outfit, dirtied the clothing by his/her sweat. So, in a nutshell, trying to find out areas on a piece of clothing where people sweat is what i have been upto for a long time now - 2 months to be precise.
HP: Wow, so how did you go about this sort of research?
RT: Well, Hema ji, you have to note that the research community for long has been trying to do this in a way which does not destroy the piece of clothing in the first place. If you go back to the time when all of us were still in kindergarten and were still learning about Heisenberg uncertainty principle - you might remember that our class teacher told us about the fact that you cannot observe a particle without disturbing it! And that was the reason why the research community couldnt measure those spots exactly on a piece of clothing.
HP: And then you came on the scene! Tell us your methodology Mr. Thathu
RT: (ahem) Its Mr. Thathoo...well so I knew there was no way one could deceive the Uncertainity principal - there are somethings in nature you really cannot defy. So I just decided to play Holi!
HP: Holi??
RT: Yes, the wonderful Indian (Hindu) festival of colors, Holi. And boy, did I play Holi or what! I mean I just went on a rampage, throwing people in water, after throwing a ton of color on them. But of course people colored me black and blue, actually more like yellow and green! The bottom line is - I was looking like a "red-Indian" at the end of it all.
HP: So how is that related with you research?
RT: You didnt let me finish..
HP: Oh, I am sorry..please continue Mr. Thattoo..
RT: (ahem ahem) Its Mr. Thathoo...so after the Holi thing, I came back and threw the dirty/colored clothes into my laundry basket. This laundry basket also contained a wonderful shirt which i wear to all my interviews. That shirt cost me a fortune, it was totally white in color, and I actually wore it on a hot day - that was my previous interview with Amazon.com. After the interview, I came home and had to throw the shirt in my laundry basket as I had sweat a lot!
HP: ahaan...and then what did you do sir?
RT: Well the next week, when I was out of clean underwear and on the verge of re-cycling old/dirty ones, I rushed to the Rains Laundry room and did my laundry. After about an hour, when I came back to throw the wet clothes into the dryer, I found - to my horror - the white shirt which i used to wear to all my interview - was no longer white. It was red! It had gullal all over it. But I was keen enough to notice that it was not red everywhere, only at specific places.
HP: ahaan!! So those places where the shirt was white were actually...(RT interrupts!)
RT: Dont even try to steel my thunder...so contrary to what you might have been thinking... the places were there was red on the shirt was actually the places where i had sweat!
HP: But that was what I was also...
RT: Forget it girl...next question please..
HP: So what were your findings?
RT: Well humans have always thought that we sweat at all the odd places, but my experiments revealed that we sweat in our armpits the most! And that is what got me the publication in "Birds of the Same Feather Flock Together" titled - "Detecting Human Sweat Regions on Clothing using Butea monosperma, from the Faboideae/Papilionaceae family". And I am invited to give a keynote address at their upcoming annual conference which is being held at University of NewFoundLand this year.
HP: Wonderful!
RT: Yes and actually to validate my findings, I tried this experiment again, I threw in a wonderful tshirt gifted to me by Prof. Hector Garcia Molina of the InfoLab, at the Computer Science Department here at Stanford (for being the second best joker in the class) with those dirty clothes which got colored in Holi and to the world's amazement and my contentment, the results were re-produced!! The armpit area on the tshirt was red! That is when I decided to finally publish my findings for the benefit of the rest of the world. And immediately, I knew that all the books on this topic would have to be re-written now that I had come up with this finding.
HP: That is just super. So with one stroke you have put India on the world map for bleeding edge research in human-textilo-hyperhidrosis.
RT: (Hehe) Well thanks, you are too kind Hema Ji!
HP: Thank you Mr. Rahaul Thathoo for joining us this week. Stay tuned next week for more exciting breakthroughs in applied sciences!


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....(camera's go offline)
RT: You bitch, why cant you get my name right, its R A H U L T H A T H O O. Somebody get me the President, I mean the Producer!!